The SSD has a surprisingly low capacity of 480 GB

Oct 23, 2014 07:49 GMT  ·  By

Normally, PCI Express solid state drives excel in both storage space and transfer speed, but for some reason, G.Skill decided to maximize only the latter when it put together the Phoenix Blade Series.

Maybe the company fully intends to expand the series later down the line, and this lone model is intended only as a sort of door opener.

Whatever the reason may be, at present, the Phoenix Blade Series is made up of a single solid state drive whose capacity is of 480 GB.

True, it's more than most SATA drives can brag about, but still a lot less than what PCI Express drives can achieve under the right circumstances.

The G.Skill Phoenix Blade Series PCIe SSD

The 480 GB storage device is compatible with the PCI Express x8 interface, which means it has a higher bandwidth to stretch over than others of its kin.

Because of that bandwidth, and the use of not one or two but four LSI SF-2281 controller chips in a RAID0 setup, the newcomer can reach a transfer speed of up to 2 GB/s (2,000 MB/s, yes). That's easily four times better than the performance of a typical SATA unit.

In addition to the sequential performance, the newcomer stands out for its massive random performance, or 245,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second). Other SSDs barely ever reach a single hundred thousand IOPS, so this is a really big deal.

It's also a larger part of the reason why G.Skill considers its creation better suited for gaming, professional graphic design, industrial design, and HD video & audio content creation than other PCI Express SSDs on the market.

Then again, all companies describe their products as such, so in the end you'll have to draw your own conclusion. It's definitely true that both sequential and random 4K performance are top notch though.

All the while, TRIM and SMART support makes sure that the data stored on the SSD, and the SSD itself, stays whole and sound. SMART even lets you monitor the drive health, so that you get forewarning when, years from now, the drive finally starts to decay like everything else in existence.

BCH ECC of up to 55 bits per sector and RAID-5-like data protection will, in the meantime, safeguard data.

Availability and pricing

They are both unknown, save for the one detail that the G.Skill Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD sells with a 3-year limited warranty. You'll have to wait until your preferred retailer lists it.

G.Skill Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD + box
G.Skill Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD + box
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G.Skill Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD
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