GALAX’s Flagship HOF Extreme 50 PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD Detailed: Phison E26, 12 GB/s Transfer Rate, Active Cooling
GALAX may not be the first name that comes to mind if we talk about SSDs but the company has been making some high-end designs under its HOF and Gamer series ranging from M.2, SATA & Add-In-Cards (AICs). According to MyDrivers, GALAX is working on its next-gen HOF Extreme 50 series SSDs which will be delivering high-end performance by utilizing Phison E26 Controller (Gen 5.0). In terms of performance, the GALAX HOF Extreme 50 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe M.2 SSD will make use of a Phison PS5026-E26 controller based on a TSMC 12nm process and a 232-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory. The performance of the new SSD is going to be rated at 12 GB/s (Read) & 10 GB/s (Write). The 4K random speeds are rated at 1500K IOPS (Read) and 1250K IOPS (Write). The HOF Extreme 50 series will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and up to 4 TB capacities. Some of the main features of the new SSD will include support for GALAX Magic Disk Xtreme Tuner with SMART self-check, storage optimization, firmware updates, secure erase, temperature monitor, and a list of other functions. In addition to the hardware and performance metrics, the GALAX HOF Extreme 50 PCIe Gen 5 SSD is also going to utilize a new active cooling solution. GALAX has stated that with Gen 5.0, the heat output of storage devices has increased substantially, & as such, standard heatsinks are not good enough for cooling purposes. As such, they have devised a new cooling solution that will ensure continuous and efficient SSD operation. There’s no word on the pricing or availability yet but the SSDs will be available in both standard and heatsink options with the standard options aiming PC users who already have motherboards with decent-sized M.2 heatsink attached to them. Several storage manufacturers, including MSI, ADATA, TEAMGROUP, GOODRAM, AORUS, APACER, KIOXIA, Corsair, and others are working on their next-gen PCIe Gen 5 SSD solutions for a formal launch later this year. The new SSDs will offer full compliance with the Microsoft DirectStorage API & AMD’s Smart Access Storage (SAS) technologies.
