This 14-Year-Old PC Standard is Coming to an End for Good.

The storage industry is undergoing a significant change, as M.2 SSDs with PCIe Gen 3 are gradually being phased out of the market. Manufacturers are now focusing their attention on newer and faster standards, such as PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5. Although the transition has been slow, it has been reported that SSD manufacturers have started to discontinue the production of these older units intended for PCs. This shift is driven by the increasing accessibility and adoption of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, which offer nearly double the bandwidth compared to Gen 3.

Major chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD have adopted PCIe Gen 4 as the baseline standard for their new platforms, further accelerating this transition. For example, the new Intel Core Ultra 200S combined with the Z890 chipset provides PCIe channels starting at PCIe 4.0. As PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, present since the early 2010s, become increasingly obsolete, high-capacity models are predominantly being replaced by PCIe Gen 4-based units. Additionally, PCIe Gen 5 SSDs are beginning to gain traction, offering even greater performance for workloads that require extreme read/write speeds, such as gaming, video editing, and tasks that demand large volumes of data.

This shift is not limited to the consumer market; enterprise platforms are also opting to move away from Gen 3 in favor of PCIe Gen 5 and even Gen 6, as companies require greater processing power for servers and data centers. The limitations of PCIe Gen 3 are becoming more evident in advanced applications, leading manufacturers to cease research and development, as well as production of Gen 3 models.

It is anticipated that in the coming years, the market will be dominated by PCIe Gen 4, with PCIe Gen 5 gaining popularity. As manufacturers fully embrace these newer standards, consumers will be able to enjoy faster and more efficient storage solutions, tailored to the growing demands of modern computing.