Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um Preview: The Newest, Excessive-Efficiency PCIe 5 SSD Platform
| Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um Preview: Coming Quickly To An SSD Close to You A mature controller, recent firmware, and the newest high-performance NAND comes collectively in one of many quickest SSDs we have ever examined. |
|||
|
|
||
Like final yr, the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um drive we’ll be exhibiting you right here will not be a retail product, however quite a reference design for different producers to make use of when constructing their very own SSDs. It options the identical E26 NVMe 2.0-complianct SSD controller, in addition to a beefy DRAM cache, however this time round it’s paired to quicker NAND flash and the drive advantages from an array of firmware and energy optimizations that finally allowed for a big efficiency uplift…
Phison E26 PCIe 5 NVMe SSD Specs And Options
The specs above are literally for the Phison E26 controller itself, not essentially this particular reference SSD. Nonetheless, it explains what the higher limits are for the controller and roughly what it might do when paired to cache and NAND flash reminiscence quick sufficient to take advantage of all of its capabilities.
Phison PS5026-E26-based drives have advanced fairly a bit for the reason that controller first hit the scene. Early drives primarily based on the Phison PS5026-E26 shipped with Micron’s B58R 3-bit per cell (TLC) NAND reminiscence working at 1600MT/s. These drives sometimes hit switch charges of about 10GB/s, which was marginally quicker than the perfect PCIe 4.0 SSDs obtainable on the time. Later Micron launched a B58R variant working at 2000MT/s, which pushed efficiency to about 12GB/s. This time round, Micron is readying an excellent quicker variant of B58R working at 2400MT/s, which is the utmost flash switch charge supported by the controller. The mixture of the Phison PS5026-E26, one other yr’s price of firmware and energy optimizations, and 2400MT/s B58R pushes the efficiency of the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um to a peak of about 14.6GB/s.
In any other case the PCB structure and options of the drive are comparable. And like current-gen Phison E26-based drives, the upcoming Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um flavors would require some type of cooling to keep up prime efficiency — whether or not it comes by the use of an lively cooler just like the reference mannequin pictued right here, or by the M.2 heatsinks constructed into immediately’s top-end motherboards. We suspect Phison’s parters shall be introducing drives on this household, with and with out included heatsinks, much like what they did all through 2023. In case your motherboard has built-in heatsinks, you possibly can save a couple of bucks on a naked drive, and if not, heatsink-equipped fashions shall be obtainable as nicely.
Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um PCIe 5 SSD Benchmarks
Underneath every check situation, the SSDs showcased right here had been put in as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a separate drive used for the OS and benchmark installations. Our testbed’s motherboard was up to date with the newest BIOS obtainable on the time of publication and Home windows 11 was totally up to date. Home windows firewall, automated updates, and display savers had been all disabled earlier than testing and Focus Help was enabled to stop any interruptions.
In all check runs, we rebooted the system, ensured all temp and prefetch information was purged, and waited a number of minutes for drive exercise to settle and for the system to succeed in an idle state earlier than invoking a check. All the drives right here have additionally been up to date to their newest firmware as of press time. The place relevant, we might additionally sometimes use any proprietary NVMe drivers obtainable from a given producer, however all the drives featured right here used the Microsoft NVMe driver included with Home windows 11.
HotHardware’s Take a look at System
| Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K Motherboard: Video Card: Reminiscence: Storage: |
OS: Home windows 11 Professional x64 Chipset Drivers: Benchmarks: |
ATTO Disk Benchmark
ATTO is a “fast and soiled” sort of disk benchmark that measures switch speeds throughout a particular quantity size. It measures switch charges for each reads and writes and graphs them out in an simply interpreted chart. We selected .5KB via 64MB switch sizes and a queue depth of 4 over a complete max quantity size of 256MB. ATTO’s workloads are sequential in nature and measure bandwidth, quite than I/O response time, entry latency, and so on.
The Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um leads throughout the board by way of learn write bandwith. Within the learn check, the hole separating it from the Essential T700 is small, but it surely opens up fairly a bit within the write check the place the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um clearly leads with the biggest switch sizes.
These benchmarks measure IOPS as an alternative of switch charge, so naturally the numerical efficiency of the drive falls off as switch dimension rises. The Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um, save for the very smallest of transfers within the learn check, leads the remainder of the best way, particularly within the write check.
CrystalDiskMark x64 Benchmarks
CrystalDiskMark is an artificial benchmark that exams each sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers utilizing incompressible information. It supplies a fast have a look at greatest and worst case eventualities with regard to SSD efficiency, greatest case being bigger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.
These firmware tweaks and quicker NAND give the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um an edge over all the different drives within the random 4K transfers as nicely, save for the Q1T1 exams the place the Samsung 990 Professional sqeaks previous by a few megabytes per second. These random write scores for the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um are wanting mightly tasty, although.
UL 3DMark Gaming Storage Benchmark
UL lately added a gaming-centric storage benchmark to 3DMark that leverages trace-based exams of precise PC video games and gaming-related actions (equivalent to streaming with OBS) to measure real-world gaming efficiency in quite a lot of eventualities. The exams embody issues like loading Battlefield V, Name of Obligation: Black Ops 4and Overwatch from the preliminary launch to the primary menu, recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS whereas enjoying Overwatchputting in The Outer Worlds and saving sport progress. And eventually, copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike: International Offensive from one drive to a different.
Except a single check, the place lower than 1MB/s separated the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um from the Essential T700, Phison’s newest platform led all the different drives as soon as once more by way of in-game switch charges.
The latency exams confirmed just about the identical rankings. The Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um eithe ties the earlier quickest drive we have examined (Essential’s T700), or it takes the lead with the perfect latency characterisitcs of the bunch.
These main switch charges and latency end result within the prime total rating we have seen from an SSD in 3DMark’s storage benchmark but.
UL PCMark 10 System Drive Storage Take a look at
We like PCMark 10’s new fast storage benchmark module for its real-world utility measurement strategy to testing. PCMark provides a trace-based measurement of system response instances and bandwidth below numerous scripted workloads of conventional consumer / desktop system use instances.
Lastly, now we have PCMark10’s fast system drive benchmark, the place the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um dominated. The Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um supplied the very best total rating now we have seen so far, with the bottom latency, and it is the primary drive to common over 1GB/s on this check as nicely.
Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um Preview: Good Issues To Come
We’re not going to gush a lot on this conclusion as a result of the benchmark numbers above converse for themselves, and this explicit drive we examined is a reference platform that received’t be offered at retail. That stated, it’s apparent Phison’s controller and tuning, and Micron’s newest B58R NAND working at 2400MT/s come collectively in what’s prone to be the highest, high-performance PCIe 5 SSD platform for 2024. We are saying “prone to be” as a result of Samsung’s most likely acquired one thing up its sleeve and we all know InnoGrit’s new 12nm, multi-core IG5666 controller is inbound as nicely, and drives utilizing it is going to even be paired to Micron B58R NAND and supply transfers within the 14GB/s vary.
Finally although, Phison has confirmed it’s a chief within the area during the last couple of years. Nearly each prime drive of 2023 was powered by Phison know-how, and we’re certain this newest PS5026-E26 Max14um variant shall be pervasive within the coming months. We’re undoubtedly wanting ahead to getting our arms on retail drives primarily based on this platform as soon as they change into obtainable.
