Gen 5 SSDs are everywhere in 2026, and it’s hard to resist upgrading to one, especially once you see their advertised speeds. When a drive promises roughly twice the speed of PCIe 4.0 drives on its spec sheet, it immediately makes you wonder whether your current PCIe 3.0 NVMe is outdated. That’s how most upgrade decisions start. But the problem here is that you’re a**uming performance from theoretical numbers, not how your PC actually behaves under regular workloads.