MSI Raider GE78 HX now available to be one of the first laptops with PCIe5 SSD support for read rates of over 15 GB/s

As promised during its CES 2023 reveal, major retailers in the US have just begun shipping the new MSI Raider GE78 to customers this week equipped with the latest 13th gen Intel Core i9 CPUs and Nvidia GeForce 40 Ada Lovelace GPUs. The model is a full-on refresh from last year's GE77 as detailed in our full review here.

Aside from the obvious processor upgrades, MSI has future-proofed the GE78 with support for PCIe5 x4 NVMe SSDs and not just the usual PCIe4 x4. When compared to the PCIe4, PCIe5 can offer up to 2x the theoretical transfer rates for a mind-boggling 15.75 GB/s.

MSI noted during CES 2023 that the GE78 would begin shipping well before any PCIe5 drives and so all initial GE78 units would come equipped with PCIe4 drives only before eventually switching over to PCIe5. The few consumer-based PCIe5 SSDs that are already in the market like the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 are currently sold out at the time of publishing and with very limited stock. Thus, we don't expect MSI to begin installing PCIe5 drives onto its own laptops until at least much later in the year.