When it comes to PC components, heat is generally the enemy, hence frequency and performance benchmark records are usually accompanied by liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling. However, Gigabyte states that its latest product, the Aorus Gen4 7000s Premium, is equipped with heat pipes and a huge cooler that never throttles up.

Or perhaps it promises to withstand deceleration much longer than a typical SSD. Gigabyte's exact wording is that it "delivers read speeds of up to 7GB/s while optimizing passive heat dissipation, and promises to never throttle even over long periods of operation."

As for exactly how much, the drive's product page includes a graph showing Gigabyte running at full speed for over 8 hours. However, it also states in fine print that "Actual performance may vary depending on circumstances."

In any case, the heat pipes are coated with nanocarbon and penetrate the multi-layered heatsink, with stacked fins and double-sided thermal pads to help them do their job. An aluminum base plate is also installed on the underside of the SSD.

We have not yet tested this drive, but are curious to see how it fares outside of Gigabyte's lab, both with and without proper airflow.

"Even without airflow, thermal solutions can prevent thermal throttling that can occur at high speeds," Jackson Hsu of Gigabyte said in a statement.

The drive leverages Phison's new 8-channel E18 controller that directs the 3D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory chip and single-level cell (SLC) cache. Of course, to take full advantage of the high-speed performance, you need a platform that supports PCIe 4.0:

AMD's X570 and B550 chipsets do, as do Intel's Z590 and B560 chipsets for Rocket Lake. PCIe 4.0 SSDs can be run on PCIe 3.0 motherboards, but read and write speeds will be slower than advertised.

The drive is supposedly "already on the market," but we could not find a listing on places like Amazon or Newegg. However, we could find no listings on places like Amazon or Newegg. No information on pricing is available, but for reference, a non-premium version with a thinner heatsink costs $380 for 2 TB and $200 for 1 TB (both prices on Amazon).