MSI shows us the PCIe Gen5 M.2 Expander-Z card of up to 128 GB / s

We are amazed with everything that will come to us within 2 years, and in this case the Taiwanese manufacturer wanted to get ahead of the rest. Thus MSI shows us the PCIe card Gen5 M.2 Expander-Z up to 128GB / s.

From what is known at the moment is that the MSI M.2 Expander-Z It is an additional card that must be installed in a PCIe slot that will serve as a bridge between the M.2 connector and the PCIe Gen5 slot, something that currently only has the Intel 12th Gen Core series.

Apparently, once this expansion card is installed, we would automatically reduce the lanes available to the graphics card, as we remember that the new ones Alder Lake processors only have 16 carriles PCIe Gen5.

MSI shows us the PCIe Gen5 M.2 Expander-Z card of up to 128 GB / s

On the other hand, the manufacturer MSI promises a bandwidth of up to 128 GB/s (16 Gbps), but this is only the maximum speed of the PCIe connector, because let’s remember that currently companies like Phison recently announced that they are preparing controllers with a transfer speed of up to 14 Gbps, this is double what the gen4 is able to do currently.

Due to its architecture, Gen5 storage will require active or passive cooling, because if you look at the MSI Expander-Z Gen5, this has a heatsink above the M.2 slot and a single fan (which can be turned off). But not everything could be good news, and it is that as expected, consumption will be increased, although it is still too early to know exactly how much.

MSI has not confirmed when the Gen5 Expander will be available. But these expansion cards are usually added to the GODLIKE series of motherboards. The Z690 version of this motherboard has yet to be shown and the release date is still unknown.

Data extracted from videocardz