AMD will launch PCIe 6.0 devices next year but consumers will have to wait almost half a decade to get it - here's why
AMD to support PCIe 6.0 in 2026, but don’t expect consumer SSDs any time soon.
- PCIe 6.0 coming to AMD platforms soon but not for consumers
- Most users won’t need PCIe 6.0 speed until much later
- Enterprise and AI will adopt PCIe 6.0 well before desktop and laptop PCs
AMD plans to support PCIe 6.0 starting in 2026, but SSDs based on the standard aren’t expected to appear in consumer PCs anytime soon.
Silicon Motion’s CEO, Wallace C. Kuo, told Tom’s Hardware that PC makers and chip vendors simply aren’t pushing for the technology yet.
"You will not see any PCIe Gen6 [solutions] until 2030," Kuo said. "PC OEMs have very little interest in PCIe 6.0 right now - they do not even want to talk about it. AMD and Intel do not want to talk about it."
PCIe 4.0 speeds are fine for most
That delay isn’t a surprise - as while PCIe 6.0 offers up to 32GB/s of bandwidth on a x4 connection, the complexity and cost of supporting that speed are much higher than for PCIe 5.0.
Enterprise systems and AI infrastructure, on the other hand, are where PCIe 6.0 will land first. These use cases can justify the need for faster interconnects, as they rely heavily on moving massive amounts of data quickly and reliably.
For everyone else, including gamers and content creators, PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 offer more than enough speed.
It’s worth pointing out there are very few laptops shipping with PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Most PCs today use PCIe 4.0, and that’s still fast enough for nearly all mainstream workloads. The real bottlenecks consumers face usually aren’t bandwidth-related.
Technical hurdles are also part of the problem. As PCIe speeds increase, the physical distance signals can travel shrinks dramatically.
A presentation by Astera Labs claims copper traces on a motherboard can reach up to 11 inches at PCIe 4.0 speeds, but that drops to just 3.4 inches with PCIe 6.0. That’s a real issue in desktops using riser cards or complex routing, especially for graphics cards.
Retimers can solve this in servers, but they’re too expensive for most consumer builds.
Making motherboards compatible with PCIe 6.0 also means more PCB layers and higher-quality materials, which pushes up costs. For now, the added expense and power draw just don’t make sense for most users.
PCIe 5.0 SSDs are likely to remain the top-end option for desktop PCs for the rest of the decade. The storage industry might be ready for the next step, but consumers probably won’t need or want it until well after 2030.
