Crucial to Take Gen 5 SSD Speed Crown With 14.5GB/s Reads

For years, we've been saddled with PCIe 4.0 SSDs and their paltry 7GB/s of bandwidth. PCIe 5.0 has promised to change that situation by offering double the bandwidth, going up to 14GB/s, making them one heck of an upgrade. The problem is most of the PCIe Gen 5 SSDs that have come out so far have failed to meet this goal, but that's all starting to change now that it's 2024. Several drives have been announced with 14GB/s read speeds, and Crucial is set to one-up those with its upcoming T705 NVME M.2 SSD that can achieve 14.5GB/s in sequential reads.

Specs and photos of Crucial's latest SSDs have been leaked online, and they indicate Crucial's next-generation T705 SSDs will be the fastest drives you can buy when they launch. Of course, not everyone will benefit from this much bandwidth, but in terms of the spec sheet, Crucial will likely be crowned the SSD speed king shortly. This new SSD will replace the existing T700 Gen 5 drives, which can hit around 12GB/s in sequential reads. According to Videocardz, the 2TB version of the T705 will be capable of 14.5GB/s sequential read speeds, making it the fastest drive available.

The T705 will reportedly be offered with or without a chonky heatsink, but at least it's a passive one. Credit: Crucial

The T705 will also be offered in 1TB and 4TB capacities, with the latter being an uncommon capacity for a high-speed SSD. The other capacities are also slightly slower in this metric than the 2TB drive, with the 1TB model hitting 13.6GB/s and the 4TB drive achieving 14.1GB/s read speeds. There are also several M.2 Gen 5 drives capable of 14GB/s read speeds, so the new Crucial drive only tops those by 0.5GB/s, which won't make any difference in the real world. Still, it looks good on a spec sheet.

One of the sources reports that these new drives use TLC Micron B58R FortisFlash NAND, a 232-layer design the company announced in December 2023. When the original T700 was launched a year ago, it was way ahead of its time with its 12GB/s read speeds, which allowed Crucial to take the Gen 5 SSD crown. Since then, several Gen 5 SSDs have been announced that can hit 14GB/s, so this move by Crucial is estimated to be an effort to recapture its former glory. Nobody needs a Gen 5 SSD right now, though, and pricing is still prohibitive, along with spotty support.

That said, 2024 is the year that Gen 5 SSDs will likely become more mainstream as their support is expected to be expanded with next-gen platforms from both AMD and Intel. That won't happen until later this year, though, so for now, drives like this exist only to push the envelope. We're all for that, by the way.