Galax has announced the HOF Extreme 50 PCIe 5.0 SSD featuring a 20mm-ish PWM fan on top of a large heatsink and capacities reaching 2TB.
The HOF Extreme 50 marks the third HOF M.2 series from Galax, following the HOF and HOF Pro running on PCIe 3.0 and 4.0, respectively. These new models take Galax’s HOF silver/white styling, including small touches like the crown on the fan hub, allowing it to blend well inside a white-themed machine, or preferably a HOF one.
The 1TB drive is said to boast 9.5GB/s read plus 8.5GB/s write speeds alongside 1,300K plus 1,100K read/write IOPS, with the 2TB climbing a bit higher at 10GB/s plus 9.5GB/s read/write and 1,500K/1,250K IOPS, respectively. No durability figures have been disclosed yet, but we can assume somewhere around 700TBW for the 1TB and 1,400TBW for the 2TB.
The HOF Extreme 50 uses Phison’s E26 controller combined with 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory chips. It also carries an unknown amount of DRAM cache – probably 1 or 2GB of DDR4 – alongside the NVMe 2.0 protocol.
While a fan may be necessary to cool these hot-running PCIe 5.0 drives, many will rather choose to go for the slower HOF PCIe 4.0 than have to endure these annoying little fans. Though to be fair, we don’t know yet at what speed these will rotate, and if there will be any noticeable noise. With that said, a passive heatsink will always be preferred due to its lack of any moving parts that tend to break when you least expect them.
As usual with these powerful shiny products, they are not cheap, with the 2TB model expected to retail for $349.99 when it launches in the US, backed by a five-year warranty.
