Phison's E37T maxes out Gen5 SSD speeds without DRAM, and it was made for consumers

Anyone who has been looking at consumer memory and storage prices recently would understand why so many people are looking backward instead of forward when it comes to affordable storage. This is why Phison's E37T controller feels like an oasis in a desert of AI and data center products. Even setting aside the current market reality, it's a game-changer.

3

The Phison E37T controller is an engineering feat worth celebrating, as it powers the first DRAMless SSDs capable of fully maxing out their PCIe Gen5 interfaces, delivering speeds over 14.9 GB/s. And the E37T does so while drawing less than 5W of power. Throw in impressive random read and write speeds, and it's a Gen5 SSD controller that truly makes Gen5 feel like it lives up to its promise. No need for additional cooling or expensive DRAM.

At Computex 2026, we spoke with Phison's Chris Ramseyer, who told us this controller was designed with consumers in mind. Not only that, but he and his team at Phison saw where the industry was headed years ago and knew that, with the DRAM trend shifting toward data center and enterprise first, they needed to come up with something for everyone else. For gamers, enthusiasts, and everyday PC users.

3

"Two years ago we started seeing the market already start to push and buy up DRAM," Chris Ramseyer tells me. "We knew it was going to be a problem later on, in the future for our flagship SSDs. And we needed a way, so we started working on a way." Phison had a single goal: "Build an extremely high-performance flagship Gen5 SSD, but without DRAM to keep parts affordable for the enthusiast market."

"As the product marketing manager for client SSDs, I'm not giving up my roots, right?" Chris explains. "This is my heritage, this is where I'm from, this is what I'm passionate about. We're gonna go and work on building a flagship DRAMless SSD to dominate the market." Right off the bat, efficiency was high on the list, as the team knew that enthusiasts and gamers didn't want Gen5 SSDs with active cooling. And with that development, they tackled two key areas: speed and efficiency. And not just hitting maximum read speeds, but random too, so that it delivers a performance upgrade that you can feel.

"We went from 11.55 Watts max on E26, down to seven Watts," Chris recalls. "With E37T, we're hitting 14.9 gigabytes per second, but we're doing it at just 4.5 Watts peak." Impressive stuff, and for a detailed breakdown on the technology and performance, be sure to check out our exclusive Phison E37T SSD Controller Preview.