MSI Spatium M580 Liquid Frozr is easily one of the most interesting SSDs we've come across in CES 2024. Picture this—an M.2-2280 SSD that has a self-contained liquid cooler, complete with a fan, radiator, a pump-block, and coolant channels. This is both cute and a little sad. M.2 SSDs were supposed to stay out of sight and be completely cable-free, like DIMMs. This isn't MSI's fault, they have to use the fastest controllers in the market, which are built on older 12 nm foundry nodes. PCI-Express 5.0 x4 is comparable bandwidth to PCI-Express 3.0 x16, and moving this kind of data is bound to generate heat for an SSD controller. Enough banter—the Spatium M580 uses the fastest Phison E26 Max14um controller, with Micron's fastest B58R 232-layer 3D NAND flash chips that deliver 2400 MT/s per flash channel.

The combination of Phison Max14um and B58R results in sequential transfer speeds beyond the 14 GB/s mark, which is where most PCIe Gen 5 x4 drives will end up accounting for the interface+protocol overhead. The theoretical max bandwidth of Gen 5 x4 is 16 GB/s. The drive comes in capacities of up to 4 TB. As for the cooler's design, the bare drive makes contact with a copper cold-plate, which has the block+reservoir, with a tiny pump. This sends coolant through a real aluminium heat-exchanger—this is probably the smallest radiator we've ever seen. The radiator is held up, a supporting structure has a tiny 20 mm lateral-flow fan, which blows air through the radiator. We can't wait to review this thing!