ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 Pro, a stylish gaming router that's ready to deliver ultrafast WiFi 6 and 10 Gbps Ethernet to every type of gamer.

The GT-AX11000 Pro is designed from the ground up to punch through increasingly congested wireless airwaves and maintain low-lag gaming experiences, wickedly fast download speeds and vast signal coverage. This coverage is expanded by leveraging ASUS RangeBoost Plus, and ASUS AiMesh compatibility allows users to combine AiMesh routers to create a whole-home mesh WiFi network—or instantly augment an existing one—in order to eliminate any dead spots. The second 5 GHz band includes new Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure 4 (U‑NII 4) support, which enables an extra high-speed 160 MHz channel for compatible client devices. The GT-AX11000 Pro is easy to manage via the free ASUS Router mobile app, which gives any level of user intuitive access to the router's arsenal of powerful features. There's also an easy-to-use web-based interface that additionally allows configuration of the new 10 Gbps LAN/WAN port.

ASRock today introduced the WRX80 Creator, a Socket WRX8 motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series workstation processors. Built in the E-ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, a 6-pin PCIe, and two 8-pin EPS connectors. The star attraction with this platform is 8-channel DDR4 memory, with all eight memory slots on this board featuring a dedicated memory channel. There are seven PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, from which five operate at full x16 bandwidth, and two can subtract 8 lanes each from two of the other x16 slots. So x16/x16/x16/NC/x16/NC/x16, or x16/x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x16.

Storage connectivity on the ASRock WRX80 Creator include two M.2 PCIe Gen 4 slots, and a U.2 port, besides eight SATA 6 Gbps. Networking interfaces include two 10 GbE, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and a 1 GbE used by the IPMI controller. Speaking of which, an ASPEED AST2500 provides basic display and various remote management capabilities. USB connectivity includes two 40 Gbps USB4 ports with mini-DP inputs for DisplayPort passthrough, four 10 Gbps USB 3.2, and a number of 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. A premium onboard audio solution featuring a Realtek ALC1220, and TI NE5532 headphones amp, makes for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Earlier this week, some details, including the PCB layout of the MSI MEG X670E Godlike leaked, but now MSI has shared some additional details, including a picture of the board. In fact, MSI shared most of thespecs of the Godlike board during Computex, but the company didn't release a picture back then. However, now we know the power design, which consists of 24+2 phases and a 105 A power stage. MSI has also created its own screwless M.2 slots, as well as heatsinks, which simply clip in place after the SSD has been installed, although it doesn't appear the Godlike board has screwless heatsinks for more than one of M.2 drives.

Other features include 10 and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, as well as AMD's RZ616 WiFi 6E module. MSI hasn't gone for USB4 from what we know and nothing was mentioned with regards to USB4 during the MSI presentation. MSI also seems to have skipped video outputs on this board, but it's possible that one of the USB-C ports will support display output, even though that wasn't the case back at Computex. As with many other X670E boards, the Godlike supports 60 W USB PD charging via the front USB-C port.

During AMD's Meet the Experts event, ASUS revealed more details about its ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, a board the company revealed during Computex, but didn't show the rear I/O of. However, ASUS also unveiled the ROG Crosshair X670E Hero, a board the company hadn't shown off prior to the AMD event. Both boards will feature a pair of USB4 ports, with both ports supporting DisplayPort Alt Mode. Both boards feature a further two USB-C ports, plus seven plus USB-A ports. The Extreme features 10 Gbps and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, whereas the Hero gets to make do with 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, although it gains an HDMI output. Both boards have a full set of audio jacks and WiFi 6E support, as well as a rear mounted clear CMOS and BIOS FlashBack button.

Taking a closer look at the Hero board, it has two PCIe x16 PCIe slots, plus a single, open-ended PCIe x1 slot. The board supports four M.2 NVMe slots for SSDs and comes with a PCIe 5.0 card for a fifth drive. It also has what appears to be six SATA ports, a front header for a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 2x2 USB-C port that also supports up to 60 W USB PD and Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+. The Hero board will be kitted out with an 18 phase power design, with the Extreme getting a 22 phase design, both with a 110 Ampere power stage. ASUS has moved its audio solution to the ALC4082 USB based audio codec and at least the Extreme will have an ESS ES9218 audio codec. ASUS is also bringing over the Q-Release solution for graphics cards to these boards, as well as the Q-Latch for M.2 SSDs.

Drive docks can be extremely handy, especially the kind with support for two drives, as they generally allow you to duplicate your data quickly and easily. However, with a move towards M.2 drives, SATA based docks are slowly becoming less useful. Akasa has launched a solution to that problem with its new DuoDock MX, which accepts a pair of M.2 NVMe drives. The dock itself looks like a miniature drive dock with the addition of a cup-shaped lid that helps protect the drives from being touched during use. The front is host to a range of LEDs and a drive clone button, whereas around the back there's a power switch, a power connector and a USB Type-C port.

The only real downside is that Akasa has gone with a 10 Gbps PCIe to USB 3.2 bridge chip, which means that the data connection to a PC would be fairly slow by today's standards. Presumably the reason for this is to prevent the need of using some kind of heatsink on the M.2 drives, as most 20 Gbps NVMe to USB 3.2 solutions tend to require heatsinks. That said, Akasa has equipped the DuoDock MX with what the company calls an ultra-thin fan, although a picture on the company website suggests it's a small blower fan. Price-wise it's not what you'd call a bargain at £98 or around US$120, although that price includes British VAT.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the McFiver PCIe Card, the latest offering in the company's expansive family of computer adapter cards. The McFiver card features five interfaces — two M.2 NVMe SSD slots, one 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports — and fits neatly inside a single-width card space. The Sonnet card is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers with an available x8 PCIe slot, and with computers with Thunderbolt ports when installed in a Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion system with an available x8 PCIe slot.

Sonnet's McFiver PCIe Card enables users to add high-performance internal SSD storage, plus 10GBASE-T (copper), 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), and 10 Gbps USB-C ports to their systems but requires only a single card slot (instead of the three slots single-purpose cards would occupy). The McFiver card mounts one or two single- or double-sided M.2 NVMe 2280 PCIe SSDs (sold separately) for ultra-fast file access; using today's highest capacity SSDs, up to 16 TB of storage may be installed. The card's 10GbE port connects to 10GbE network infrastructure and shared storage systems via inexpensive Cat 6 or Cat 6A cabling. The USB-C ports connect and power two high-performance USB peripherals, supporting a full 10 Gbps connection through each port, and providing USB bus-powered SSD, SSD RAID, and hard drive devices with up to 7.5 watts of power through each port.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced its Wi-Fi 7 capable Qualcomm Networking Pro Series Gen 3 family of platforms. Now sampling and available to global development partners, the Qualcomm Networking Pro Series, Gen3 is the world's highest performance Wi-Fi 7 network infrastructure platform portfolio commercially available. Building upon the multi-generation legacy of the Qualcomm Networking Pro Series platforms, the products combine Wi-Fi 7 features with Qualcomm Technologies' intelligent multi-channel management technologies to improve speeds, lower latency, and enhance network utilization for users of Wi-Fi 6/6E devices while offering game-changing throughput and incredibly low latency for the next generation of Wi-Fi 7 client devices.

"Qualcomm Technologies has enabled the era of 10 Gbps Wi-Fi with our first customer deliveries of the Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Series," said Nick Kucharewski, senior vice president and general manager, Wireless Infrastructure and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Combining support for the latest Wi-Fi 7 innovations with our unique product architecture, the platform enables solutions ranging from whole-home mesh to connectivity networks for large public venues. With this product line, we anticipate a new class of customer systems for both today's applications and the emerging Wi-Fi 7 ecosystem."

Lexar, a leading brand of flash memory solution, proudly unveils the world's fastest Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B Card DIAMOND Series and Lexar Professional CFexpress Type A Card GOLD Series at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event this week in Las Vegas, Nevada. From field to post production, Lexar aims to provide our users products that offer unmatched quality, performance, reliability and compatibility to dramatically accelerate workflow from start to finish.

To meet the demand of high-performance memory solution needed for professional filmmakers and content creators, the Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B Card DIAMOND Series provides unmatched read speeds of up to 1900 MB/s, dramatically accelerating your post-production workflow for enhanced productivity. And with blazing-fast write speeds of up to 1700 MB/s, quickly capture smooth RAW 8K, 6K and 4K video with ease. It is also backwards compatible with select XQD cameras.

It appears that 2022 might be the year WiFi 7, or 802.11be as it's also known, launches, despite the fact that the specification isn't set to be ratified until 2024. Broadcom has just unveiled its first set of WiFi 7 radios, as well as accompanying SoC and it looks like the new hardware will bring a big jump in performance under the right circumstances. Broadcom's first WiFi 7 SoC will be known as the BCM4916, which sports a quad core ARMv8 processor. It appears to be a custom Broadcom design that's capable of delivering up to 24 DMIPS of performance, but beyond mentioning that it has 1 MB L2 cache and 64 kB L1 cache, Broadcom doesn't go into any specifics.

The Arm based processor is backed up by what Broadcom calls a Dual Issue Runner Network Processor, or DI-XRDP, which is a packet processor that shuffles the data around between the wired and wireless network interfaces. There's also a crypto coprocessor and Broadcom has added support for Arm TrustZone and Secure Boot, with the prior having support for a trusted execution environment. What stands out with regards to the BCM4916 compared to most current router SoCs is the wide arrange of high-speed connectivity options. For starters, it has no less than four PCIe interfaces of unspecified generation, as well as a native 10 Gbps network interface and as well as the option for two more. In addition to this, it has a further option for a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interface, as well as a typical four port Gigabit switch built in. A pair of USB 3.2 ports are also part of the chip, but these are likely to be 5 Gbps ports. The SoC also has support for DDR3 and DDR4 memory.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card, the latest offering in the company's popular line of USB PCIe adapter cards. The new Allegro card features eight external USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports and fits neatly inside a single-width card space. The Sonnet card is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers with an available x16 PCIe slot, and Mac and Windows computers with Thunderbolt ports when installed in a Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion system with an available x16 PCIe slot.

Sonnet's Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card enables users to connect and power up to eight high-performance USB peripherals to their computer at the same time and provides a full 10 Gbps connection through each port. The Allegro card supports USB bus-powered SSD, SSD RAID, and hard drive devices with up to 7.5 watts of power to every port, without the user having to connect auxiliary power to the card or AC power adapters to the devices for operation.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today unveiled the 2U short-depth rackmount TS-873AeU NAS series, including the TS-873AeU and TS-873AeU-RP, with high-performance and energy-efficient AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 series V1500B 4-core/8-thread, 2.20 GHz processors. The series is available in 8-bay models with single and redundant power supply options. The TS-873AeU series is suitable for tackling resource-demanding applications and tasks, such as virtual machines, intensive multi-user access, or hybrid cloud applications, making it a cost-efficient solution for businesses that depend on virtualization or VDI applications.

The 2U rackmount TS-873AeU series has a short depth design of only 11.7 inches (297.4 mm) for up to 38% reduction in size, making it an excellent choice for smaller racks, wall-mount AV rack cabinets, and network rack cabinets. Space saved by its short depth design can greatly benefit cabling or ventilation. The TS-873AeU series is ideal for flexible deployment and is especially suitable for installation in locations such as offices, audiovisual rooms, and for applications such as security surveillance recording.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock, the latest offering in the company's popular Echo family of Thunderbolt docking stations and hubs. The new Echo dock features two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt ports, two internal M.2 NVMe SSD slots, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports. The Sonnet dock is compatible with all Thunderbolt 4 computers; all M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max Mac computers; all Thunderbolt 3 Mac and Windows computers; and iPad Pro tablets with a Thunderbolt port.

A Thunderbolt docking station provides users a central place to connect computer peripherals — such as storage and input devices, a monitor, etc. — instead of directly to a computer that may have fewer ports than necessary, or inconvenient port placement. An SSD-based Thunderbolt 3 external storage device provides users the fastest possible data transfers from a peripheral device. Sonnet's Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock combines the benefits of a docking station and Thunderbolt-connected SSD storage, enabling users to connect to their peripheral devices and high-performance storage through a single Thunderbolt cable.

SmartAVLink, a world-leading active optical cables (AOC) manufacturer, today announced the release of their next-generation USB type C Active Optical Cable available in a maximum length of 10 meters (33 feet).

With no external power needed, its built-in active circuitry is powered by both ends of the cable, eliminating external power supply costs. With power delivery of up to 60 watts, the next-gen AOC supports various voltage profiles up to 20 Volts at 3 Amps and is thus able to charge a wide range of devices. With a strong zinc alloy metal shell, the attractive gold-plated contacts maintain a long-lasting, reliable electrical connection. The next-gen cable is conveniently backwards compatible with previous USB standards and also works with Thunderbolt devices (With DP Alt Mode) and is available in 3-, 5-, 7.5-, and 10-meter (33 feet) lengths, with support available for extra customization.

In addition to the Marvel M02, Silicon Power today released the Marvel Xtreme M80 performance-segment USB flash drive. Built in the conventional 2-piece form-factor, the Xtreme M80 measures 68.5 mm x 17.8 mm x 8.2 mm (LxWxH), weighing about 8.5 g. It comes in 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB capacities. The drive features a USB 3.1 Gen 2 type-A (10 Gbps) interface, and offers sequential transfer rates of up to 600 MB/s reads, and up to 500 MB/s writes, and takes advantage of UASP. Its plastic body features a brushed alumiunium-looking finish, with a chrome element toward the end. The company didn't release pricing.

Today, Intel announced the Intel NUC 12 Extreme (code-named Dragon Canyon) and the Intel NUC 12 Extreme Compute Element (code-named Eden Bay), a highly modular desktop PC kit engineered to provide phenomenal performance for high-end gaming and content creation tasks. With the latest 12th Gen Intel Core desktop processors, capacity for full-size 12-inch discrete graphics cards and a full range of I/O ports including Thunderbolt 4, the Intel NUC 12 Extreme delivers massive performance and features that enthusiast gamers and professional creators need in a compact and modular form factor.

The Intel NUC 12 Extreme brings Intel's new performance hybrid architecture and a socketed motherboard to the NUC line for the first time. For those who want a powerful system with a small footprint and more versatility than ever before, the Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit is an outstanding option. The most powerful Intel NUC yet encompasses new features, like performance hybrid architecture and access to faster PCIe interfaces, accelerating load times, all in a footprint that can fit on any desk.

The NUC Extreme might not share much in terms of design with either the original NUC or its earlier Extreme siblings these days, as it's grown into a rather hefty SFF system. Now the 12th gen NUC Extreme has leaked and it comes with a few unexpected surprises, in both a good and a bad sense. Initially it looks like there will be two main barebones SKU's, the NUC12EDBi9 and the NUC12EDBi7, with a 65 W Core i9-12900 and a Core i7-12700 CPU respectively. In other words, it appears we're not looking at any dedicated CPU SKU's this time around.

The first thing that sticks out in the spec is the fact that Intel has gone for a pair of DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, rather than DDR5. In all fairness, this could be due to a lack of DDR5 SO-DIMMs in the market, but feels odd in a product with Extreme in the product name. Memory speeds of up to 3200 MHz are supported and up to 64 GB can be fitted. On the storage side, there's support for no less than three PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe drives using the 2280 form factor. Two of the slots can also accept 2242 drives and SATA drives. A full PCIe 5.0 x16 slot is also present for an optional graphics card, but more on that a little bit later.