Shortly after AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation processors hit the scene, we’ve been seeing NVMe SSDs break all sorts of sequential read and write speed records approaching 5,000MB/s. However, Gigabyte’s premium gaming brand, Aorus, has managed to blow past the 5K Rubicon and deliver an 8TB setup that runs up to 15,000MB/s read and 15,200MB/s write.

This incredibly speedy drive from Aorus is actually made up of four individual 2TB NVMe SSDs strapped together on an add-in card (AIC) that plugs into a PCIe 4.0 x 16 slot on an X570 motherboard . Typically, these drives would max out at 5,000MB/s just like the latest PCIe 4.0 SSDs from Corsair and Patriot, but Aorus went one step further and arranged the drives in a RAID 0 arrangement to multiply its sequential data transfer speeds.Of course, having all those drives operating at such high speeds is sure to generate a ton of heat, so the Aorus AIC also integrates its own blower-style fan and thick copper heatsinks to keep things cool.This is probably something only the most extreme computer enthusiasts would do, but it’s still incredible to see the potential SSD speeds PCIe 4.0 can achieve—and this still isn’t even close to the fastest they can go.The theoretical maximum speed of an SSD connected to an PCIe 4.0 x 16 slot is 31,510 MB/s and that’s without putting anything into Raid 0. Even with a single NVMe drive on its own connected to a regular M.2 PCIe 4.0 x 4 could theoretically achieve speeds of 7,880MB/s.

Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam