Phison is a name you should definitely know when it comes to PC storage. Their controllers power some of the fastest consumer storage products currently available. This year they are ushering in a new level of performance with their PS5026-E26 “Max14um” controller. We’ve already seen many different drives this past use make use of the PS5026-E26 controller, but the PS5026-E26 “Max14um” is something completely different. A lot of those drives were not able to get to the 14GB/s that the E26 is actually capable of. Some of the main reasons were the availability of 2400 MT/s 3D NAND, the fact that the PCI-SIG M.2 specification limits power to 11.55W, and there were a host of other issues as well. That is why many E26-based drives were advertised as having 10GB/s or 12GB/s maximum throughput. Phison’s R&D team was tasked with solving those issues and out of that came the PS5026-E26 “Max14um”, which they say is one of the most optimized consumer solid state drives ever built! In this preview article we will be taking a look at Phison’s reference model of this drive to see what it can do!
Special thanks to Phison for providing us with the Phison PS5026-E26 “Max14um” Solid State Drive to review.
Specifications
Host Interface: PCIe 5.0 x 4
Sequential Read: 14000 MB/s
Sequential Write: 1200 MB/s
4K Random Read: 1400K IOPS
4K Random Write: 1400K IOPS
TBW: 1400
Warranty: 5 Years
Security:
– AES 256
– SHA 512
– RSA 4096
– TCG Opal
Phison PS5026-E26 “Max14um” Solid State Drive
The Phison PS5026-E26 “Max14um” is as I mentioned not a real product, but rather a reference design for company’s to use for their drives. So our drive came to us with an actively cooled cooling solution on it. This cooling solution makes use of a large heatsink with a tiny fan in the center. All E26-based drives will require some type of heatsink for cooling.
Removing four screws we can get a better look at the drive. You’ll find the Phison PS5026-E26, four (2 on each side) NAND packages, and a DRAM cache chip. The NAND here is Micron’s B58R running at 2400MT/s.
