MSI has unveiled a Gen 5 M.2 SSD topped by an AIO liquid cooler. Interesting, huh? Dubbed MSI Spatium M580 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 Frozr Liquid SSD, the new drive leverages the power of liquid cooling to siphon heat away from its active components, thus maintaining higher speeds under load. That’s the theory, anyway.
Available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, with sequential performance up to 14,000MB/s, the SSD is clearly far from the compact, at least when it comes to height. It incorporates a custom pump, ‘pipes, and radiator in a meticulously crafted design to avoid compatibility issues as much as possible.
The heat is transferred using liquid to a teeny-tiny radiator on the top, looking like a mariachi hat. Ay, caliente! The radiator is then cooled by a blower fan. Furthermore, the base plate is designed to contact both the controller and memory chips to ensure high performance regardless of usage. Definitely one of the noteworthy contraptions of this CES 2024.
To be clear, something like a Spatium M480 is good enough for most users, but if you are an enthusiast who wants it all, well, the M580 Frozr Liquid could be what you are looking for.
That said, needing advanced or active cooling to manage the heat produced by Gen 5 SSDs may soon become a thing of the past, as Phison and potentially other controller makers move down to smaller manufacturing nodes. Phison, for example, has announced a new controller fabricated using a 7nm node. Moreover, while it’s built for M.2 SSDs, you can bet someone will try to slap a cooler on top of a gaming handheld to get more performance. Wait and see.
