Mushkin Launches DELTA And GAMMA PCIe 4.Zero NVMe SSDs

Mushkin has introduced two new product strains for PCIe 4.Zero M.2 SSDs. Following on from final yr’s introduction of the ALPHA collection, the brand new DELTA and GAMMA drives proceed Mushkin’s latest pattern of utilizing Phison’s SSD controllers and reference designs. The ALPHA makes use of the Phison E12S controller and QLC NAND, the brand new DELTA makes use of the Phison E16 controller and QLC NAND, and the brand new GAMMA makes use of the Phison E18 controller and TLC NAND.

The new Mushkin DELTA collection and their current ALPHA collection each use QLC NAND, however the DELTA shouldn’t be an entire alternative for the ALPHA. The DELTA does supply a efficiency increase because of the sooner controller supporting PCIe 4.0, however that sooner Phison E16 controller additionally takes up extra PCB space than the compact Phison E12S controller used within the ALPHA. That prevents the DELTA collection from providing an 8TB possibility. The ALPHA collection is targeted particularly on excessive capacities because it solely consists of 4TB and 8TB fashions, whereas the DELTA is a little more mainstream with 1TB by 4TB capacities.

The new GAMMA collection is Mushkin’s new flagship based mostly on the Phison E18 controller. Performance specs are just like different drives based mostly on the identical reference design, with sequential learn speeds of over 7 GB/s and peak sequential write speeds beginning at over 5.5 GB/s for the 1TB mannequin.

For each the DELTA and GAMMA collection, Mushkin’s preliminary pricing is in step with road costs for different drives based mostly on the identical {hardware}. Among that membership, Corsair’s MP600 CORE and MP600 PRO SSDs include substantial heatsinks, whereas Mushkin is following the strategy taken by Sabrent, Inland and different manufacturers by maintaining the drives slim and leaving any heatsink as much as the top consumer.

Mushkin hasn’t specified the precise NAND utilized in these new drives, however we count on them to each be utilizing 96-layer 3D NAND. Later this spring we are going to see a brand new spherical of high-end Phison E18 drives adopting Micron’s 176-layer 3D TLC for marginal efficiency enhancements, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a bit early for Mushkin to be together with the brand new NAND on the GAMMA.