Die besten PCIe Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs (2024)

FAQs

What is the best value PCIe Gen 4 SSD? ›

WD Black SN850X – Best PCIe 4.0 SSD runner-up

The reason the WD Black SN850X edges out that drive as our pick for best PCIe 4.0 runner-up is that it offers better value for the money—not only does it give you the same great speed as the FireCuda, but it does so at a lower price per GB.

SSDs that utilize a PCIe 4.0 interface are ideal for data-intensive workloads. They load applications and games faster while also optimizing boot load up time. PCIe 4.0 also brings power-saving enhancements, meaning your device runs cooler while consuming less power.

The WD Black SN850X is something of a last hurrah for Gen 4 SSDs, and it's still the best overall NVMe drive out there right now. The Lexar NM790 is a very fast Gen 4 SSD from a respected manufacturer that costs a lot less than you might expect, while making very few real-world compromises.

NVMe Drives can use 4 PCIe lanes, which means a theoretical maximum speed of 3.9 Gbps (3,940 Mbps).

At the very minimum you're looking at a simple heatsinks that sit on top of the SSD, with some form of thermal material that helps transfer heat away from the drive. For the vast majority of M. 2 NVMe SSDs this kind of cooling is more than sufficient to keep the drive operating optimally.

For the fastest data transfer speeds available, look no further than the NVMe SSD. Through its Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) bus, NVMe SSDs can achieve transfer speeds of up to 20 gigabytes per second (Gbps)—more than three times the speed of a SATA SSD.

Compared to traditional storage interfaces like SATA, NVMe provides significantly faster performance. It leverages the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface, allowing for direct communication between the CPU and the SSD. This results in reduced latency and improved overall system responsiveness.

Even though M. 2 SSDs are smaller, they are generally able to hold as much data and are often faster than other forms of SSDs available. NVMe is a more efficient and faster method to access non-volatile memory, compared to the older SATA SSDs.

Another helpful aspect of PCIe devices is that they are backward and downward compatible, so a PCIe 2.0 x2 will still work with a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface. Likewise, you can put a PCIe 4.0 device into a PCIe 3.0 slot, and it will work, albeit at PCIe 3.0 speeds.

The PCIe 4.0 standard is designed to increase data transfer speeds from 8 GT/s (PCIe 3.0) to 16 GT/s (2 GB/s per lane), and with faster speed for data to move, enables SSDs/GPUs/NICs and other devices to deliver faster I/O performance than previous PCIe revisions.

What is the latest version of NVMe? ›

NVMe 2.0 was released. The specification was restructured to enable faster and easier development of NVMe and to support a more diverse NVMe environment. 2022. The NVMe 2.0 specifications were twice restructured to NVMe 2.0b in January 2022 and 2.0c in October 2022.

PCIe 4.0 doubles the bandwidth of 3.0, the current standard; 5.0 doubles the bandwidth of 4.0 again. Additional CPU PCIe lanes give both your GPU and SSD access to CPU lanes. Upgrading to a PCIe 4.0 SSD prepares your system for new gaming innovations like DirectStorage. Every generation of PCIe is backwards compatible.

While every PCIe card is backward compatible, if you put a PCIe 4.0 SSD card into a 2.0 slot, the performance can only achieve 2.0 rates.

PCIe Gen 4 offers another key advantage in addition to its higher bandwidth outlined above – you may not need as many lanes. For example, devices requiring up to 100 Gbps of bandwidth only require 8 lanes with PCIe 4.0 compared to 16 lanes with the older PCIe 3.0.

PCIe 4.0 doubles the bandwidth of 3.0, the current standard; 5.0 doubles the bandwidth of 4.0 again. Additional CPU PCIe lanes give both your GPU and SSD access to CPU lanes. Upgrading to a PCIe 4.0 SSD prepares your system for new gaming innovations like DirectStorage. Every generation of PCIe is backwards compatible.

PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs offer faster data transfer speeds compared to PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs, which can be beneficial for tasks that require high-speed data access, such as video editing, gaming, or large file transfers.

PCIe Gen 4 offers a massive upgrade over the traditional PCIe Gen 3 SSD. The new standard almost doubled the transfer speeds as compared to the previous generation. The bit rate doubled to 16 GT/s as compared to the 8 GT/s supported by Gen 3.

PCIe 4.0 doubles the throughput to 2GB per lane, while PCIe 5.0 doubles the data transfer rate again to 4GB per lane. That means, a PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD, which uses four lanes, will offer nearly 8GB/s of theoretical throughput, which is twice the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 and half the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0.