In brief: Gigabyte's new Aorus Xtreme AIC SSD crams eight m.2 Gen4 7000s drives into a single GPU-like enclosure. It features dual cooling fans, an aluminum heatsink and baseplate for heat dissipation. There's no word yet on pricing or availability, but expect this storage to cost an arm and a leg when it goes on sale.
With the Aorus Xtreme AIC SSD, Gigabyte aims to approach the maximum bandwidth afforded by PCIe 4.0 with up to 28GB/s transfer speeds while offering tons of storage at the same time. The drive's performance should also be consistent, considering that Gigabyte promises a non-throttling experience with the drive's on-board cooling solution.
Those cooling measures essentially make the SSD look like a GPU. The dual-slot form factor drive has baffle plate venting and features two intake fans for cooling the aluminum finned heatsink, alongside an m.2 baseplate for passive cooling.
8 x 4TB 7000s SSDs in RAID 0 result in exceptional seq. performance, disappointing random 4K speeds
There are also 10 temperature sensors on the drive that work with Gigabyte's SSD Tool Box software for monitoring individual m.2 modules, while the Aorus Storage Manager allows for setting them up in RAID 0 and/or adjusting fan speeds.
The Aorus Xtreme SSD employs eight sets of '4TB Gen 4 7000s level' drives with Phison E18 controllers. Gigabyte also notes backward compatibility with Gen 3 platforms, though expect to see a considerable drop in bandwidth and transfer rates. Also, expect an eye-watering price tag when this AIC SSD becomes available to buy.