Gigabyte Aorus 10000 SSD Review: Bold PCIe 5.0 SSD, If You Can Find It

Gigabyte’s take on the first wave of PCIe 5.0 SSDs

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Gigabyte Aorus 10000 SSD
(Image credit: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

The Gigabyte Aorus 10000 is a good alternative for an early adopter PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD. It arrives with an optional, robust heatsink and is otherwise a solid entry. Performance is higher than the previous-generation 4.0 drives, but there’s more of this high speed on the way.

Pros

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    Fast sequential performance

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    Solid all-around performance

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    Nice included heatsink

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    DirectStorage optimization

Cons

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    Pricing remains uncertain

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    Performance leap over 4.0 is generally underwhelming

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    Poor power efficiency

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    Faster drives on the way

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The Gigabyte Aorus 10000 was one of the first PCie 5.0 NVMe SSDs to be announced, and today this speedy SSD has finally landed on our test bench. It stands apart with an included optional heatsink, which has aesthetic appeal. With performance that peaks at 10 GB/s of sequential throughput, this drive has plenty of horsepower for demanding workloads. 

Gigabyte traditionally markets its SSDs to OEMs, and the Aorus 10000 is difficult to find at the time of review. Since the drive comes bare with the optional heatsink included, this could be a good choice if you want to use your own cooling solution or run multiple drives. However, it is not recommended to operate the drive bare, so laptops are generally out of the target applications. Gigabyte also offers additional software support for this drive which helps gives it a leg up over products like the Inland TD510. The real question is pricing: The drive has been listed at $399.99 for the 2TB model, but we aren’t sure if that is official pricing —Gigabyte has yet to share details.

Shane Downing
Shane Downing
Freelance Reviewer

Shane Downing is a Freelance Reviewer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering consumer storage hardware.

15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kjfatl
    Where is the heat coming from? For example, is it 90% from the controller chip and 10% from the memory array? Is there a path for lower power PCIE5?
    Reply
  • UWguy
    I really wish you’d start measuring the amount of heat coming from these drives. The heat sinks are downright scary.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    UWguy said:
    I really wish you’d start measuring the amount of heat coming from these drives. The heat sinks are downright scary.
    We'll look into it, but you can tell by the power figures that this size of heatsink is overkill. We're talking peak power of <12W, and that's nowhere near the average power under load of 6.7W. It's not that hard to deal with 10W of power use. The Crucial T700 had a significantly smaller heatsink and was actually faster (thanks to faster NAND).
    Reply
  • kjfatl
    Measuring the DC power in is probably sufficient unless the PCIE termination is super-power hungry.
    Reply
  • Dr3ams
    I wouldn't even consider a M.2 that needs a heat sink that size.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    That heat sink is completely ridiculous. How is that going to fit on any motherboard that has heat shields on it?
    Reply
  • gg83
    That slogan "team up fight on". Lmfao! Excellent gamer speak.
    Reply
  • Roland Of Gilead
    Have to agree with most others. These drives are hot. They seem to run very high temps over PCIe 4.

    I think the heatsink is gaudy, too big of a footprint.
    Reply
  • waltc3
    What motherboard was it tested in? Nothing with a heatsink would work in my PCie4 Aorus Master--not enough clearance under my video card. Yes, those heatsinks are non-starters--too much heat, by far. My 980 Pro PCIe4 500GB NVMe SSD runs fine and cool enough at top, sustained PCIe4 speeds without a heatsink--whereas my PCIe3.0 960 EVO 250GB NVMe will not run sustained at PCIe3.0 speeds without throttling. (When the 960 EVO was my primary NVMe drive in the 0 position, I could not do an AV scan of C:\ without the drive failing to complete the scan. No problem with the 980 Pro in the 0 slot position, with the 960 moved down to the next NVMe slot. The 960 is fine for anything that isn't sustained operation.)
    Reply
  • SyCoREAPER
    I love the bend/warping the drive has.

    Makes me curious if there is thermal expansion and contraction at play which will affect the reliability.
    Reply