We've Tested the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe Card: The Fastest Single PCI Express Slot SSD
Our team at Linus Tech Tips has had the pleasure of testing some of the most cutting-edge storage solutions on the market, but every once in a while, we get something that truly leaves us speechless. Today, we're excited to introduce you to the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, codenamed "The Honey Badger." This single PCI Express slot SSD is the fastest of its kind currently available, with a top speed of nearly 29 gigabytes per second.
We've seen some fast storage solutions in our time, but this one takes the cake. Let's take a closer look at what makes it so special. The Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card is a PCI Express Gen3 16x card that can house four PCI Express Gen3 4x NVMe SSDs. This means that each of the four slots has its own dedicated lane, allowing for maximum performance and efficiency.
One of the things that's most impressive about this card is its price tag. Despite being capable of supporting some of the fastest storage speeds available, it's actually quite inexpensive. This is due to the fact that there's no fancy controller or PCI Express switching logic on board - it's all left up to the motherboard to split out those 16 lanes into groups of four lanes that are effectively wired straight up to each SSD.
Of course, with great power comes great speed, and this card doesn't disappoint. The theoretical maximum speed for a card like this is about 15.8 gigabytes per second, assuming no additional losses. While this may not be as fast as some of the more exotic storage solutions available, it's still incredibly fast and definitely faster than anything the typical desktop user could benefit from.
However, with the introduction of AMD's X570 platform, we've got a new generation of storage technology to play with. PCI Express Gen4 offers double the bandwidth of the previous generation, meaning that we can theoretically create a 16x-slotted SSD capable of around 31.5 gigabytes per second, assuming no additional losses.
As you can imagine, this is a game-changer for anyone looking for fast storage solutions. With the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, we've got a single slot that's dedicated entirely to storage. It's like having your cake and eating it too - who needs a graphics card when you can have a whole lot of storage?
But what really sets this card apart is its features. Instead of just four slots, the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card comes equipped with eight M.2s and a ballin'-out PCI Express switch. This means that you've got plenty of room to add more storage as needed, without having to worry about running out of lanes.
Of course, no introduction would be complete without mentioning our sponsor, Ridge Wallet. Ridge Wallet wants to redefine the way we think about wallets with its compact frame and RFID-blocking plates. By keeping your wallet bulge down and using their offer code LINUS, you can save 10% and get free worldwide shipping at the link below.
Now that we've taken a closer look at the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, it's time to talk about how it works. Let's take a look at what makes this madness so different from what you're used to.
The Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card is actually pretty simple in terms of its underlying technology. It's just a PCI Express Gen3 16x card that can house four PCI Express Gen3 4x NVMe SSDs. However, this simplicity belies some incredible complexity and innovation.
As I mentioned earlier, the card relies on the motherboard to split out those 16 lanes into groups of four lanes that are effectively wired straight up to each SSD. This means that instead of having a fancy controller or PCI Express switching logic on board, the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card is actually pretty straightforward.
Of course, this simplicity comes at a cost - the theoretical maximum speed for a card like this is limited by the speed of the PCIe Gen3 interface. This means that we can't push the speeds as high as we might like, but it's still incredibly fast and definitely faster than anything the typical desktop user could benefit from.
The Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card is a true marvel of modern engineering, and we're excited to see how it will perform in real-world applications. With its incredible speed and innovative design, this card is sure to be a hit with anyone looking for fast storage solutions.
As I'm sure you're aware, the introduction of AMD's X570 platform has brought us some exciting new developments in terms of storage technology. PCI Express Gen4 offers double the bandwidth of the previous generation, meaning that we can theoretically create 16x-slotted SSDs capable of around 31.5 gigabytes per second, assuming no additional losses.
Now that we've taken a closer look at the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, it's time to take a look at what makes this madness work in real-world terms. Let's tear this thing open and see what's inside.
As you can imagine, tearing open a PCIe card is not for the faint of heart. It requires a lot of skill and patience, but the end result is well worth it. With the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, we've got a truly impressive device that's sure to blow your mind.
As I mentioned earlier, this card comes equipped with eight M.2s and a ballin'-out PCI Express switch. This means that you've got plenty of room to add more storage as needed, without having to worry about running out of lanes. It's like having your cake and eating it too - who needs a graphics card when you can have a whole lot of storage?
In conclusion, the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card is truly an incredible device that's sure to change the way we think about storage solutions. With its incredible speed, innovative design, and generous feature set, this card is sure to be a hit with anyone looking for fast storage.
As always, we'd like to thank our sponsor, Ridge Wallet, for their support of our content. By using their offer code LINUS, you can save 10% and get free worldwide shipping at the link below. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more content like this, and we'll catch you in the next video!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- We've tested a lottacool, expensive stuffon Linus Tech Tips, butevery once in a whilewe get something in the shop that istruly face-meltingly epic.Come on over here, just come look.Wait, not that close.This is the Liqid Element LQD4500PCI Express NVMe card, codename: The Honey Badger.It is the fastest singlePCI Express slot SSDthat current technology can support,with a top speed of nearly29 gigabytes per second.Holy (beep).Speaking of speed, here's a super fasttransition to our sponsor, Ridge Wallet.Ridge Wallet wants to redefine the walletwith its compact frameand RFID-blocking plates.Check out how you cankeep wallet bulge down,and use offer code LINUS to save 10%and get free worldwideshipping at the link below.(upbeat electronic music)Before we get into thespeeds, we need to talka little bit about how this madness works'cause it's differentthan what you're used to.You might've seensomething like this before.This is a PCI Express Gen3 16x cardthat can house four PCIExpress Gen3 4x NVMe SSDs.And in spite of itscutting-edge performancea card like this isactually pretty inexpensive.That's because there's no fancy controlleror PCI Express switching logic on it.It's actually left up to the motherboardto split out those 16 lanesinto groups of four lanesthat are effectively wiredstraight up to each SSD.Because of the speed limitationsof PCIe Gen3, though,the most that you cantheoretically pull outof a card like this is about15.8 gigabytes per second,assuming no additional losses.Now, don't get me wrong,that's obscenely fastand definitely faster than anythingthe typical desktopuser could benefit from.But it's no longer the fastest it gets,so out with the old, can you catch this?I bet you can!(Jake sputters and wheezes)And in with the new.As I'm sure you're aware,with the introductionof AMD's X570 platformwe got our first tasteof PCI Express Gen4 on a consumer platformwith double the bandwidthof the previous generation,meaning that you couldtheoretically createa 16x-slotted SSD capable of around31.5 gigabytes per second,assuming no additional losses.Now that's fast!Let's tear this thing open.More screws, and (laughs)there it is, my friends.A PCIe Gen4 16x slot dedicatedto nothing but storage.I mean, who needs agraphics card anyway, right?What's interesting, though,is that instead of just four slots herethey went and put eight M.2s on this thingand a ballin'-out PCI Express switch.Now, you're probably thinking,\"Couldn't they have just made a simple\"quad-NVMe card with Gen4 SSDs?\"And the answer is yes, yes, they could've.Gigabyte actually already did this.However, here's the thing:Even with the fastest Gen4 M.2 SSDs,the most that a single drivecan really achieve right nowis five gigabytes per second sequentialdue to limitations ofcurrent NVMe controllers.That means that if you wereto combine four of those,the most you could achieve isabout 20 gigabytes per second.Lame, ew, gross.Right?So the on-card PCE Express switching meansthat they can spread the throughputof each of these eight drivesacross the entire Gen4 16x link.Which, with high-end Gen3 SSDs like thesefour-terabyte Rockets from Sabrent,means that we can expect speedsof up to 28 gigabytes per second,which is right near thetheoretical maximum.And then, because these areactually four-terabyte drives,I guess the 30-plus terabytes of capacityis just a nice added bonus.Ooh!It's fine, I got it.Something you guys mighthave noticed, by the way,is our graveyard over hereof Enterprise Samsung M.2s.So these are the SSDs thatLiqid actually includedwith the Honey Badger they sent.But, thing is, they're designed forlong-term endurancerather than drag racing,so the write speeds onthese, kinda lackluster.Liqid is also soon gonna be releasinga Phison-based version of the Honey Badgerfilled with Gen4 NVMe SSDs,which can apparently reachnearly 29 gigabytes per second,effectively as fast as you can goafter accounting for overhead.This feels so wrong,using the top PCIe slotfor a storage deviceinstead of the Titan RTXthat's also installed.- I think thefirst time we did this wasthe 100-gig card, right?- Yeah, yeah, the network card.- This is insane!Wow, it's even bowing a bit.I guess it's not used tothat double-sided NAND.- Before we start testing,we need to (clears throat)change our motherboard, oops.We're running an Asus board now'cause we need one that has these options.So we need to set the preferred I/O busso that our Threadripper 3990X 64-core CPUknows where to allocate allthat sweet, sweet bandwidth.And we need to turn off PCI Express ARIwhich, on these Asusboards, is off by default.Turn it on or off?- Make sure it's off, basically.- Make sure it's off, okay.- Yeah.- Instructions unclear.(beep) stuck in second PCIe slot, yeah.- Oh, I believe it.- Finally, because we'restarting with Windowswe're gonna go to NVMe RAIDmode, set that to Enabled,reboot and set up the array.Once you've created your array,we can pop into Manage Array Propertiesand there it is, Array1, RAID0, 32.7 terabytes.It's worth noting that theHoney Badger doesn't comewith any kind of RAIDchip on board, though,meaning that all of the drivesare exposed to the system individually.This allows Liqid theflexibility to use itwith their composableinfrastructure system.So they could, say for example,take two of these drivesand assign them to one server over there,and then four or whatever toanother server over there,depending on what theircustomers wanna do.Those guys are just straightcray cray, you know?Cray cray, Jake insisted wehave cray cray in this group.- I insisted we specificallydon't say cray cray.But sure.Wow, that's really not bad for Windows.- Yeah!- 20 gigs--- 20 gigs a second, baby!- This is better than New Whonnock.- On one card, that's embarrassing.That was 24 drives, with like a--- This is eight.- Dang it!- I mean, those drives were cheaper, but--- Yeah, but still.- What's the IOPS like, 200,000?- Yeah, it's still crap.- What about the other side?The write rate?- Still garbage.- You'd probably dolike 400 if you did FIO,but Crystal (beep) Mark...(Jake snickers)- Actually, that's all it's for measuring.- Yeah.- Wow, it's already changed the scaleto gigabytes per second.And we're at 8k.Holy banana sacks.32 kilobyte, we're already writing at--- Open Task Manager at least.- 2 1/2 gigabytes per second.Ah!- It's at 100% usage now.- Sure is, boys.- And this is on Windows, too, like, damn.(Linus squawks)- Are you okay?You gonna make it, bud?- Wow, over a gigabyteper second at just 16k.- Faster than regular Whonnock,faster than New Whonnock.It's probably fasterthan both put togetherin the current state.- Now, for fun, let's have alook at some workstation use.We'll play back some4K video, look at that!Look at that smooth scrubbing right there!Isn't that incredible,that smooth playback?Instant stop and start.It's actually far moreimpressive than you thinkbecause this is not just onevideo file that we're playing,it is 16 with a total bit rateof 500 megabit per second.That is about 20 times a4K stream off of Netflix,just to put it in context.Hey, there it is, wow!Would ya look at that!- Wait, what is this?50%, that's a lot.- Beautiful!Well, let's play back atdouble speed then, shall we?Hey, there it is!More speed!2.5, 3.2.Let's go faster!- Wow, 3.8!I wanna go fast!- It went fast for a sec.- Three gigabytes asecond, dang, look at this!- It got up to 3.8.- That's actually kinda cool.Ooh, ho ho, 4.9 gigabytes a second!- So it's just like ifyou do quick speed upor stop or start it's sort of beneficial,but so would just a regular 4.0 SSD.- Well, yeah, minor details.I mean, you can do 5.7.It might have actuallyhiccuped a little biton a mortal SSD.- Wow, look at that!So each of these is 500 megabit.- Each of them?- Yeah.- No.- Yeah, it's one file, butit's loading It 16 times.- Oh, so this is like--- A lot.- Over five gigabit.- So like 500 megabytes a second.- So that's like--- A lot.- Like 250 times your Netflix 4k.- Yeah, if they're allplaying at the same time.- Now, to see what thisthing's really capable ofwe need to fire up Linux.So we're gonna delete our array.See ya!Confirm, wait, I don't even--- I don't even think you selected,you didn't even set the array.You gotta select it first.- Oh, what?This is the worst UIthat I have ever seen.- It's a BIOS, man, relax.- No arrays found in the system.Okay, then we need to go back into,no, I expect better than this!We need to go back into SATA configurationto turn off NVMe RAID,and then we're gonnaboot to our other drive.- So what do we wanna start with?Sequential read, sequential write?- Oh yeah.- 4K random?- Yeah, just show me that giant numberthat means absolutely nothing.- Okay, so we'll do the sequential read.- I just like big, throbbing numbers.- Well, there'syour big, throbbing number.- Wow!- So that's gibbybytes.- 26 gibbybytes per second.Gosh darn.- That's insane, that's a lot.Oh, 27.8!- 27.8.- Whoo!That's a lot.- That's basically as fast as she goes.I would high five you, but--- Yeah, so we were thinking28.5 is the theoretical maxof these SSDs, so I guessthere's a little bit of overhead.And then maybe they're over-reportingtheir speeds just a little bit.But that's really fast.What about write?'Cause the Samsung ones couldonly do like eight combined.These should do over20, yeah, look at that.- How peasant-tastic.- 22.5 gibbybytes.- I can see why they're into the wholecomposable infrastructure thing becausethis is so fast that no earthly systemcould benefit from having allof this performance in it.- Yeah, look at that.So 99.5% utilization on all of them.Okay, random read.So this is cued up to 32,this is pretty unrealistic.4.15 million IOPS.- I don't even have context for that.- That's a lot of input/output operations.- I'm used to seeing SSDsmeasured on the orderof hundreds of thousands ofIOPS for a really good SSD.- I think these ones'lldo 580,000-something each.This is just madness.- So, okay, New New Whonnock.- Yeah.- After all the hassle we hadwith that other stupid thingwe could've just pluggeda Honey Badger into it.- Like two.- Yeah, two.- We could just get--- Hey, Liqid.Something to note here is that, actually,New Whonnock performed just finewhen we were runningit like this, as well,when we were just addressingall of the disks individually.So we haven't actually gotany file system overheador array overhead on here,so we would have to doa little bit more experimentation.Stay tuned though, guys,because there will besome kinda followup involvingmore drives in the future.In conclusion, though, guys,this thing is flippin' gnarly.But clearly, here at Linus Media Groupwe don't actually need thiskind of speed for anything.Cards like this are designedfor big data applicationsor for databases where youneed a ton of informationstored in a super accessible mannerso that even multiple userswill have high performance access to it.Another benefit of something this fastis that any data that you were to storeon an array of devices like thiscould be swapped in andout of system memoryextremely quickly, wherethe CPU can work on it.Now, Liqid is buildingthese first and foremostfor their composable infrastructure,as we talked about before.What that means is that you'd havea rack of servers over here somewherewith just CPUs and memory,no GPUs, no storage.Then, over fiber optics, you would havea whack of high-speed storage over hereand a hunk of GPUs over there.And then you could configurethem however you wantrather than over moretraditional networkinglike a typical supercomputer.And I guess researchers likethe guys over at Folding@homecould probably use somethinglike this, as well,while they're trying tovisualize or perform calculationsacross their gigantic data sets.Anyway, the point is thisis really more of a toolfor the the enterprise andscientific types out there,but hey, I still can't wait untilit trickles down to desktop computers,and then maybe finally, eventually,to game consoles another decade later.Sick burn.Speaking of burns, I wentso fast into this sponsor,Micro Center, that I almost got one.Micro Center is open tosupply all your work-from-homeor learn-from-home technology needs.The Maingear Element laptop is availableat 25 Micro Center locations,as well as on Amazonfor anyone who's notnear one of their stores.It's got a Core i7-9750H processor,Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics,32 gigs of DDR4 2666 RAM,two terabytes of NVMe storage.It's not quite this, butthat's still pretty good.15.6-inch IPS display,and you can check itand other Micro Center specials outat the link in the video description.If you guys enjoyed this video,maybe check out the one we did recentlyexplaining why this is completelyunnecessary for gamers,because under normalcircumstances you wouldn'teven be able to tell the differencebetween a SATA SSD and an NVMe one,let alone an NVMe onein something like this.\n"
