PCIe 5.0 SSDs represent the fastest consumer storage you can get your hands on. These Gen5 drives doubled the theoretical bandwidth compared to Gen4 drives, pushing it to 16GB/s (total for 4 lanes). You got SSDs boasting nearly 15,000MB/s transfer speeds, promising massive throughput for data-intensive workloads. These next-gen drives took a massive technical leap forward, but they targeted a problem most people didn't need solving. Gen4 drives were far from struggling when Gen5 drives came along, and they didn't even speed up the most common workloads in any meaningful way. Add to that the PCIe 5.0 premium and thermal challenges, and you can see why people consider Gen5 SSDs useless, at least for the time being.

No one was clamoring for faster SSDs

Gen5 drives are well ahead of their time

You're probably using a Gen4 SSD right now. These high-speed SSDs have been more than enough for gaming, browsing, file transfers, and even productivity workloads for quite some time now. People were booting their PCs in seconds, flying through game loading screens, and enjoying snappy machines long before PCIe 5.0 storage was commercially available. It wasn't as if we were close to saturating the capabilities of PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Storage capacity and longevity were probably what most users prioritized instead of wishing for even faster SSDs. Technological advances always exist in an overlap with previous-gen products for a time, but they at least offer a tangible improvement in real-world experience — Gen5 SSDs failed to do that.

The arrival of PCIe 5.0 storage was far from the game-changing upgrade that was the SATA SSD or even the first few NVMe SSDs. It was something that came and went without much fanfare from the general consumer. There simply was no point in buying this next-gen technology that would someday deliver performance gains in a handful of workloads. This was stretching the definitions of future-proofing, and even the most delusional PC enthusiasts couldn't justify it. Gen5 SSDs, even today, are way ahead of their time.

Sequential speeds were never the pain point

Most workloads need higher random IOPS

SSD marketing tried to convince us that PCIe 5.0 drives promised a massive speed boost to basically everything we do on our PCs. What they conveniently sidestepped was that most workloads were still years behind in leveraging sequential speeds. The blazing-fast read/write numbers you see talked about in Gen5 storage marketing don't move the needle when it comes to gaming or other common workloads. Sure, Gen5 drives give a significant boost to file transfers, video editing, 3D rendering, and machine learning, but unless you are moving massive RAW files or running professional software every day, you will struggle to notice a difference.

Technologies like DirectStorage can actually use the massive bandwidth of PCIe 5.0 SSDs to accelerate the storage-GPU pipeline, reducing the dependence on the CPU to improve performance. However, not many games have benefited from this technology yet. Several challenges in GPU decompression and unwanted performance overhead are yet to be solved before Gen5 drives can become truly useful for gaming. The GPU remains the bottleneck for high-end gaming, followed by the CPU and RAM.

Gen5 drives have seen a minor increase in adoption over the last few years, but unless popular workloads start seeing significant gains with PCIe 5.0 speeds, we'll not see the technology become commonplace. There's an urgent need for developers to solve operational challenges in implementing techniques like DirectStorage, so that gamers have an incentive to opt for newer Gen5 drives instead of tried-and-tested Gen4 models.

All we got were higher costs and increased complexity

One step forward, two steps back

In the absence of real-world relevance for the majority of users, PCIe 5.0 SSDs ended up being pricier for seemingly no reason. Why would a gamer or work-from-home professional spend double on a Gen5 SSD just to let it sit on the motherboard without earning its keep? Future-proofing doesn't make sense here, since you can always buy a Gen5 drive years later and install it in the Gen5 M.2 slot on your motherboard, moving your Gen4 SSD to a secondary slot. The current PC hardware market is even worse for Gen5 drives, since the DRAM shortage has pushed the price of storage across the board.

Apart from the cost consideration, there are also thermal challenges in running high-end Gen5 SSDs. These drives have a lot more going on than Gen4 models, and can run quite hot even in idle scenarios. Thermal throttling under load is a very real concern on these drives, which is why you need to put up with bulky, unwieldy cooling solutions, often including beefy heatsinks and cooling fans. It feels as if PCIe 5.0 storage is too fast for its own good. If I have to pay more for an SSD that runs hotter for seemingly no performance benefit, I'd easily pick the cheaper drive without a second thought.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs were made for a future that hasn't arrived yet

It's clear that Gen5 SSDs are waiting for their moment. Eventually, we'll see more games being able to benefit from PCIe 5.0 speeds, convincing a large section of gamers to make the switch. More adoption will increase the supply, pushing down prices, which will lead to more adoption, and so on. Gen4 drives will slowly become what Gen3 drives are today, and we will forget all about what was once wrong with Gen5 drives. I just wish that future arrives sooner rather than later.