MSI introduced a new M.2 PCIe Gen 5 adaptor card during their coverage of new Z690 motherboards on YouTube. The new card will use PCIe Gen 5 x8 interface, making it fully compatible with future Gen 5 NVMe SSDs.

MSI did not specify if the card would be bundled with any motherboards, but we expect it to be offered separately. Because Alder Lake's native M.2 slots don't support Gen 5, this card is one of the few options to acquire Gen 5 NVMe on Alder Lake. The card has a black shroud with a small heatsink and fan for actively cooling the single M.2 slot, just as MSI's other Gen 4 M.2 cards. MSI warns that future PCIe Gen 5 M.2 SSDs will get hot, necessitating active cooling.

However, the card's physical connection is x16. For use in the second Gen 5 slot on Z690 motherboards, which are wired for x8 but physically support x16 cards. The only disadvantage is the loss of 8 lanes to your main graphics card. So your GPU must run in x8 mode to run the M.2 card. We don't have any precise release dates for Gen 5 SSDs yet. Samsung has teased enterprise PCIe Gen 5.0 SSDs for Q2 2022. If correct, we can see consumer SSDs around late 2022 or early 2023.

MSI To Include PCIe Gen 5 Card for Future NVMe SSDs with Select Z690 Motherboards