This 14-year-old PC standard is finally dying for good
The decline of PCIe Gen 3 M.2 SSDs is largely driven by the widespread adoption of PCIe 4 drives.
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The storage industry has been undergoing a significant change, with PCIe Gen 3 M.2 SSDs gradually being phased out as manufacturers focus on newer and faster standards like PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5. The transition has been slow, however.
According to a report by ServeTheHome, though, SSD manufacturers are finally discontinuing production of these older SSDs for PCs. The report claims that this shift is driven by the growing affordability and adoption of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, which offer almost double the bandwidth of Gen 3. Major chipmakers like Intel and AMD now support PCIe Gen 4 as the baseline for new platforms, further accelerating the transition. For instance, Intel’s newly launched Core Ultra 200S paired with the Z890 chipset offers PCIe channels that all begin at PCIe 4.0.
PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, which have been around since the early 2010s, are becoming increasingly irrelevant, especially for high-capacity models. While smaller-capacity Gen 3 SSDs remain in circulation, large-capacity drives are now predominantly PCIe Gen 4-based. PCIe Gen 5 SSDs are also gaining traction, offering even higher performance, especially for workloads that demand extreme read/write speeds, such as gaming, video editing, and data-intensive tasks.
CorsairThis move is not limited to consumer markets. Enterprise-level platforms are also shifting away from Gen 3 in favor of PCIe Gen 5 and even PCIe Gen 6 SSDs, as businesses require higher throughput for servers and data centers. PCIe Gen 3’s limitations are becoming more apparent, particularly in cutting-edge applications, prompting manufacturers to stop R&D and production for Gen 3 models.
In the coming years, the market is expected to see the dominance of PCIe Gen 4, with PCIe Gen 5 becoming mainstream. As manufacturers fully embrace these newer standards, consumers will benefit from faster, more efficient storage solutions that cater to the increasing demands of modern computing.
Kunal is a Computing writer contributing content around PC hardware, laptops, monitors, and more for Digital Trends. Having…
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