The first PCIe Gen 5 drives are here and fast, but do you have a need for speed?

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By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.

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The first PCIe Gen 5 solid state drives (SSDs) are starting to hit the market with big promises of speed boosts. I’ve been testing Crucial’s T700 PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe solid state drive over the past few weeks alongside Seagate’s latest FireCuda 540 in an effort to discover if this latest generation of storage will change PC gaming or how it could improve workflows for those who work with large files daily.

PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs are at the very early stages of life, with Crucial and Seagate part of a handful of manufacturers to actually sell this storage in stores right now. PCIe Gen 5 is expected to deliver theoretical read speeds of 14,000MBps for NVMe SSDs, compared to the theoretical maximum of 8,000MBps on PCIe Gen 4 drives. That’s a 75 percent bump in speed, but it comes at an upgrade cost.

You’ll need a motherboard that supports PCIe Gen 5 and, naturally, the corresponding CPU, both of which are at the pricey end of the PC building market right now. You’re also looking at $179.99 for a 1TB Crucial T700 model (without a heatsink) all the way up to $629.99 for a 4TB model with a heatsink. Likewise, Seagate’s FireCuda 540 is available at $189.99 for a 1TB model or $319.99 for a 2TB version. Considering you can easily get a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro, a well-reviewed Gen 4 drive that’s a few years old, for $79.99, that’s a big price premium. So, is it worth it?

I tested Crucial’s 2TB T700 and Seagate’s 2GB FireCuda 540 against a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. You might be