Hands-On: Gigabyte AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD, AORUS Stealth 500 DIY PC Kit & Massive AORUS SSD Heatsink

At CES, Gigabyte gave us a hands-on look at some next-gen & innovative products such as the AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD & the Stealth 500 DIY PC kit.
Gigabyte & AORUS Show Off Gen5 SSD & Gen5 SSD Heatsinks, In-Depth Look At The Stealth 500 DIY PC Kit
The AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD is based on the PCIe Gen 5.0 protocol and conforms to the NVMe 2.0 and M.2 standards. The SSD will be a high-end solution when it launches in the market that utilizes the Phison E26 Gen5 SSD controller.
AORUS has also shared some performance metrics which may be from an early sample but show really good results. The Sequential Read speeds are rated at 12.5 GB/s while the write speeds are rated at 10 GB/s. Compared to Corsair’s recently revealed MP700 PCIe Gen 5 SSD, that’s an uplift of 25% in reading and 11% in write speeds. One more thing, AORUS’s current fastest PCIe Gen 4 SSD, the Gen4 7000 is rated at up to 7000/5500 MB/s speeds and comes with a heatsink solution. The Gen5 drive offers up to 79% better performance without the need for a heatsink though it might be good to use one.
That’s why AORUS is planning to ship a higher-tier variant of their Gen5 10000 SSD with a massive heatsink. Although the prototype shown at CES reads ‘AORUS Gen4 SSD’, this design is similar but updated to the ones previously used by Gen4 products and even motherboards such as the Z690 AORUS Xtreme which houses a similar heatsink solution for the SSD. The heatsink deploys a large aluminum base with a nickel coating and has two large heat pipes running from the base & to the top aluminum fin layer which can be dissipated through central ventilation within your PC chassis.
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AORUS hasn’t given a timeframe for the launch of its Gen5 SSDs but it should be relatively soon since PCIe 5.0 platforms are already shipping to consumers for over a year now.
AORUS Stealth 500 DIY PC Kit – One Step Closer To Retail
Gigabyte also seems to be back with its Stealth 500 DIY PC kit at this year’s CES. The design was first showcased all the way back at CES 2021 and was aiming to make PC cable management easier and cleaner. Well, it looks like we are finally close to the final version of this concept, and the AORUS 500 Stealth PC case we were shown houses three main components, the casing, the motherboard, and the GPU.
All three components are designed in accordance to meet the Stealth standard. The PC chassis has the required cut-outs and access paths to allow easy reachability to the connectors on the graphics card and the motherboard. The motherboard has various connectors (power, SATA, Fan, RGB, front panel headers) and others on the back side of the PCB while the Stealth series graphics cards have been designed to feature power connectors on the flip side so they face the rear side-panel.
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AORUS will need to design both proprietary Stealth graphics cards and motherboards which are compatible with their Stealth 500 cases for it to have a wide adoption rate. Also, the current-gen NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards come with a 16-pin ’12VHPWR’ connector which has requirements of extra clearance room of 35mm for proper connection and that should also be a thing that AORUS should consider since a loose connection can potentially burn the card and the connector. The graphics card shown by AORUS was an older RTX 3070 that makes use of an 8+6 pin power input.
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Another area that can definitely see an improvement is the fans since you can still see visible cables leading from each of them. Since custom fans are being used, builders who prefer to go with other fans like the Lian Li Uni-Fan series may find cable management less of a hassle. We’ll see how this all pans out but the Gigabyte AORUS Stealth 500 is a unique design for sure and others should also adopt this cable-free design approach.