What
The SKHynix PE8111 is a pretty solid enterprise drive! It only entered wide availability early 2021 and so is barely 3 years old.
It’s half a yardstick, but it is 16 terabytes.
PE8111 is specifically optimized for Open Compute Project (OCP) storage platforms, supporting sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,400MB/s and 3,000MB/s, and random read and write of up to 700K and 100K IOPs, respectively. (from above)
It doesn’t appear that the ones I got are even used:
Where
They are selling for around $600 which is neither the deal of the century nor a bad price. It is 16tb of flash, but it’s pretty slow by modern standards.
How
To use them on a modern system you will need an MCIO to E1 adapter, PCIe carrier (unlikely to fit in your case because of the format) or an M.2 to E1 cable. You will maybe need an adapter with redrivers, or a motherboard with native MCIO capability.
It is a PCIe Gen4 drive but it is pretty gen3-ish speeds for most scenarios. SK says the drive should only link at gen3 speeds? But my two seemed to link at gen4 speeds, but the drive wasn’t any faster than 4gb/sec real world fwiw. (This could be an artifact of the way I’m doing the interface as there is electronics between the drive and motherboard pcie lanes when probably there doesn’t need to be).
Pcie Gen3 is likely not to need anything special so a u.2 to mcio adapter could work? But signal losses from, say, slim sas x4 to u.2. to e1 may be too much even for pcie gen 3.
I can also confirm cables from serialcables.com will work. The ali-express pcie to e3 adapter did NOT work, and that adapter only fits in extra deep cases like the fractal define series anyway.
This is why I say $600-700 is okay – on the order of $50/tb with a few $ taken out for the expensive adapters you’ll need to use this thing.
Given the price of 20tb mechanical hard drives, though, it’s a good price.
