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PNY has launched the new CS3150 Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD which is among the fastest models on the market to date. This drive is capable of sequential performance of up to 12,000 MB/s write and 11,000 MB/s read, and it’s scheduled to launch in December with a starting MSRP of $179.99.
The PNY CS3150 Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD launches in two capacities of 1TB and 2TB and comes equipped with a dedicated heatsink armed with its own dual-fan setup. There’s the choice of three different colors including black, white, and an RGB option topped off with the company’s XLR8 logo.
If you are interested in the RGB variant, prices start at $189.99 for the 1TB model, an extra $10, and you’ll need a nine pin connector to hook up the fans and the lighting effectively. No official word has been revealed of which controller the CS3150 is using, however, given the quoted performance, it’s likely to be paired with another top performer.
For reference, the company’s previous generation flagship, the PNY CS3140, ran on the all-star Phison E18 controller in order to cap out what PCIe 4.0 could do. It stands to reason that we could see the Phison E26 inside of this latest model, however, this is purely speculation at this time. We’re looking forward to testing this drive and seeing what it’s capable of compared to some other Gen 5.0 SSDs on the market to date.
The boasted sequential performance of up to 12,000 MB/s is significantly higher than the top-end of the competition such as the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 10000 and the Seagate FireCuda 540 with up to 10,000 MB/s. It also surpasses the similarly priced Corsair MP700 that tops out around the 9,500 MB/s mark, too. The extra burst of speed is likely why the PNY CS3150 requires not only a thick heatsink but built-in fans as well, as the SSD is creeping close to what’s physically possible from NVMe 2.0.
Time will tell whether the PNY CS3150 can be considered one of the best SSDs for gaming that you can slot into your PC. We’ll be bringing you our verdict as soon as we go hands on with real-world testing and synthetic benchmarks and will update you soon.
For upcoming offers on storage available now, we recommend checking out next week’s Black Friday SSD deals as well as the Black Friday Samsung SSD deals and the Black Friday external SSD deals, too.
