TeamGroup has revealed the T-Force Z54A PCIe 5.0 SSD, which will undoubtedly shame even the best SSDs. With its sequential read and write speeds of up to 14.2 GB/s and 11.5 GB/s, respectively, the T-Force Z54A is set to become the fastest consumer PCIe 5.0 SSD once it hits the retail market.
Unlike other PCIe 5.0 drives that employ the Phison PS5026-E26 controller, the T-Force Z54A leverages a competing solution: the IG5666 controller from InnoGrit. Adata's Project Nighthawk and Project Blackbird SSDs utilize the same controller, but TeamGroup is the first vendor to announce a finished product. There's also a third player out there — Silicon Motion has the SM2508 and SM2504XT controllers that will power upcoming PCIe 5.0 SSDs. However, those will come in late, as they're slated for a fourth-quarter release.
Judging by TeamGroup's provided performance numbers, the Innogrit IG5666 controller delivers higher performance than the Phison PS5026-E26 controller. The screenshot shows the T-Force Z54A hitting sequential read speeds of up to 14,365 MB/s and write speeds of up to 11,547 MB/s. It outperforms the Crucial T700, which is the fastest E26-powered drive with 12.4 GB/s of sequential writes and 11.8 GB/s of sequential reads.
The product render for the T-Force Z54A shows a bare drive without any bulky heatsinks or cooler. But like any other PCIe 5.0 SSD, the drive will likely thermally throttle if you run it without a heatsink, though you may get away with it under standard usage. Still, more intensive workloads will likely impact the drive's performance, so consumers should use the motherboard's integrated M.2 heatsink or an aftermarket cooler with bare drive PCIe 5.0 SSDs. There's a reason why TeamGroup showed off an upcoming 360mm AIO liquid cooler with an M.2 module to liquid cool the T-Force Z54A.
