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MSI Reveals its Latest B760 Motherboards

Intel introduced the Z790 platform to the market last year and impressed enthusiastic gamers. This year, we expect the introduction of the latest B760 platform. MSI's new B760 motherboards lineup will spring a surprise for mainstream users, attracting interest and sparking widespread discussion. Targeting the mainstream market, MSI B760 motherboards have unique designs and loaded specifications. Let's explore more about the B760 platform.

The B760 platform has lots of amazing features accompanied by MSI's MPG, MAG, and PRO Series. The mainstream users' choice - MAG Series includes black TOMAHAWK and white MORTAR motherboards. The MSI MAG Series motherboards adopted 12 Duet Rail Power System with 75 A DrMOS and 6 layer PCB with 2oz thickened copper, which provides stable currents delivered to the CPU. For expansion, the MSI MAG Series supports Lightning Gen 5 PCIe and owns up to 3 onboard M.2 Gen4 slots. To deal with the heat generated in high-loading operation, the MAG Series features premium thermal solutions including All Aluminium Design and Extended Heatsink. The M.2 slots are covered with M.2 Shield Frozr as well.

ADATA to Showcase 8 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD, External USB4 SSD and More at CES 2023

ADATA, the world's leading memory module brand and XPG, their performance and gaming arm, today announced that they will be attending the CES 2023, where they will showcase a number of new products with the theme "Make it Fusion, Make it Xtreme!" The feature product to be displayed will be the XPG FUSION 1600 W Titanium power supply developed in collaboration with Delta Electronics. Other impressive power supplies also equipped with the latest ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0, such as the XPG CYBERCORE II and CORE REACTOR II series will be shown as well.

ADATA will also present impressive offerings in other categories, such as the XPG PCIe Gen5 SSD which offers a patented heat dissipation design, up to 8 TB of storage space, and read/write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s. Additionally, ADATA will present other award-winning memory and storage products, as well as gaming focused products in system, chassis, special themed pc build and peripherals categories.

Enterprise SSD Revenue Slid to US$5.22 Billion for 3Q22 and Will Fall by Another 20% for 4Q22

TrendForce reports that the recent easing of tight supply for components has led to rising shipments for enterprise servers. Furthermore, ODMs for the most part have been able to sustain the momentum of data center build-out with the demand from ByteDance and the tenders issued by Chinese telecom companies. Nevertheless, the performance of the enterprise SSD market on the whole has been impacted by falling NAND Flash prices. For 3Q22, the NAND Flash industry's enterprise SSD revenue dropped by 28.7% QoQ to US$5.22 billion. Furthermore, all enterprise SSD suppliers recorded a negative performance for the period as well.

Regarding individual enterprise SSD suppliers' revenue figures for 3Q22, Samsung posted around US$2.12 billion. Its market share also shrank to 40.6% from 44.5% in 2Q22. Samsung's performance was mainly dragged down by the decline in its NAND Flash ASP. In the aspect of product development, SSDs featuring 128L NAND Flash and PCIe 4.0 will remain Samsung's main offerings for enterprise storage during 2023.

Supermicro Unveils a Broad Portfolio of Performance Optimized and Energy Efficient Systems Incorporating 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, at the 2022 Super Computing Conference is unveiling the most extensive portfolio of servers and storage systems in the industry based on the upcoming 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor, formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids. Supermicro continues to use its Building Block Solutions approach to deliver state-of-the-art and secure systems for the most demanding AI, Cloud, and 5G Edge requirements. The systems support high-performance CPUs and DDR5 memory with up to 2X the performance and capacities up to 512 GB DIMMs and PCIe 5.0, which doubles I/O bandwidth. Intel Xeon CPU Max Series CPUs (formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids HBM High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)) is also available on a range of Supermicro X13 systems. In addition, support for high ambient temperature environments at up to 40° C (104° F), with servers designed for air and liquid cooling for optimal efficiency, are rack-scale optimized with open industry standard designs and improved security and manageability.

"Supermicro is once again at the forefront of delivering the broadest portfolio of systems based on the latest technology from Intel," stated Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "Our Total IT Solutions strategy enables us to deliver a complete solution to our customers, which includes hardware, software, rack-scale testing, and liquid cooling. Our innovative platform design and architecture bring the best from the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, delivering maximum performance, configurability, and power savings to tackle the growing demand for performance and energy efficiency. The systems are rack-scale optimized with Supermicro's significant growth of rack-scale manufacturing of up to 3X rack capacity."

AMD 4th Generation EPYC "Genoa" Processors Benchmarked

Yesterday, AMD announced its latest addition to the data center family of processors called EPYC Genoa. Named the 4th generation EPYC processors, they feature a Zen 4 design and bring additional I/O connectivity like PCIe 5.0, DDR5, and CXL support. To disrupt the cloud, enterprise, and HPC offerings, AMD decided to manufacture SKUs with up to 96 cores and 192 threads, an increase from the previous generation's 64C/128T designs. Today, we are learning more about the performance and power aspects of the 4th generation AMD EPYC Genoa 9654, 9554, and 9374F SKUs from 3rd party sources, and not the official AMD presentation. Tom's Hardware published a heap of benchmarks consisting of rendering, compilation, encoding, parallel computing, molecular dynamics, and much more.

In the comparison tests, we have AMD EPYC Milan 7763, 75F3, and Intel Xeon Platinum 8380, a current top-end Intel offering until Sapphire Rapids arrives. Comparing 3rd-gen EPYC 64C/128T SKUs with 4th-gen 64C/128T EPYC SKUs, the new generation brings about a 30% increase in compression and parallel compute benchmarks performance. When scaling to the 96C/192T SKU, the gap is widened, and AMD has a clear performance leader in the server marketplace. For more details about the benchmark results, go here to explore. As far as comparison to Intel offerings, AMD leads the pack as it has a more performant single and multi-threaded design. Of course, beating the Sapphire Rapids to market is a significant win for team red, so we are still waiting to see how the 4th generation Xeon stacks up against Genoa.

TrendForce: Annual Growth of Server Shipments Forecast to Ebb to 3.7% in 2023, While DRAM Growth Slows

According to the latest TrendForce research, pandemic-induced materials shortages abated in the second half of this year and the supply and delivery of short-term materials has recovered significantly. However, assuming materials supply is secure and demand can be met, the annual growth rate of server shipments in 2023 is estimated to be only 3.7%, which is lower than 5.1% in 2022.

TrendForce indicates that this growth slowdown is due to three factors. First, once material mismatch issues had eased, buyers began adjusting previously placed purchase order overruns. Thus, ODM orders also decreased but this will not affect the 2022 shipment volume of whole servers for the time being. Second, due to the impact of rising inflation and weakness in the overall economy, corporate capital investment may trend more conservative and IT-related investment will emphasize flexibility, such as the replacement of certain server terminals with cloud services. Third, geopolitical changes will drive the continuing emergence of demand for small-scale data centers and previous construction of hyperscale data centers will slow. The recent ban on military/HPC servers issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on October 7 has a very low market share in terms of its application category, so the impact on the overall server market is limited at present. However, if the scope of the ban is expanded further in the future, it will herald a more significant slowdown risk for China's server shipment momentum in 2023.

Gigabyte B650 Series Motherboards Primed to Power Mainstream AMD Gaming Builds

With the arrival of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors based on the new Zen 4 architecture, the world's leading computer brand, GIGABYTE today announces its B650E and B650 motherboards ready to power these next-gen CPUs. Sporting the new AM5 socket, the AORUS B650E and B650 gaming motherboards are equipped with a direct digital power design and a full-covered cooling module to keep the circuitry cool. These AORUS motherboards come with PCIe 5.0 connectivity and support for DDR5 memory, which are AMD EXPO and Intel XMP capable of up to DDR5-6600 and beyond. The AORUS gaming motherboards are also equipped with the DIY-friendly PCIe and M.2 device fast installation and removal design, making future upgrades quick and easy.

Power delivery and thermal design have always been the top factors when it comes to CPU performance. To meet the needs of gamers looking for powerful yet stable system performance, the AORUS B650E and B650 gaming motherboards are designed with a maximum 16+2+2-phase twin digital power, covered by a massive heatsink that has four times more surface than the previous generation to ensure the smoothest power delivery even under loads. Other thermal designs, such as 8 mm mega-heatpipes and dedicated heatsinks on key components, greatly improves the system's stability and overall performance. With the friendly design of PCIe and M.2 EZ-Latch features on the AORUS B650 gaming motherboards, GIGABYTE makes components swapping a whole lot easier.

News ASRock Launches B650E/B650 Motherboard Series with Evolutionary Design.

Leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, is proud to announce its AMD B650E/B650 motherboard series. These motherboards are targeted at the mainstream AM5 segment featuring various exciting new products such as our flagship B650E Taichi, the high-end B650E Steel Legend Wi-Fi for high end market, B650E PG Riptide Wi-Fi and B650 PRO RS for mainstream users, and B650 PG Lightning a new SKU joining the Phantom Gaming family targeted the entry level market. ASRock also offers the new B650E PG-ITX WiFi for small form factor enthusiasts.

ASRock went all-out on its VRM design by creating a 24+2+1 phase Smart Power Stage (SPS) Dr.MOS on the B650E Taichi series, providing users with the most powerful AM5 platform it can offer ready to unlock maximum CPU performance. The flagship ASRock B650E Taichi motherboards are equipped with many exciting features and technologies such as PCIe 5.0 technology for graphics cards and M.2 SSDs, an incredible IO that includes the latest USB4 offering a fast and simple level of connection for work or home.

ASRock Z790 Motherboard Series Launches Ready for 13th Generation Intel Core Processors

Leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces its new series of Intel Z790 motherboards supporting the latest 13th Generation Intel Core Processors. ASRock's Z790 series includes premium Z790 Taichi, including a new Special Edition Z790 Taichi Carrara, in addition to Z790 Steel Legend WiFi targeting high-end users, Z790 PRO RS, Z790 PG Lightning and Z790 PG Riptide designed for mainstream users, and also the Z790 PG-ITX/TB4, a powerful mini ITX motherboard with Thunderbolt 4 for small form factor lovers.

KIOXIA Highlights Expanded Performance Capabilities of PCIe 5.0 SSDs at Intel Innovation

KIOXIA America, Inc. is at Intel Innovation this week to demonstrate its CM7 Series NVMe SSDs that deliver next-generation levels of performance to enterprise and data center workloads. The KIOXIA CM7 family is designed with PCIe 5.0 technology in Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S and 2.51-inch form factors. These drives double performance from the prior generation and offer an expanded set of form factor options, larger capacities, and advanced features.

Intel Innovation is a technology showcase event that spotlights the tools, training and community created to empower developers to create what's next. CM7 demos will be conducted in the KIOXIA kiosk located in Intel Innovation's PCIe 5.0 and CXL Ecosystems Zone on the show floor of San Jose's McEnery Convention Center. KIOXIA will present a video showing its PCIe 5.0 drives demonstrating high performance, low latency and high bandwidth, in a 12th Gen Intel Core processor-based workstation. CM7 performance of up to 14 gigabytes per second sequential read throughput, utilizing the full bandwidth of PCIe 5.0 x4 speed, will be shown.

ASUS Launches ROG Crosshair and ROG Strix Motherboards Based on AMD X670E and X670

Gamers everywhere trust AMD Ryzen CPUs for their battlestations. Packed to the brim with cores, these chips excel at tasks that call for an extra dose of parallel computing power, like heavy multitasking, livestreaming game sessions on Twitch—and, of course, powering through the latest games at high frame rates. Now, AMD has fired off its fourth salvo of AMD Ryzen CPUs, and we've readied the X670E and X670 motherboards you'll need to harness the full potential of these new chips.

Our X670E and X670 motherboard lineup includes a wide range of tempting choices for gamers everywhere. The ROG Crosshair series returns to offer uncompromising performance and style for those who dare to build a gaming PC like none other. ROG Strix boards deliver gaming prowess in a wide range of designs. We've also added X670E and X670 motherboards to our TUF Gaming, ProArt, and Prime motherboard families? Ready to find the perfect partner for your new AMD Ryzen CPU? In this guide, we'll walk you through the core features of the platform and introduce you to our ROG X670E and X670 motherboards. Whether you're an experienced PC enthusiast or a newcomer planning out your first build, we'll help you find the best Ryzen motherboard for your needs and budget.

Seasonic Announces the Vertex ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 Ready PSU Line

Sea Sonic Electronics., Co., Ltd. is proud to announce the introduction of the new VERTEX Series of power supplies specifically designed and built to power new PC components requiring the new ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 standards.

On the heel of NVIDIA's recent announcement about the release of the new RTX 4090 VGA cards, we entered a new era, where the power supply, more than ever, has an important role to play. Issues such as VGA excursion power and cable integrity (now with high-grade 12VHPWR connectors) should be resolved.

AMD B650E "Extreme" Chipset Confirmed, Brings PCIe 5.0 for GPU and SSD

AMD's upcoming launch of Ryzen 7000 series processors will bring an entirely new AM5 platform that will enable newer technologies and protocols. We have DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connection with everything at level five. However, the upcoming chipsets AMD has designed to work alongside the new processors will be available in several variants. There will be regular X670 and B650 versions that support either a PCIe 5.0 GPU or a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVIMe SSD. Today, we got a confirmation that not only the big X670 chipset has an "E" or "Extreme" version, but its smaller brother B650 as well. With X670E and B650E, users get both PCIe 5.0 connectivity for their GPU and M.2 NVIMe SSD. For more information, we have to wait for AMD's official launch information later today.

Server Shipment Growth and Spiking Pricing Push Total 2Q22 Enterprise SSD Revenue Growth to 31% QoQ, Says TrendForce

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

Corsair Teases the Performance of its Upcoming MP700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD

Corsair decided it was time to start teasing its upcoming MP700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, although the company didn't bother providing any images of the drive itself, or any specifications in the teaser. However, Corsair did provide some sequential performance figures, which end up being impressive and disappointing at the same time. The MP700 is said to offer sequential read speeds of up to 10 GB/s or 10,000 MB/s if you prefer and sequential write speeds of 9.5 GB/s. These are obviously very fast speeds, but quite far from what the PCIe 5.0 can deliver and the performance figures are only a bit faster than the best PCIe 4.0 drives. It's likely that we'll see better performance from second generation controllers, just as we did with PCIe 4.0 SSDs, as this gives both the SSD controller makers and the SSD makers a chance to refresh their products a year or two down the line.

Samsung 990 PRO PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD Confirmed By PCI-SIG

The upcoming Samsung 990 PRO flagship consumer SSD has recently been listed as PCIe 5.0 compliant by PCI-SIG with the entry also confirming the drive's name and M.2 interface. The upgrade to PCIe 5.0 from 4.0 doubles the available bandwidth for the card with Samsung's existing enterprise PCIe 5.0 drives reaching speeds of 13,000 MB/s significantly above the 7000 MB/s of the best PCIe 4.0 drives. The latest Intel Alder Lake systems can support PCIe 5.0 drives on select motherboards with AMD support set to arrive with the launch of Ryzen 7000 and X670/B650 motherboards. Samsung is expected to release at least 1 TB and 2 TB variants of the drive however other details such as the exact length of the card and the controller used are currently unknown.

The MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 is the World's First ATX 3.0 Compliant PSU with 600 W PCIe Connector

MSI welcomes the MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 power supply unit, the world's first power supply unit to be fully ready for ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0. With graphics cards becoming all the more important, users must know what components to buy for their system if they are looking to upgrade. To understand why the MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 is the ultimate future-proof power supply unit, let's begin with understanding ATX 3.0.

ATX 3.0 is Intel's new specification standard for existing PSUs. In short, ATX 3.0's main purpose is to help provide more reliability, and better power efficiency and provide graphics cards up to 600 watts of power. ATX 3.0 is created in response to graphics cards' increase in performance and the ever-increasing need for power. ATX 3.0 puts heavy emphasis on power excursions to make sure high-performance graphics cards can be sustained and your system can remain stable. Thanks to ATX 3.0 there is now an increase in efficiency while idling and a new power connector is added to help achieve all the above. ATX 3.0 added a new PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR connector that features 12+4 pins instead of the traditional 6 or 8. With the new PCIe 5.0 connector, the power supply and cable can supply up to 600 watts of power.

AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processor Runs Phison PCIe 5.0 SSD with Micron 232-Layer NAND Flash

During this year's Flash Memory Summit, Phison, a company known for SSD controllers and now flash drives, demonstrated a system running AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors based on Zen 4 architecture. What is interesting about the shown specification is that the system was running an engineering sample of an upcoming Zen 4-based CPU with the latest storage technologies at impressive speeds. Using a Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller, also called E26, the PCIe 5.0 SSD is powered by Micron's latest 232-layer TLC NAND flash. This new NAND technology will also bring greater densities to the market by promising higher endurance, higher read/write speeds, and better efficiency.

With AMD's upcoming AM5 platform, support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs is a welcome addition. And we today have some preliminary tests that show just how fast these SSDs can run. In CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it achieved over 10 GB/s in both read and write. We know that the E26 controller is capable of 12 GB/s speeds, so more fine-tuning is needed. Being an early sample, we expect final specifications to be better. The system is powered by an engineering sample of a six-core, twelve-threaded Zen 4 CPU running at unknown clocks, codenamed 100-000000593-20_Y. We can expect to see more of this technology once AMD's AM5 platform lands and Phison-powered SSDs hit the shelves in September.

Cadence Achieves PCIe 5.0 Specification Compliance for PHY and Controller IP in TSMC Advanced Technologies

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CDNS) today announced that its PHY and Controller IP for the PCI Express (PCIe ) 5.0 specification in the TSMC N7, N6 and N5 process technologies have passed certification tests from PCI-SIG at the industry's first event for PCIe 5.0 specification compliance held in April. The Cadence solutions were tested to their full potential and complied with the full speed of 32GT/s for PCIe 5.0 technology. The compliance program provides designers with testing procedures to assess that the PCIe 5.0 interfaces on their system-on-chip (SoC) designs will operate as expected.

The Cadence IP for PCIe 5.0 technology consists of a PHY, companion controller and Verification IP (VIP) targeted at SoC designs for very high-bandwidth hyperscale computing, networking and storage applications. With Cadence's PHY and Controller Subsystem for PCIe 5.0 architecture, customers can design extremely power-efficient SoCs while accelerating time to market.

Intel Core i9-13900 "Raptor Lake" Processor Gets a Preview

Intel is preparing to launch its 13th generation of desktop processors codenamed Raptor Lake. Succeeding Alder Lake, the 13th gen design will implement up to eight P-cores with 16 E-cores manufactured on Intel's improved 7+ technology node. Today, we got a performance preview from SiSoftware that has collected SiSoftware Sandra database scores of Intel Core i9-13900 Raptor Lake-S processor. They present an overview of a few benchmarks. Firstly, the SoC features 36 MB of unified L3 cache versus 30 MB in Alder Lake. With DDR5 memory running up to 5600 MT/s and PCIe 5.0, the SoC features the latest IO and memory standards. The big P-cores now lack AVX-512 and feature 2 MB of L2 cache per core. We see 4 MB of L2 cache for a cluster of small E-cores. An exciting addition to E-cores is the AVX/AVX2 support, which is a first for Atom cores.

Regarding testing, the author has collected a few tests that seemed appropriate to compare to the equivalent Alder Lake model. Starting with ALU/FPU tests that benchmark basic arithmetic tasks, Raptor Lake delivered 33% to 50% improvement over Alder Lake. The Raptor Lake design achieved this with 3.7 GHz P-Core and 2.76 GHz E-Core frequency. In vectorized and SIMD tests, the 13th gen design showed only 5% to 8% improvement over the previous generation. For more benchmarks and accurate results, we have to wait for TechPowerUp's test, which will be coming on the release day.

Rising Demand and Rush Order Pricing Drive 14.1% QoQ Enterprise SSD Revenue Growth in 1Q22, Says TrendForce

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

Biostar Shows Off X670E Valkyrie at Computex 2022

Biostar is seemingly trying to become more competitive in the consumer motherboard market and although the company has some catching up to do with the tier one motherboard brands, the company has put out some more interesting products in the past couple of years. Its VX670E Valkyrie motherboard seems to sit near the middle of the X670E models that have been announced so far, although it's a little bit hard to tell, as the company only provided partial specs. As this is an AMD X670E based board, the PCIe x16 slot is using PCIe 5.0, although it's multiplexed with the second x16 slot, which means if both slots are used, the bandwidth drops down to eight lanes per slot. The board layout doesn't suggest any PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, but as this is mandatory on X670E board, we have to presume that the M.2 slot right below the x16 PCIe slot, is the PCIe 5.0 one. The board has a further three M.2 slots, as well as what appears to be an empty M.2 E-keyed slot for a WiFi/Bluetooth module.

Other features listed by Biostar includes 2.5 Gbps Ethernet via a Realtek chip, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, six SATA 3 ports, one rear and one front header for USB Type-C Gen 3.2 2x2 (20 Gbps) ports, as well as Realtek based audio and a pair of ARGB headers. The board also has a debug LED and a few buttons and switches for resetting the CMOS, and powering the board on. Interestingly, Biostar also provided figures for the memory clock speed, as the company listed support for up to four sticks of DDR5 memory at 5600 MHz plus. AMD has already demoed higher memory clocks of 6000 and even 6400 MHz during its keynote, as supported by the footnotes that went alongside it, suggesting that this might just be a placeholder. Intel officially only supports 4800 MHz DDR5 memory, but speeds in excess of 6000 MHz doesn't appear to be an issue with the right motherboard and CPU combination. We'll have to wait and see what the official figures will be from AMD.

M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs Set to Increase to 25 mm in Width, Might Not Fit Older Motherboards

NVMe SSDs based on the M.2 form factor come in several different lengths today, ranging from 30 to 110 mm, although the 30 mm drives are rare and the 110 mm drives have so far been reserved for the server space. However, they've all had one thing in common, the 22 mm width, as otherwise there might be issues in terms of fitting the drives, especially in notebooks. However, it appears that the PCI-SIG snuck in a wider, 25 mm option for M.2 SDDs at the end of 2020, but seemingly forgot to mention it to anyone. The only reason we even noticed, was because Gigabyte listed its upcoming X670 and X670E motherboards as having support for 25110 SSD's, where you'd expect to see support for 2280 or 22110 drives.

An extra 3 mm in width might not sound like much, but many M.2 drives seem to be somewhat space constrained, mainly with regards to the passive components and the power regulation. It also seems like this is in preparation for PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives, where the host controller is expected to run hotter, even though it might not be as bad as initially expected. Regardless, it seems like motherboard makers are now making space for this slightly wider M.2 form factor, as well as implementing suitable cooling solutions to match. Whether we'll see drives using this slightly wider form factor or not, is still up in the air and one reason why the SSD manufacturers might choose not to go wider, is because new drives might not fit in older motherboards and laptops, if the clearance is too small.

ASUS Shows Off the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme

Although AMD didn't provide too many details during its Computex 2022 keynote speech about the upcoming AM5 platform, the company did announce that there will be at least three chipsets for the platform and showed pictures of some upcoming motherboards. ASUS has kindly filled in some more details about its upcoming ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, which will be one of its higher-end models. Sadly the pictures posted are kind of tiny and the company didn't provide a shot of the rear I/O. That said, ASUS did point out some of its new features that we can expect to find on the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme.

For starters, the board will have a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, although each slot is likely to only have eight lanes each, when both slots are in use, but ASUS doesn't mention any details here. The board has support for up to five M.2 NVMe SSDs, four of which support PCIe 5.0. Only two are onboard, with the other three being via ASUS' proprietary ROG PCIe 5.0 M.2 card and ROG GEN-Z.2 card. ASUS also promises USB4 support, as well as a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 header with Quick Charge 4+ as well as up to 60 W charging support, for cases with a front USB-C port. On top of the rear I/O is an AniMe Matrix LED display that can be user customised.

AMD Confirms Zen 4 Dragon Range, Phoenix APUs for 2023

AMD has confirmed its revamped APU strategy will be delivered throughout three different APU line-ups come 2023. While Raphael will take care of AMD's hopes in the desktop space, the company is readying a new, "Dragon Range" lineup of "pinnacle gaming"-oriented APUs, leveraging the company's upcoming Zen 4 architecture, DDR5, and PCIe 5. Dragon Range APUs will feature the "highest core, thread, and cache ever for a mobile gaming CPU" - although AMD stopped just short of confirming exactly what "highest" translates to. To aid in its extreme gaming aspirations, TDP for Dragon Range is set at 55 W - they thus "largely exist in the space where gaming laptops are plugged in the majority of the time," according to AMD director of technical marketing Robert Hallock.

Another APU family, Phoenix, will be aimed at thin and lights with a penchant for gaming. Phoenix too will leverage AMD's Zen 4 core, DDR5 memory subsystem, and PCIe 5 interfaces. Being aimed at thin and lights, Phoenix APUs are set for a 35 W - 45 W operating range. Interestingly, AMD didn't share any other details - more crucially, the graphics architecture that's to be employed in these high-performance APUs.
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