Super Talent introduced the Nova line of SSDs in the 9.5 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, which take advantage of the PCI-Express bus, over the SFF8639 connector, which either wires out as U.2 or SATA-Express. It provides the drive with 32 Gb/s of bandwidth on machines with PCI-Express gen 3.0, which the drive pays forward with sequential read speeds of up to 3,000 MB/s, and sequential write speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s. The drive comes in capacities ranging between 120 GB to 1920 GB.

Plextor unveiled the EP2 line of SSDs that take advantage of 32 Gb/s PCIe, and come in two form-factors, M.2-22110 and U.2 2.5-inch. Both drives combine a Marvell-made processor with up to 1 GB of DDR3 DRAM caches, and Toshiba-made 15 nm MLC NAND flash. Both drives support the ATA protocol. The M.2-22110 drive comes in 960 GB capacity, and offers sequential transfer rates of up to 2,200 MB/s reads, with up to 800 MB/s writes, up to 270,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 150,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The company didn't put out performance numbers for the U.2 variant. We did manage to get some up-close pics of its PCB, though, revealing a rich array of capacitors that could amount to power-outage protection.

GALAX is preparing an onslaught for the enthusiast consumer SSD space, with the new Hall of Fame (HOF) NVMe Series. Spanning three key enthusiast form-factors, namely 2.5-inch with 32 Gb/s U.2 interface; 32 Gb/s M.2, and PCI-Express 3.0 x4 add-on card; the lineup sees the company use a very powerful custom controller to churn up sequential transfer rates of 2.5 TB/s. To begin with, the 2.5-inch with U.2 form-factor drive comes in 512 GB and 1 TB sizes, offering speeds of up to 2500 MB/s reads, with 1200 MB/s writes, 300,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and 250,000 IOPS 4K random writes.

The M.2 lineup comes in two module lengths - the more common M.2-2280, and the longer M.2-22110. The M.2-2280 drive comes in capacities of up to 512 GB, and offers slightly higher write-performance of up to 1350 MB/s, while the M.2-22110 drive comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, offering the same transfer rates as the U.2 drives. Then there's the PCIe add-on card form-factor drive for those without either M.2 or U.2, which comes in sizes of up to 1 TB, and has the same performance as the U.2 drives. There's also a 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s drive in this series, but its specs don't hold our attention for too long.

MSI announced its second Gaming Titanium socket LGA1151 motherboard after the Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium, the Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium. This board features a slightly lighter feature-set than its XPower sibling. It retains the silvery white color-scheme of the PCB, with silver/chrome heatsinks and heatspreaders; and even features a white back-plate on its reverse side. The rather minimalist-looking board features a 11-phase CPU VRM; and features reinforcement braces along its four DDR4 DIMM slots, and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x4 or x8/x8/x4). Other expansion slots include three PCIe 3.0 x1.

Storage connectivity includes two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, and six SATA 6 Gb/s. Among its modern connectivity options are two USB 3.1 ports (one each of type-A and type-C), seven USB 3.0 (including one internal type-C port), AudioBoost 3 onboard 8-channel audio, and one gigabit Ethernet connection (driven by an Intel controller). The company didn't reveal pricing or availability.

MSI is proud to announce the latest X99 Performance GAMING motherboard, the X99A GAMING PRO CARBON, world's first motherboard offering front USB 3.1 Type-C. This new motherboard has been built from the ground up and has a completely new design for its heavy plated heatsinks and covers, based on the latest CARBON look & feel. Besides this totally new design, the X99A GAMING PRO CARBON motherboard also comes packed with several new and unique MSI features such as new Mystic Light with smartphone control over WIFI including a Mystic Light extension RGB cable and pin header.

Onboard Turbo U.2 is present to support the latest and greatest SSDs available in the market supporting NVMe. DDR4 Boost is accompanied by DDR4 Steel Armor to ensure the best memory performance. The X99A GAMING PRO CARBON is the first X99 model featuring Game Boost with 8 gears up to 5 GHz of one-second-overlocking! Last but not least, this model has been designed and optimized for next-generation Intel "Broadwell-E(P)" processors. So whether looking for extreme performance or endless customization, the new X99A GAMING PRO CARBON is sure to deliver.

At its PAX East booth, GIGABYTE showed off three of its upcoming socket LGA2011v3 motherboards, which it plans to launch alongside Intel's Core i7 "Broadwell-E" processors. The three include the X99-Designare EX, the X99 Phoenix SLI G1, and the X99 Ultra Gaming (pictured in that order). The running theme on these boards, apart from their design-language that's similar to GIGABYTE's Z170-series motherboards, is 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, even U.2 slots in some cases, reinforced PCIe - and in some cases even memory - slots, and USB 3.1, besides out of the box support for the latest CPUs.

The X99-Designare EX features five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, from which three can function at x16 speed and two U.2 ports. GIGABYTE is probably betting on NVMe SSDs with U.2 connectors heavily. The X99 Phoenix SLI G1 appears to be a slightly more toned down board in terms of features. It features just four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, wireless networking, and just one U.2 connector. Unlike the Designare, which is slotted in the company's mainline Ultra Durable lineup, this board is the company's new G1 Gaming offering for this platform. Then there's the X99 Ultra Gaming. This board is based on the same PCB as the X99 Phoenix SLI G1, lacks wireless networking, but features reinforced memory slots. The three boards could launch alongside Intel's new CPUs.

Micron Technology, Inc. today announced a new portfolio of PCIe solid state drives (SSDs) that leverage the high-performance NVMe protocol. The new Micron 9100 and 7100 PCIe SSDs provide data center customers with purpose-built storage products for implementing an agile, scale-out IT infrastructure. These new drives extend Micron's rich portfolio of SATA and SAS SSDs that enable customers to extend and improve their legacy data center infrastructure with proven flash products.

Customers are disaggregating storage from Storage Area Networks (SANs) and frame-based arrays, moving toward server-based storage as a solution because of today's changing computing landscape, which is largely driven by the influx of data being created, accessed and stored from the proliferation of mobile devices and cloud computing. Many of today's leading hyperscale companies, who have taken advantage of server-based storage, have deployed Micron memory and storage in their data centers, giving them consistent, accelerated access to the world's data wherever they are, whenever they want and from any device.

Addonics Technologies today announced a family of adapters for NVMe 2.5" U.2 SSDs, which ensure full READ/WRITE speed by directly connecting the SSD to a 4-lane PCIe 3.0 slot. The family includes NVMe 2.5" U.2 SSD PCIe adapter; SFF-8643 PCIe 4X adapter, and M2 SFF-8643 converter. The NVMe 2.5" U.2 SSD PCIe adapter is a PCIe 4X add-on-card with a 68-pin SFF-8639 female connector on board to directly connect a NVMe 2.5" U.2 SSD to a PCIe 4-lane slot. No cables are needed. It is a simple solution for installing the U.2 SSD into desktop or server equipment.

The SFF-8643 PCIe 4X adapter is designed for connecting the high performance 2.5" NVMe U.2 (SFF-8639) SSD to a PCIe 4-lane slot in a system via a SFF-8643 cable, which allows installation of U.2 SSDs into various types of drive bays. The adapter is a flexible solution for installing NVMe U.2 SSDs into standard height or low profile systems. The M2 SFF-8643 converter is a small adapter that is designed to install into a M2 PCIe SSD socket and turn it into a SFF-8643 connector. This converter enables the NVMe 2.5" U.2 SSD to be attached to the system PCI BUS via a M2 PCIe SSD socket using the SFF-8639 to SFF-8643 cable.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces the immediate availability of dual-port functionality on OCZ's award-winning Z-Drive 6000 NVM Express (NVMe) Solid State Drive (SSD) series. The Z-Drive 6000's addition of dual port connection enables two host systems to concurrently access data from the same storage device or provides a redundant access path to the drive, providing SAS-like features such as High Availability (HA) that storage architects have come to rely on.

Now dual-ported, the Z-Drive 6000 series represents a complete solid-state storage solution that supports the real-time I/O needs of business-critical enterprise applications and virtual infrastructures which require high bandwidth and low latency performance, but also need redundancy. The Z-Drive 6000's dual port capabilities enable redundant data access that eliminates a single point of failure and when two hosts are using the same drive, maintains Quality of Service (QoS) in an event when one data path is compromised. In addition to the dual port upgrade, the Z-Drive 6000 series now includes feature enhancements such as multiple namespaces, non-binary sector sizes, and self-encrypting drive (SED) with Crypto Erase.

Lite-On Storage Group, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of solid-state drives (SSDs) will be showcasing their latest enterprise and client storage solutions at its Aria suite this year for CES 2016. Lite-On announced its EP2 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD at the Flash Memory Summit (FMS) 2015. At CES 2016, they are releasing the new addition EP2 PCIe Gen 3 x 4, NVMe 2.5" SSD with U.2 form factor.

The EP2 with the U.2 connector is hot swappable, providing great flexibility to IT Managers to easily change drives without shutting down the server. By combining the PCIe form factor with NVMe protocol, the EP2 U.2 series increase server application performance, lowers latency and delivers fast and predictable data access in a datacenter environment. It delivers superior speed with 4KB random read performance of up to 290,000 IOPS, and 4KB write performance of up to 26,000 IOPS. The EP2 U.2 also features end-to-end data protection, guarding against corruption and errors, and Power Loss Protection, against sudden power loss. The EP2 U.2 is available up to 2TB capacity.

Ever wondered why nobody made a SATA-Express SSD? We guess it's probably because of its IDE-sized connector. The SSD industry is turning its attention to other connector standards, such as M.2 and the newer U.2 (formerly known as SFF-8639). The U.2 is essentially a cabled M.2 connector, designed for drives in more common form-factors, such as 2.5-inch. The connector itself is more narrow, although it has the same pin-count as M.2, and the same bandwidth (up to 32 Gb/s with current PCI-Express standard).

ASUS debuted the connector on its flagship Maximus VIII Extreme motherboard, but MSI doesn't plan to be left behind. MSI released a new accessory that converts M.2 slots into a U.2 port. The MSI Turbo U.2 Host Card has wiring to support 32 Gb/s physical layer. The card could be included in MSI's upcoming high-end motherboards, and looking at the way it's branded and packaged, it could even be sold separately. One of the first U.2 drives is Intel SSD 750 in its 2.5-inch avatar.