Liquid Element LQD4500, the SSD that is 5 times faster than the SSD of the PlayStation 5

All the information about the PlayStation 5 emphasizes the SSD unit that will integrate. This unit seems to be the one that will do the magic and not the processor and graphics card developed by AMD. But the SSD unit built into the PlayStation 5 has come up against competition. The Liquid Element LQD4500 drive offers significantly more performance than Sony's console SSD.

It was mid-2019 that this Liquid Element LQD4500 unit was announced with some impressive data. The first thing is that this unit is based on the PCI Express Gen4 x16 interface. Through this connection system this SSD unit offers us 24.000MB / s in sequential read and write speed.

Liquid Element LQD4500 is now a reality

Theoretically, the PCI Express Gen4 interface for M.2 NVMe SSDs offers up to 8000MB / s, but the commercial drives move between 5.000-7000MB / s. These transfer speeds are very good, but these units have a problem: the price. PCI Express Gen4-based SSDs are very expensive and are not worth buying.

Linus Tech Tips has been lucky enough to test one of these Liquid Element LQD4500 units. This storage unit is based on the FHFL format and is completely covered by a passive aluminum heatsink. This SSD unit occupies a single PCI slot and has a consumption of 65W, powered by a 6-pin PCIe connector.

Internally this unit has 8 M.2 NVMe drives that allows it to reach speeds of 24GB / s. The PlayStation 5's NVMe SSD offers 5GB / s speed, so we're talking about 5x the speed. Something quite interesting is that this unit allows you to play 4K video with a bitrate of 500Mbps, which is 20 times more than what Netflix offers. Basically we could play several 4K videos simultaneously without getting messy. It should be noted that this unit is not intended for the home user, it has been developed for companies and Data Centers.

Specifications

The versions for Data Centers will arrive in capacities of: 7.68TB, 12.8TB and 25.6TB. The versions for Companies will arrive in capacities of: 6.4TB, 12.8TB and 25.6TB. The specifications for both are:

Source: T4G