Do you need the extra speed of PCIe 5.0 or is PCIe 4.0 good enough? How much will you benefit from buying a PCIe 5 SSD versus a PCIe 4 SSD? The answer isn’t as simple as you might expect, as it really depends on what you use your computer for.
PCIe 5.0 vs. PCIe 4.0 for SSDs: How I Conducted My Tests
To evaluate the performance difference between PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0 for SSDs, I ran a series of tests on a high-end desktop computer that supports both types of connections. Here’s what the test PC included:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
Cooler: ASUS ROG Ryuo III 240 ARGB
Motherboard: ASUS ProArt X870E-CREATOR WIFI
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5-7200 32GB
Video Card: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
Storage: Corsair MP700 PRO (2TB, PCIe 5.0)
The most important Monitor: ASUS ROG Strix XG32UQ (4K UHD)
Power Supply: Seasonic Focus GX-1000
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro version 24H2
One of the best features bc data india of this motherboard is its powerful UEFI (BIOS). It offers a lot of customizable options, including the ability to select the PCI Express version for each NVMe SSD. This feature allowed me to easily switch my SSDs between PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0, depending on what I needed for this article.
Setting up the PCI Express interface in the motherboard UEFI
Although the motherboard has two NVMe slots that support PCIe 5.0, I could have simply moved the SSD to another slot that only minimum advance payments for self-employed workers in 2024 at a glance supports PCIe 4.0. However, I decided to leave the SSD in the same slot to ensure consistency. This way, the heatsink and cooling conditions remained the same for each test.
The SSD was cooled by a large radiator
To find out the actual performance differences between PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0, I ran a series of tests. I started by testing the system with PCIe 5.0, which is the default setting. Then I went into UEFI to change the PCIe settings for the search engine optimization mails SSD so it would run on PCIe 4.0 and ran the tests again. Before running the tests, I made sure all my software and drivers were up to date. And to get accurate results, I ran each test multiple times and averaged the numbers. Here are the results I got and what they mean.