Solidigm—the company that Intel sold its SSD business to—held a tech day last week where the company shared some details about its future roadmaps. The company appears to be focusing on 3D QLC NAND and its 192-layer product promises both larger drives, but also enhanced endurance for QLC NAND. For example, Solidigm's 30.72 TB SSD is promising a PBW of around 32 PB (Petabyte) endurance. This is using what the company calls QLC Essential Endurance NAND.

However, its QLC Value Endurance NAND is what will enable the 61.44 TB drive, which is said to offer around 65 PB write endurance, but it should be noted that this is at 16 KB aligned data or during other types of light data writes. Neither type of NAND is destined for consumer applications as of now, as Solidigm is only targeting E1, E3 and U.2 form factors. Regardless, this appears to be a huge step forward for 3D QLC NAND and Solidigm is hoping that its upcoming drives will be able to replace mechanical drives in the enterprise market space. On top of this, Solidigm also claims to offer better throughput and latency compared to its competitors, but we're still looking at SATA type level SSD performance for the IOPS. The first drives with the new 192-layer 3D QLC NAND are expected to be available sometime early next year.

Intel today launched its 12th Gen Core Processors with vPro. Released across the company's mobile and desktop product lines, these processors are targeted at pre-built commercial desktops and commercial notebooks that companies typically issue their employees, which come with a host of security and remote-management features suitable to a large corporate environment. With this generation, Intel is bringing vPro to even more market segments, including ultraportables designed under the Intel Evo banner; a new breed of enterprise-grade Chromebooks for businesses built entirely on the Chrome OS platform and cloud-based apps; and for the first time, an SMB version of vPro called vPro Essentials, which will make it to entry-level Core i5 processors with vPro.

Security, Productivity, and Future-readiness form the three areas in which Intel innovated for 12th Gen Core processors with vPro. The company added new capabilities for Threat Detection Technology, which can detect ransomware and supply-chain attacks, and can work with various endpoint security software. Intel Hardware Shield technology prevents attacks from "below" the software (below ring-0, or at the firmware, microcode, or hardware levels). This is achieved through hardware-accelerated virtualization and encryption of the entire software environment. Hardware-based protections extend to vPro Enterprise for Chrome.

OWC a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company and one of the world's most respected providers of hard drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions and performance upgrade kits, today announced the latest edition of its legendary Mercury Elite Pro external storage system for Mac, PC, Linux machines, Smart TVs, and PS4 and Xbox consoles. The 3.5-inch USB 3.2 5 Gb/s hard drive system is a modern day workhorse, delivering real-world performance up to 283 MB/s and capacities up to 16 TB to keep pace with the demands of everything from video editing projects, critical business data, and irreplaceable personal content to expanding PS4/Xbox One game storage and enjoying music/video content via a Smart TV.

The Essential External Storage Solution for Everyone
The Mercury Elite Pro kicked off OWC's rich, storied history of storage solution innovations nearly 20 years ago, and it has successfully stood the test of time by continuing to offer an incomparable blend of performance, quality, and value in a single HDD storage solution.

Razer has expanded to the worldwide market an entry-level rodent that it has previously only released in China, under the product name "Jugan". The new and renamed Razer Jugan is now the Razer Abyssus Essential, and is a pretty standard mouse: ambidextrous in design, with a 7,200 DPI optical sensor, and three programmable Razer Hyperesponse buttons that are rated for 10 million clicks. It's also compatible with the Razer Synapse 3 software. This software not only allows users to program the Razer Hyperesponse buttons, but also to control the Razer Chroma RGB elements (with support for up to 16.8 million colors) on the mouse. The Razer Abyssus will be available starting from $50/€49.99.

SilverStone has announced new models for its Essential series of PSUs, which aim to bring quality to a lower pricing level than the more premium offerings, and allow SilverStone to cater to the high-volume market at the same time. These PSUs are Sirtec-made, and do cut some corners in order to address some aggressive pricing targets. Case in point: SilverStone rates these PSUs for 40ºC operation, a full 10ºC lower than the ATX specification defines, and includes only a few protections, namely Over Power, Over Voltage, and Short Circuit. The lacking OTP (Over Temperature Protection) would seem to be the best feature for such a model with a lower-rated operating temperature, but alas, this is what SilverStone offers.

The ET-550B, ET-650B are 80 Plus Bronze certified, and their +12V rails can deliver 504 and 600 W respectively. Their combined +3.3, +5V rating stands at 110 W for the 550B, and 120 W for the 650B. The cabling is fixed on both options, black-braided, and cooling is taken care of by tour average 120 mm Sleeve Bearing Fan. The PCIe connectors stand at 2x PCIe (1x 6+2 pin, 1x 6 pin) for the ET-550B, while the ET-650B doubles that amount to two of each. The dimensions stand at 150 mm (W) x 86 mm (H) x 140 mm (D). European pricing seems to be the sweet spot for these PSUs, with the 550B coming in at around 53,50€ and the 650B upping the ante to 60,60€ (prices excluding VAT, however.) In the US, I don't expect these to sell well if they keep their pricing, where the 650B currently retails for $90.