Back at CES 2019 we shared a story on Kingston's then upcoming A2000 series NVMe drives. The company's development strategy for these was to undercut SATA SSDs in pricing while delivering non SATA-bound speeds. The company planned to leverage component cost falls for NVMe controllers, pairing that with the reduced materials cost of NVMe drives (smaller than their SATA counterparts) so as to be able to achieve below-SATA price points. The choice of Toshiba's BiCS4 3D TLC NAND also aimed to keep costs down, whilst delivering performance that's "at least three times as high as SATA-bound drives".

The company is offering a limited 5-year warranty on their A2000 series, which in itself is a sign of the company's confidence in these products - despite their entry-level classification and overall development strategy. The A2000 series will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities, with speeds claimed of up to 2,200/2,000MB/s sequential read/writes; up to 250,000/220,000 IOPS in random 4K read/writes; and 600 TBW rating (all of these values are for the 1 TB solution, with TBW falling to 350 TBW for the 500 GB part and 150 TBW for the 250 GB drive. These drives make use of a PCIe 3.0 4x controller, which means savings weren't at the expense of 2x PCIe channels, as some solutions have done in the past in order to cut costs. Pricing is being quoted at $40 for the 250 GB part, $60 for the 500 GB one, and a mere $100 for the 1 TB part. The true democratization of NVMe SSDs has just caught some heavy favorable winds on its sails.

Maxsun may not be much of a household name in territories outside China, as the western market penetration isn't the most relevant within NVIDIA's partners. That said, the company does enjoy the status of NVIDIA AIB, so they're privy to details on next-gen products - especially when they are, allegedly, so close to a reveal and launch.

Maxsun showcased their take on NVIDIA's next generation (you can find the ending of that very word in the photo of the presentation slide) products with a 3D render of what could very well be their finalized next-gen graphics card's looks - and part of their premium, iCraft segment. The ubiquitous RGB is there, as always, pandering to the majority of users' lighting requirements. The graphics card presents a dual-slot, triple-fan solution, and there doesn't seem to be a DVI connector, nor an SLI termination, for that matter. The card also seems to have a single 8-pin power connector, and the GeForce branding is clear. Sadly, the render doesn't specify the model it pertains to - it would be great to finally have some closure on the 1100, 2000 series' debates.

Yesterday, a story surfaced on how Manli corporation had seemingly spilled the beans on NVIDIA's next-gen graphics cards lineup. A submission registration appeared online where the company was registering GTX 2070, GTX 2080, and GA104 and GA104-400 codenames for upcoming products - which obviously paved the way for speculation on those being the real, next-gen NVIDIA graphics solutions, in detriment of the on-and-off GTX 1100 series.

Today, Manli has sent out a media-wide email denying that the company had anything to do with the submission, and are actively investigating how, when, and why this happened. Still, the fact remains that the submission to the Eurasian Economic Union did happen. It remains to be seen whether this is a defensive, last-ditch effort to try and control media and PR damage to an impending announcement, or just an exceedingly clever ploy from a non Manli-affiliated party.

There's just no quieting the rumor mill. It's like we're walking through a field that's made entirely of small pieces of stone that we inadvertently kick - and under every stone, another tidbit, another speculation, another pointer - a veritable breadcrumb trail that's getting more and more convoluted. Even as we were getting sort of decided in regards to NVIDIA's next-generation hardware and its nomenclature and model number - 1100 series - we now have two distinct sources and reports popping one right after the other that point to a 2000 series - and that also suggests Ampere might be in the cards for the next-gen product after all.

AMD on its YouTube channel shared a video where their Technical Marketing Manager, Robert Hallock, explains some of the new, fine-tuned technologies behind the new Ryzen 2000 series processors. We've already found in our very own reviews that AMD has done a great job with extracting maximum performance from their chips, almost invalidating the need for fine-tuning overclock - at least, when it comes to the processors' frequency (remember that AMD's Zen always improves the most when it comes to tweaking the system RAM speeds and timings).

XFR2 and Precision Boost 2 are the sort of technologies that almost make the point of an unlocked processor moot for the average user, but here's to AMD for keeping that option open - there's always LN2. And even if there isn't, there's something to be gained from going from a small, anemic, airflow-restricted case to an actual monstrosity packed with water cooling systems. AMD has made sure of that. You can check the AMD video after the break.