The age of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs has only just begun, with the current focus being on high-performance drives that push the envelope. Just this week, we reviewed the Crucial T700 , which promises sequential read and write speeds of 12,400 and 11,700 MBps respectively but costs a whopping $339 for the 2TB model.
Over time, all Gen 5 SSDs will get cheaper, especially as NAND prices sink. However, one sure-fire way to get budget Gen 5 SSDs is to go with a DRAMless configuration. There are a slew of PCIe Gen 3 and Gen 4 drives without DRAM and, though they can't quite hit the same speeds as more expensive SSDs that have a DRAM cache, they give you a lot for your money.
