Brainbox, a Korean media outlet, has gathered information on Intel's newest Ice Lake and Cooper Lake server processors from a presentation ASUS held for its server lineup. With Cooper Lake-SP paving the way for the first server CPU model to be released on the new "Whitley" platform, it is supposed to launch in Q2 of 2020. Cooper Lake-SP comes with TDP of 300 W and will be available with configurations of up to 48 cores, but there also should be a 56 core model like the Xeon Platinum 9282, that has a TDP of 400 W. Cooper Lake-SP supports up to 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, 8 channel memory (16 DIMMs in total) that goes up to 3200 MHz and four Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI) links.

Ice Lake-SP, built on the new 10 nm+ manufacturing process, is coming in soon after Cooper Lake-SP release, with a launch window in Q3 of 2020. That is just few months apart from previous CPU launch, so it will be a bit hard to integrate the launches of two rather distinct products. As far as the specifications of Ice Lake-SP goes, it will have up to 38 core for the top end model, within 270 W TDP. It supports 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes with three UPI links. There is also 8 channel memory support, however this time there is an option to use 2nd generation Optane DC Persistent Memory. Both CPU uArches will run on the new LGA 4189 on the P+ socket.

As AMD launched the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors and immediately gained lots of attention recently, MSI also released a bunch of motherboards for various use. To fulfill different gamers offer diversified options, MSI is pleased to introduce our new MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard into gaming market. Belonging to the top gaming segment MEG series, MEG X570 UNIFY is our brand new premium product with modest and pure black design, emphasizing on the true value of the motherboard instead of fancy LED decoration.

By eliminating all the redundant RGB LED from the motherboard and adopting the UV black printing, the heatsink shows the gleam and the shining reflection of the dragon to symbolize a mysterious and high quality image. For MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard, MSI put great efforts on those essential parts concerned by those enthusiast gamers, enhancing not only the thermal but also power solution to run with the AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen processors. Emphasizing the ultimate performance, MEG X570 UNIFY also brings astonishing overclocking records to enthusiast gamers. With AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, it is an incredible result to push CPU frequency to 5857 MHz, which is by far the top 1 of all records.

Today, AMD announced the Radeon RX 5500 series graphics products, harnessing groundbreaking RDNA gaming architecture to deliver the ultimate in high-performance, high-fidelity 1080p gaming. The AMD Radeon RX 5500 series includes the Radeon RX 5500 graphics card that will be available in desktop PCs from leading manufacturers and graphics cards from board partners, as well as the Radeon RX 5500M GPU for notebook PCs. Top system providers worldwide are embracing the new products, with HP and Lenovo planning to offer Radeon RX 5500 graphics cards in their high performance desktop gaming PCs beginning this November, and Acer planning to offer systems with the cards beginning this December. In addition, later this month MSI is expected to launch the world's first gaming notebook powered by AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon RX 5500M GPUs.

"Based on feedback and insights from global gaming communities, gamers rank graphics as the most critical component for speed and performance," said Johnson Jia, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Business of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. "That's why the Lenovo Legion T730 and T530 gaming towers and the IdeaCentre T540 Gaming desktop pack in AMD's latest Radeon RX graphics - satisfying players' need for high-fidelity visuals and lightning-fast frame-rates to fully immerse into their gameplay." "MSI Alpha 15 is a new chapter for us, and we're excited to partner with AMD to combine the latest 7 nm technology found in the Radeon RX 5500M GPU and MSI's gaming DNA for our gamers," said Charles Chiang, CEO of MSI.

We've known for some time that AMD's mainstream-segment B550 chipset wouldn't bring all the bangs and whistles of its bigger, enthusiast-class cousin X570. For one, it wouldn't make sense to increase development and implementation costs of both the chipset and motherboards built for mainstream enthusiasts by adding PCIe 4.0 support and the more stringent signaling and power requirements the new standard entails. As such, B550 reportedly cuts down fully on PCIe 4.0 support, as well as on the latest USB standards, to offer a product that's sufficiently rounded up on I/O while offering overclocking support for users that demand it.

Reportedly, AMD's B550 will only support up to 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 devices, 6x USB 2.0, 4 + 4 SATA3 connections, and the interlink between the chipset and the CPU occurs via a 4x PCIe 3.0 interface, which means there's less bandwidth for communication between the CPU and the chipset than on X570 - not that that was a real problem on AMD's previous-gen Ryzen products, though, so that's more of a technicality at this point. Ryzen 3000 CPUs still offer 4x PCIe 4.0 ports, though, so these could be used for speeding up a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, for instance. The launch of B550-bound products is expected towards October.

HP has listed new desktop consumer prebuilts that use previously unannounced hardware from AMD, namely the Radeon RX 5300 XT graphics card and the B550 chipset. B550 has been expected for a while — it's a lower-cost chipset for Ryzen 3000 "Zen 2" processors with reduced feature set. HP calls the chipset "AMD Promontory B550A" in their sheets which seems to be designed and produced by ASMedia (unlike X570, which is a fully AMD in-house design). One of the major differences between X570 and B550 is that the latter has no support for PCI-Express 4.0, which won't matter one bit in its target segment. This move not only reduces chipset cost, it also drives down the cost of motherboards significantly, as the more stringent signal integrity requirements for PCIe 4.0 won't apply here.

While we have heard rumors that AMD is working on a smaller chip for their "Navi" architecture (Navi 12 and Navi 14), it's uncertain whether RX 5300 XT is really based on Navi, or whether it will be yet another rebrand — we wouldn't be surprised if Polaris is making a comeback yet again. Both systems are listed for € 699 and € 899, with shelf availability expected for October 8th.

At the European launch in Rome, Italy AMD today highlighted the growing adoption of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors across cloud, enterprise and HPC customers. "Today, we are proud to have new platforms from Dell and new customers adopting 2nd Gen AMD EPYC for cloud, enterprise computing and HPC," said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group. "We continue to take the AMD EPYC processor to new heights and are thrilled to have the ecosystem supporting us across hardware, software and cloud providers as we face the challenges of the modern data center head-on."

AMD also announced a new addition to the 2nd Generation AMD EPYC family, the AMD EPYC 7H12 processor. The 64 core/128 thread, 2.60 GHz base frequency, 3.30 GHz max boost frequency, 280 W TDP processor is specifically built for HPC customers and workloads, using liquid cooling to deliver leadership supercomputing performance. In an ATOS testing on their BullSequana XH2000, the new AMD EPYC 7H12 processor achieved a LINPACK score of ~ 4.2 TeraFLOPS, ~11% better than the AMD EPYC 7742 processor.

VIPER GAMING, a trademarked brand of PATRIOT and a global leader in performance memory, solid-state drives (SSDs) and flash storage solutions, is releasing their new PCIe 4.0 SSD, the VIPER VP4100 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x 4 SSD.

VP4100 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x 4 SSD is an excellent M.2 SSD choice for hardcore gamers, PC enthusiasts, content creators, and video rendering professionals who are looking into blazingly fast startup times and instantaneous access for superior productivity. VIPER VP4100's blazing transfer speeds empower the user to access and get back into their games faster while accelerating the overall responsiveness of the system. The VP4100 is ten times faster than the traditional SATA III SSD speeds and deliver remarkable sequential Read speeds of up to 5 GB/s and Write speeds of up to 4.4 GB/s. The drive also provides up to 800K random Read and Write IOPs for massive throughput. 4K Aligned Random Read and Write optimizes the SSD for multi-threaded and data-intensive applications for when the system is accessing multiple applications at once.

ASRock is pleased to announce a very special product launch: the new X570 AQUA motherboard, which is already highly anticipated for its unprecedented features and performance.

The X570 AQUA is the only completely water-cooled X570 motherboard - its unique all-copper cooling block covers the CPU, VRM and X570 Chipset to provide unbelievable performance and stability. This exclusive product is being manufactured in a very limited production run of just 999 boards and made available on a first come first served basis. X570 AQUA is the ultimate selection for the AMD X570 chipset and Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors - to be enjoyed only by a select few worldwide. With the top choice CPU for DIY PC enthusiasts - AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors paired with ASRock's super high-end X570 AQUA motherboard will definitely be your ideal partner.

As the first and only company shipping PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe SSD solutions, Phison Electronics is the industry leader in enabling high-performance computing for bandwidth-hungry applications. In developing these solutions, Phison is ushering in a new era for applications expected to meet the demand for increasingly faster and higher-definition digital experiences.

The PCIe 4.0 standard offers double the data transfer rate over the prior PCIe 3.0 version. The increased data transfer rate, signal reliability and integrity of PCIe Gen4 enables technology solutions providers with the ability to deliver greater performance, additional flexibility and lower latency to a multitude of applications, including PC, gaming, mobile, storage and networking.

AMD's latest AGESA update, which is being seeded to motherboard manufacturers, culls efforts to implement support for PCIe 4.0 in boards not carrying the latest X570 chipset. Some motherboard manufacturers had enabled support for the new standard on existing B450 and X470 motherboards - some with limited support, as was the case on some of ASUS' motherboards, others with full support. However, these efforts from motherboard manufacturers went against AMD's strategy with their X570 platform - all in all, these "rogue additions" reduced one additional feature of new X570 motherboards over their older counterparts.

The new AGESA code carries the part number AM4 1.0.0.3 ABB, and will likely be reflected in manufacturers' release notes for new BIOS versions that incorporate the code - and remove added PCIe 4.0 functionality. Other changes in this AGESA code release include fixes for Destiny 2 gamers' woes, which were having a hard time getting the game to run properly on Ryzen 3000 processors. If you're an avid Destiny 2 player and want PCIe 4.0 support, you'll likely be reminded of Rick and Morty's pickle episode. If not, you can always defer these AM4 1.0.0.3 ABB updates, if your system is behaving properly.

Marvell today released the industry's lowest power PCIe Gen4 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) controller portfolio. Marvell's newest SSD controllers are designed to meet the need for lower power and higher performance in next-generation data centers and edge devices as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G gain momentum. This breakthrough technology delivers unparalleled performance in an ultra-compact footprint, leveraging the company's complex system-on-chip (SoC) design expertise and groundbreaking storage IP to help data center, notebook, tablet, gaming and edge computing platform architects advance their solutions for the highly distributed data era.

"Marvell's latest family of storage controllers has been architected to optimally address edge computing and data center pain points of power-performance and capacity-performance," said Nigel Alvares, vice president of marketing for the Flash Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "With today's launch, we're once again demonstrating Marvell's leadership in storage, delivering the industry's first 4-Channel PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD controllers with the industry's lowest power consumption that will help revolutionize SSD solutions for the data economy."

ADATA Technology (Taiwan Stock Exchange: 3260.TWO), a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories today announces the launch of the XPG GAMMIX S50 PCIe Gen 4 x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). Utilizing next-generation PCIe Gen 4 x4 and implementing the NVMe 1.3 standard, the S50 delivers blazing-fast read/write performance of 5000 / 4400 MB per second. What's more, it features an aluminium heat sink for excellent heat dissipation, 3D Flash memory with up to 2 TB capacity, SLC caching, a DRAM cache buffer, End-to-End Data Protection, and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) error correcting code technology.

The S50 supports the NVMe standard and utilizes the latest PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface to let users enjoy sustained read/write speeds of up to 5000 / 4400 MB per second. What's more, with 3D Flash memory it offers a leap forward in capacity, efficiency, and durability. Also with the M.2 2280 specification, it supports the latest Intel and AMD platforms. These capabilities make the S50 ideally suited for gamers, PC enthusiasts, overclockers, and graphics professionals.

AMD in a Facebook post late Friday confirmed that its Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards will launch at reduced prices compared to what it announced at its E3-2019 product announcement. The Radeon RX 5700 XT will have a reduced MSRP of USD $399, which puts it on par with that of the GeForce RTX 2060 Super. The Radeon RX 5700 will cost $50 less, at $349, which puts its price on par with the original RTX 2060. The commemorative limited-edition RX 5700 XT AMD 50th Anniversary Edition is now reduced to $449. AMD didn't announce any changes to the two cards' launch bundle that include a 3-month Xbox Game Pass for PC.

Commenting on the development, AMD said "We embrace competition, which drives innovation to the benefit of gamers. In that spirit, we are updating the pricing of our Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics cards, launching July 7." The company added "We know that gamers will be thrilled once they have the opportunity to experience the amazing performance, stunning visual fidelity and highly responsive gameplay these new graphics cards provide. Making history on 7/7 as the first company to launch gaming CPUs and GPUs together - the first in 7nm and PCIe 4.0 - is all about pushing the ultimate gaming experience forward for as many gamers as possible."

First seen at Computex this year, Corsair seems to be first to market with a PCI-Express x4 Gen 4 SSD. Amazon Japan has the Corsair MP600 listed now for pre-order, with a "July 13" release date - it was also listed on Amazon US earlier today, but the product page has vanished since then. Corsair's MP600 SSD comes in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB, and will be priced at $250 for the 1 TB version, and $450 for the 2 TB model. With PCIe 4.0, the bandwidth per pin is once again doubled over what 3.0 offered. According to Corsair, the MP600 SSD will reach up to 4.95 GB/s sequential write speed and up to 4.25 GB/s sequential read. Like most other PCI-E Gen 4 SSDs that we saw at Computex, the MP600 is based on Phison's PS5016-E16 controller and uses 3D TLC NAND memory.

Update Jul 1st: The drive is now listed at Amazon US, release date is "July 1st", so today: MP600 1 TB ($249.99) and 2 TB ($449.99). It is sold and shipped by Amazon itself.

American flash memory products manufacturer Sabrent announced a client-segment M.2 NVMe SSD that takes advantage of PCIe gen 4.0, the Rocket NVMe 4.0 series. Based on the same Phison PS5016-E16 controller as most PCIe gen 4.0 SSDs launched so far, the drive uses 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash by Toshiba. It also appears to have higher on-paper performance numbers than most drives from other brands that use the same combination of controller and NAND flash, with up to 5,000 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 4,400 MB/s sequential writes, on both its 1 TB and 2 TB variants. The company didn't bother with a sub-terabyte variant. The 1 TB variant is priced at USD $229.99 ($0.23 per GB), and the 2 TB variant at $429.99 ($0.21 per GB).

With PCI-Express 4.0 graphics cards and motherboards soon to arrive, UL has released their PCI Express feature test for 3DMark. This latest addition has been designed to verify the bandwidth available to the GPU over a computer's PCI Express interface. To accomplish this, the test will make bandwidth the limiting factor for performance and does so by uploading a large amount of vertex and texture data to the GPU for each frame. The end goal is to transfer enough data over the PCIe 4.0 interface to thoroughly saturate it. Once the test is complete, the end result will be a look at the average bandwidth achieved during the test.

GIGABYTE today officially launched its latest addition to the Aorus series of motherboards, made for the new generation of Ryzen 3000 series processors. The "Master" as it is called, is an impressive feat of engineering designed to handle even the most power-hungry Ryzen CPUs like the 16 core Ryzen 9 AMD recently showcased.

For starters, the board is featuring twice the amount of copper wires usually needed to implement a PCIe connection, which means less information loss on PCB. It has a 14 direct phases of Infineon digital IR 3556 PowIRstage MOSFETs VRMs that are capable of delivering 50A each, which means that the VRM is capable of delivering up to 700A of current, providing additional headroom for CPU overclock. To handle the large amount of VRMs effectively, the board is equipped with beefy heatsinks and a heat pipe that has direct contact with VRMs. Sandwiches between the heatsink and the board is a new generation of thermal pads designed by LAIRD, with 1.5 mm thickness and 5 W/mK thermal conductivity.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, participated in the PCI-SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group) Compliance Workshop #109 in Burlingame, California, where several prototype and engineering samples of the company's upcoming PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs underwent PCI-SIG FYI Gen 4 testing.

The fourth generation of the PCIe interface, PCIe 4.0, doubles available bandwidth for graphics cards, SSDs, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet cards. The new standard will enable SSDs in particular to provide much higher performance than previous PCIe 3.0 SSDs, especially sequential read performance. An early participant seeking to enable PCIe 4.0 technologies, Toshiba Memory leverages its technology leadership role and actively collaborates with PCI-SIG and other member companies to accelerate adoption of the new interface standard.

"We realized years ago that the future of flash storage would be built on the NVMe architecture," noted John Geldman, director, SSD Industry Standards for Toshiba Memory America, Inc. and a member of the NVM Express Board of Directors. "This new and faster PCIe standard will maximize performance capability - unlocking systems' full potential."

UL Benchmarks via its 3DMark product have announced that they'll be introducing a new, comprehensive test that aims to test PCIe bandwidth across generations. Citing the introduction of PCIe 4.0 to the masses - soon available in the consumer market via AMD's Ryzen 3000 series release - UL wants users to be able to know what a difference this makes towards allowing for more complex games and scenarios that aren't data-constrained by PCIe 3.0.

The 3D Mark PCIe Performance Test will be made available this summer for free for 3DMark Advanced Edition and for 3DMark Professional Edition customers with a valid annual license.

MSI's CEO Charles Chiang, quoted by Tom's Hardware at COMPUTEX 2019, laid out what we were already seeing with motherboard designs from all vendors of AMD's X570-based motherboards: pricing is likely increasing across the board, and AMD's market positioning won't be of the alternative, lower-value brand.

As quoted, Chiang said that ""Lots of people ask me, what do you think about today's AMD? I say today's AMD is completely different company compared to two, three, five years ago. They have nice technology and they are there to put the higher spec with the reasonable pricing. But right now they say, "Hey Charles, let's push to marketing to the higher [end]. So let's sell higher-pricing motherboards, higher-spec motherboards, and let's see what will happen in the market. So I don't think that AMD is the company that wants to sell low cost here, low cost there." Which does make sense: AMD isn't in the position of the underdog anymore -at least technology and product-portfolio wise when it comes to consumer CPUs. With better products, comes a desire for higher margins, and a change in direction for a company that was basically forced to almost cut itself out of the market in terms of profits with its previous, non-competitive CPU designs.

With AMD chipset based motherboards like X570 and next-generation Ryzen 3000 series CPUs delivering the 4.0 version of the PCIe protocol for consumers, products based on the faster protocol are bound to take advantage of its improvements - especially in terms of better bandwidth.

At their Computex booth, Gigabyte showed off some pretty impressive results of their PCIe 4.0 based SSD card. The so-called "Auros AIC Gen4 SSD" is a performance monster. It is able to pack up to four PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs that can go up to 2 TB of density each, for a maximum 8 TB total storage. Put them in RAID 0 configuration, though, and you will get some amazing performance numbers. Gigabyte demonstrated speeds exceeding 15 GB/s in sequential reads and writes, providing much more bandwidth than what has ever seen before ina consumer-geared product. The SSD comes with an aluminum shroud with pre-applied thermal pads to facilitate heat dissipation. Additionally, there is a blower fan attached to the card to keep a constant flow of fresh air, which seems like a must if you're packing four M.2 drives inside a tiny aluminum case.

CORSAIR , a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today unveiled the new CORSAIR Force Series MP600 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD, one of the world's first PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs compatible with the new AMD X570 chipset, also revealed today. Unleashed by the PCIe 4.0 ready AMD X570 chipset, the MP600 reaches new heights of enthusiast single-drive storage performance, delivering up to 4950MB/sec sequential read - ten times the performance of many SATA SSDs, and fifty times faster than some hard disk drives.

The MP600's phenomenal performance stems from the hugely increased bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 (PCI-Express Generation 4), a feature that will be made available to customers for the first time as part of the AMD X570 chipset and 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors. Easily fitting into a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, the MP600's NVMe interface and high-density 3D TLC NAND combine with a Phison PS5016-E16 controller to enable a new level of single-drive SSD performance. Boasting up to 4,950MB/s sequential read and 4,250MB/s sequential write speeds, the MP600 is ready to become the storage center of your new 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor and AMD X570 chipset-based system.

Who would have thought that Gigabyte - who don't manufacture controllers, nor memory - would be the first company to tease a PCIe 4.0-based M.2 SSD. In a blog post on its website that serves as a warm-up for the upcoming Computex, the company says that they'll be announcing the world's first PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD - with speeds up to 5000 MB/s at "low temperatures" - I guess that means that thermal throttling will become much more common with these new SSDs.

Any other details are currently unknown; however (and we're just speculating here), we know that Phison was preparing a PCIe 4.0 NVMe controller in the form of the E16. At the time (back in January of 2019), Phison paired their E16 controller with Micron's 96-layer TLC flash, but improvements in controller development as well as changes in the flash memory used could have brought up their - then - performance figures of expected 4.8/4.4 GB/s of read/write throughput on Toshiba's BiCS 4 flash. We'll just have to wait for Computex and see, but oh my - new PCIe 4.0 SSDs, new up-to 16-core CPUs on the 7 nm process, new 7 nm GPUs... Isn't this a great time to be a PC enthusiast? Read after the break for the rest of Gigabyte's Computex tease.

As we gear up for launch of AMD-s Ryzen 3000 series, details are bound to come up with increasing frequency. One of the latest, regarding AMD's in-house developed X570 chipset, which brings a renewed feature set to the AM4 platform, pertains to its PCIe lanes. AMD has included a grand total of 40 PCIe 4.0 lanes on the chipset, which will be distributed between PCIe uplink, USB 3.1 Gen2, USB 2.0 and SATA, as the spec sheet below (which may not be real) indicates. That's a whole load of bandwidth for the PC platform, not counting those PCIe lanes that are to be provided by the Ryzen CPUs.

It seems AMD will be using PCIe support level as a differentiator factor for its chipsets. The X570 is reported to be the only chipset to feature PCIe 4.0 support, while all other chipsets below it (B550 and so on) will only support PCIe 3.0. These lower-end chipsets should be manufactured by ASMedia.

Today, Intel announced the Intel SSD DC P4510 Series for data center applications. The P4510 Series uses 64-layer TLC Intel 3D NAND to enable end users to do more per server, support broader workloads and deliver space-efficient capacity. The P4510 Series enables up to four times more terabytes per server and delivers up to 10 times better random read latency at 99.99 percent quality of service than previous generations. The drive can also deliver up to double the input-output operations per second (IOPS) per terabyte. The 1 and 2TB capacities have been shipping to cloud service providers (CSPs) in high volume since August 2017, and the 4 and 8TB capacities are now available to CSPs and channel customers. All capacities are in the 2.5-inch 15 mm U.2 form factor and utilize a PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 connection.

To accelerate performance and simplify management of the P4510 Series PCIe SSDs and other PCIe SSDs, Intel is also delivering two new technologies that work together to replace legacy storage hardware. Intel Xeon Scalable processors include Intel Volume Management Device (VMD), enabling robust management such as surprise insertion/removal and LED management of PCIe SSDs directly connected to the CPU. Building on this functionality, Intel Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC) uses Intel VMD to provide RAID to PCIe SSDs. By replacing RAID cards with Intel VROC, customers are able to enjoy up to twice the IOPs performance and up to a 70 percent cost savings with PCIe SSDs directly attached to the CPU, improving customer's return on their investments in SSD-based storage.