Micron has showcased a new concept product that combines four 2TB Crucial T700 SSDs in a RAID array on an add-in card (AIC) to hit up to a staggering 45Gbps – all cooled by Airjet’s novel cooling system.
The Crucial T700, which is one of the fastest SSDs in the world, uses the Phison P5026-E26 controller in an eight-channel design designed for some of the fastest computers and heavy-duty applications.
But, as with any PCIe 5.0 SSDs, you can only unlock its highest speeds by sufficiently cooling it. PCIe 5.0 SSDs generate a huge amount of heat when running, which hits performance – which is why heatsinks are normally advised. Stitching four together, therefore, would require a significant cooling effort in order to sustain its performance for an extended period of time.
Next-gen cooling
But Micron’s 8TB compilation – which can reach sequential reads and writes of 45Gbps and 42Gbps respectively – is able to work by using Frore Systems’ AirJet Mini cooling technology, according to Tom’s Hardware.
Frore Systems, which is based in San Jose, has devised a new cooling chip that’s been incorporated into more and more pieces of hardware over the last 12 months. These AirJet chips ditch fans and instead provide airflow by vibrating a thin membrane inside the chip at ultrasonic frequencies, which generate jets of air that cool the system.
Over the course of last year, Frore’s cooling system has been spotted in several machines including the Zotac ZBox PI430AJ mini PC. Reviews of the device show that two AirJet coolers keep the CPU fitted inside it to below 70 degrees Celsius.
Frore also demonstrated its potential if fitted into a 15-inch MacBook Air, with the modified version outperforming the factory-ready version in every department. The longer the laptop ran, the more significant the performance differences became.
Micron’s 8TB SSD amalgamation relies on a modified Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 AIC adaptor that can support up to four PCIe 5.0 SSDs – and paves the way for up to 60Gbps data transfer speeds. This is cooled with four AirJet Mini modules, one for each SSD, which rests on a copper heat spreader that’s mounted on the SSDs.
