FlumeIO 5901 U.2 SSD review: as good a PCIe 5.0 enterprise drive as you’re going to find

FlumeIO 5901 U.2 SSD: Two-minute evaluation

Mainstream prospects searching for quick storage have had a choose of dozens of M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs available on the market over the past 12 months and a half, however enterprise prospects, inventive business professionals, or those that have been seeking to improve their cloud server storage from older SATA or racks of PCIe 3.0 U.2 drives have not been as fortunate. 

With U.2 PCIe 5.0 drives solely now simply beginning to make it to market, storage newcomer FlumeIO simply may be a godsend with its FlumeIO 5900-series U.2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 SSDs, providing a large pace improve for I/O-heavy units like community servers at a surprisingly inexpensive value for an enterprise-grade SSD with this stage of efficiency.

With budgetary pricing beginning at $643 for 4TB, and scaling as much as $2,059 for 16TB, the FlumeIO 5900-series (comprised of the FlumeIO 5900 and FlumeIO 5901 fashions, the latter of which I examined for this evaluation), is usually cheaper than slower, last-gen drives just like the Samsung PM9A3, a Gen 4.0 drive with considerably decrease learn/write speeds, fewer IOPS, and better latency.

It goes with out saying that this affordability is relative, as prospects in enterprise channels are used to paying many hundreds of {dollars} for brand spanking new drives on a rolling foundation as their present SSD drives close to the top of their drive-write lifespan.

But whereas this drive is nearly solely for knowledge facilities or related high-throughput, high-volume community units and programs, there are numerous inventive or engineering and analysis workstations on the market with U.2 appropriate motherboards, and this drive may be particularly attention-grabbing for these in these industries who want each large storage capability in addition to pace.

Fortunately, the FlumeIO 5900-series guarantees so much and successfully delivers on these guarantees, not less than so far as my testing is worried. After an in depth couple of weeks placing this drive by way of its paces, it was finally with a heavy coronary heart that I needed to ship it again to FlumeIO, as it is the sort of SSD I’d have beloved to have integrated into my take a look at bench within the NYC TechSwitch workplace.

Starting with a easy, single direct I/O operation with 4KB learn/write blocks and a 4GB file dimension, the FlumeIO 5901 scored decrease than the promised IOPS and sequential learn speeds, however that is to be anticipated when utilizing a single course of and blocks so small, however it’s instructive as to the efficiency of a single course of on this drive. Multiple processes in a manufacturing atmosphere will be capable to push these numbers a lot increased, as we see when growing the block dimension, course of pool, and I/O queue depth.

Moving issues right into a extra “production” like atmosphere begins to push up in opposition to the promised 14GB/s sequential learn and 10GB/s sequential write efficiency, whereas its random learn IOPS likewise will increase significantly, whereas its random write IOPS decreases a bit, given the elevated block dimension.

Increasing the block dimension to 128KB slows issues down a bit, particularly with random I/O IOPS, however enhance the variety of processes to a real manufacturing atmosphere of 128 processes or increased and these numbers too will likewise enhance significantly.

For content material creators or researchers with workstation-class {hardware} able to mounting a U.2 drive and who may be contemplating this drive over an M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD just like the Crucial T705 or related, this drive has so much to give you as effectively, together with considerably quicker random learn and write speeds, whereas nonetheless sustaining top-tier sequential learn and write efficiency that you just’d anticipate from a PCIe 5.0 drive. 

Even higher, quite than having to configure a number of M.2 SSDs right into a RAID configuration to get a strong storage machine for very massive information, this drive can provide you a one-and-done answer because of its considerably bigger capacities.

In the top, then, no matter your wants may be, this is among the greatest U.2 SSD choices available on the market, and for those who’re searching for a PCIe 5.0 SSD, there aren’t actually many to select from, making it comparatively cheaper price level all of the extra spectacular.

FlumeIO 5901 U.2 SSD: Price & availability

The FlumeIO 5900 sequence SSDs will likely be out there in Q2 2024 with budgetary pricing kicking off at $643 for 4TB, and topping out at $2,059 for 16TB.

FlumeIO 5901 U.2 SSD: Specs

Should you purchase the FlumeIO 5901 U.2 SSD?

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First reviewed April 2024