Silicon Power XPower XS90 SSD Brings Blistering 14.3GB/s Speeds To Gaming PCs

Storage prices may be on the rise (boo!), but flagship solid state drives are also getting faster (hooray!). We've seen a handful of new SSDs push the envelope lately, and Silicon Power's new XPower XS90 Gen 5 SSD joins the bunch with blazing-fast sequential read speeds of up to 14,300MB/s (14.3GB/s) and sequential writes of up to 13,400MB/s (13.4GB/s).

Those metrics are a little behind recent additions by Corsair and PNY, with their respective MP700 Pro XT and CS3250 models are rated to deliver up to 14,900MB/s (14.9GB/s) for sequential reads and at least 14,000MB/s (14GB/s) for sequential writes. Same goes for Teamgroup's T-Force Z54E that debuted just ahead of those other drives.

They're all incredibly fast, though, as drive makers inch closer to the upper limits of what can be achieved on four lanes of the PCI Express 5.0 bus. Not accounting for overhead, the maximum throughput for four PCIe 5.0 lanes is around 15,750MB/s (15.75GB/s), which is twice as much as PCIe 4.0.

"Designed for the next generation of computing, the XS90 delivers blistering performance and unmatched efficiency to meet the growing demands of AI-driven workloads, high-end gaming, and professional content creation. Combining raw speed with cutting-edge technology, the XS90 redefines what users can expect from a Gen 5 SSD," Silicon Power states.

These kinds of speeds are currently overkill for gaming, but we still like to see drive makers collectively keep the pedal to the metal.

As for the XPower XS90, which is Silicon Power's fastest SSD to date, it pairs LPDDR4 DRAM cache with a controller built on TSMC's 6-nanometer manufacturing process. Silicon Power isn't divulging exactly what kind of NAND flash memory chips it's using on its newest flagship, but did say that it's offering the drive in 4TB, 2TB, and 1TB capacities.

All three capacities are rated to hit 14,300MB/s for reads. For writes, the 4TB and 2TB models are rated to the aforementioned 13,400MB/s speed metric, while the 1TB drops to 10,500MB/s, which is still fast (just not as fast as the bigger capacities).

There's no mention yet of pricing or availability, though Silicon Power notes that all three XPower XS90 SSDs are backed by a 5-year warranty.