Gigabyte has finally released their AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD. We actually got a glimpse of this drive back in January at CES. This drive is a built in the AIC form factor with a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. It makes use of a Phison PS5012-E12 NVMe 1.3 controller with Toshiba BiCS3 TLC NAND flash.
The drive will be available in 512 GB and 1 TB capacities which will have 512 MB and 1 GB of DRAM cache respectively. As far as speeds go the 1 TB version will offer read speeds up to 3480 MB/s and write speeds of 3080 MB/s with up to 610,000 IOPS 4K random reads and up to 530,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The 512 GB variant is slightly slower with the same read speeds, but writes of 2100 MB/s and 360,000 IOPS 4K random reads and up to 510,000 IOPS random writes.
The drive makes use of a passive cooling system that is made up of a thermal pad that makes contact with the controller, NAND chips, and DRAM on one side and on the other side is an aluminum shroud which doubles as a heatspreader. There is also an equally-thick aluminum back-plate. The card has RGB lighting on the top edge, which will show out if you have a case with a window.
Both the 1TB and 512 GB versions are backed by a 5-year warranty. No word yet on pricing.
