The State Of Solid State: Computex 2015

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G.Skill

The Phoenix Blade was G.Skill's first workstation-class SSD. We spotted it at Computex 2014 and noticed it start selling a few months later. Before Intel launched its SSD 750, the Phoenix Blade was the fastest workstation SSD you could buy thanks to an all-in-one RAID design.

Building on the Phoenix Blade's success, G.Skill is back with a lower-power solution that uses Phison's new PS5007-E7 NVMe eight-channel controller. It even looks a lot like the Phoenix Blade. And the similarities don't stop there: the new drive is called Phoenix Blade X. A cover kept us from seeing if G.Skill used an M.2-to-PCIe adapter or if the Phoenix Blade X is a full add-in card design. 

Although it's not exactly groundbreaking, this product is important because it shows that companies are preparing drives with the new Phison PS5007-E7 controller.

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Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
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Chris Ramseyer was a senior contributing editor for Tom's Hardware. He tested and reviewed consumer storage.

50 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blackmagnum
    The time is ripe to change your old spinning catastrophe and embrace the now of SSD.
    Reply
  • Vivecss
    So have they fixed the data loss if not connected to electricity for more than a week thing?
    Reply
  • synphul
    Spinning catastrophe? My hdd doesn't perform much slower than my ssd for 90% of tasks, the biggest improvement was installing windows. For that I was impressed. An hdd shouldn't be a catastrophe, if it is I'd strongly suggest a better brand/model. Installed an ssd on a workstation and of all the upgrades it was the component I was least happy with. The new cpu and ram upgrade were by far more impressive. Not that I'm 'unhappy' with it, it is a little snappier though not enough to make me rush right out to buy another one for my other rig. If another 240gb ssd goes on sale for $60 like the first one I bought I might consider it. Pcie m.2 look appealing and great on paper but I suppose it would be of greater benefit to someone who is suffering a bottlenecked system due to storage in the first place.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    So have they fixed the data loss if not connected to electricity for more than a week thing?
    Yes, about 5 years ago.
    SSDs are still no archival media, and they will corrupt after a year or two without power. But if you are the sort of person who travels a lot and unplugs your PC for 2-3 months at a time then it is not a real concern anymore.
    Reply
  • wtfxxxgp
    So have they fixed the data loss if not connected to electricity for more than a week thing?

    I'm so out of touch that I didn't even know that was "a thing"

    O.o
    Reply
  • Vivecss
    So have they fixed the data loss if not connected to electricity for more than a week thing?
    Yes, about 5 years ago.
    SSDs are still no archival media, and they will corrupt after a year or two without power. But if you are the sort of person who travels a lot and unplugs your PC for 2-3 months at a time then it is not a real concern anymore.

    Really? 5 years ago? Because I've gone on vacation for about a month and my Windows wont even start anymore. And that was about a year ago. Heard a rumor that the 3D stacking technology thing managed to eliminate this problem and i was waiting for some more good news about that before buying a new SSD.
    Reply
  • CRamseyer
    Spinning catastrophe? My hdd doesn't perform much slower than my ssd for 90% of tasks, the biggest improvement was installing windows. For that I was impressed. An hdd shouldn't be a catastrophe, if it is I'd strongly suggest a better brand/model. Installed an ssd on a workstation and of all the upgrades it was the component I was least happy with. The new cpu and ram upgrade were by far more impressive. Not that I'm 'unhappy' with it, it is a little snappier though not enough to make me rush right out to buy another one for my other rig. If another 240gb ssd goes on sale for $60 like the first one I bought I might consider it. Pcie m.2 look appealing and great on paper but I suppose it would be of greater benefit to someone who is suffering a bottlenecked system due to storage in the first place.

    A $60 240GB SSD is the reason why you don't feel a big performance increase over your HDD.
    Reply
  • WyomingKnott
    "Really? 5 years ago? Because I've gone on vacation for about a month and my Windows wont even start anymore. And that was about a year ago."

    But how old was the SSD? The model, not the particular one that you own.
    Reply
  • synphul
    It was on sale. At the time, ocz vector 150's were going for $180. It stays neck and neck with the samsung 840 evo (850's weren't even available yet) and the two trade blows a bit. The vector 150 has slightly slower random reads and the samsung has slightly slower write speeds. It was chosen for a workstation doing content creation with larger files where write speed was preferred. Maybe people feel such a huge difference over their hdd's because they're using junk hdd's? My wd re4 gives me no issues. The only time aside from bootup that ssd's seem to have a huge performance gain is during testing where a longer sustained data transfer is occurring. Something most people won't encounter under normal use of a pc, instead it will more than likely operate in small bursts. So technically, it was a $180 ssd using the newer 19nm toshiba nand. Hardly a junk ssd.
    Reply
  • CRamseyer
    When you said it I was thinking something along the lines of a V300 with async flash.
    Reply