Intel is ready with pre-built NUC desktops based on its 8th generation "Coffee Lake" SoCs. The cases of these NUCs are mosty similar to those the company debuted its low-power "Gemini Lake" based NUCs with, this March. The NUC8i3BEH, NUC8i5BEH and NUC8i7BEH, differentiated by Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 chips, respectively; come in larger cases to cope with the 28-Watt TDP. In addition to a bigger heatsink, these three serve up a 2.5-inch drive bay with SATA 6 Gbps back-plane, in addition to an M.2-2280 slot that has both SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4 wiring. The slimmer NUC8i3BEK and NUC8i5BEK, differentiated by lower TDP (15 W) SoCs, lack 2.5-inch drive bays. You still get a full-featured M.2-2280 slot. Retailers hint at availability from the first week of August.

Sapphire introduced the FS-FP5V, a mini-ITX (147.3 mm x 139.7 mm) SFF motherboard designed for AIO desktops, digital signage boxes, and compact desktops. At the heart of this board is an AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 series FP5 SoC based on the 14 nm "Raven Ridge" silicon. Since this SoC also integrates a southbridge, the board is practically chipset-less. The Ryzen Embedded V1000 chip is configured with a 4-core/8-thread "Zen" CPU clocked at 2.00 GHz with 3.35 GHz boost, and 4 MB L3 cache. The iGPU is a Radeon Vega 11, which may look overkill, but is required to pull the four DisplayPort 1.4 outputs of this board (handy for digital-signage applications).

The Ryzen Embedded V1000 is wired to two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2933 memory. Storage connectivity includes an M.2-2280 slot with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 wiring, an M.2 E-key slot with x1 wiring for WLAN cards; and a SATA 6 Gbps port. Networking options include two 1 GbE interfaces. USB connectivity includes two USB 3.1 gen 1 ports at the rear-panel, and two USB 3.1 gen 1 ports (direct ports) at the front side of the board, one each of type-A and type-C. Stereo HD audio makes for the rest of it. The board draws power from either 2-pin DC (external) or 4-pin ATX.

GIGABYTE introduced the CMT4034 and CMT4032 M.2 PCIe riser cards, which convert a PCI-Express gen 3.0 slot to M.2-22110 slots with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 wiring. Your motherboard needs to support PCI-Express lane segmentation, as the cards have no switching logic of their own. Both cards are built in the half-height (low-profile) add-on card form-factor. The arrangement of the M.2 slots is where the two slightly differ. The CMT4034 has four M.2-22110 slots and takes in PCI-Express 3.0 x16, while the CMT4032 only has two M.2 slots, plugging into PCI-Express 3.0 x8.

While the CMT4032 features a single PCB with two M.2 slots on the obverse side of the PCB, the CMT4034 is designed with two PCBs such that a smaller PCB features the x16 host interface, while a larger second PCB is elevated from the main PCB, and has two M.2 slots on each of its side. The idea here is to provide clearance on the reverse side of the card, lest the M.2 drives installed there intrude into the space of the adjacent add-on card. Both cards include metal heatspreaders. You also get thermal sensors and link/activity LEDs for each individual slot. The company didn't reveal pricing.

BIOSTAR unveils its newest solid-state drive featuring 3D TLC NAND flash - the M500 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. The BIOSTAR M500 uses the compact M.2 2280 form factor that is compatible with latest-generation motherboards, laptops, and mini PCs. It supports the ultra-speed PCI-express Gen3x2 interface which offers builders greater compatibility. The BIOSTAR M500 SSD is NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) 1.2 compliant delivering high-performance speeds of up to 1700MB/s sequential read and 1100MB/s sequential write and random read/write IOPS of up to 200K/180K.

Smart Temperature Display
The BIOSTAR M500 Series SSD features visible smart LED indicators on its heatsink cover for temperature and data activity. The LED Smart Temperature display delivers real-time temperature status of the solid-state drive in three different levels: green for temperature below 50°C, yellow for temperature between 50°C to 65°C, and red for temperature above 65°C. The LED Data Transmission display data transmission status: blue light for access status and a green light for PCIe transmission mode (Gen 2 / Gen 3).

MSI showcased their upcoming overkill solution for users that want to have a dedicated PCIe x16 expansion card - and one that brings the true and final cooling solution to end all thermal throttling. Basically, the company appropriated its Aero cooler, which is used for some of their graphics cards, and applied it to a 4x M.2 expansion card. The result? Up to 50 W of cooling capability with this solution - which can go up to 75 W if users connect the additional 6-pin power connector for the fan to go into overdrive.

It's almost as if MSI was giving users a "yes we can" shout on designing this cooling solution, with the amount of overkill this has. No amount of thermal throttling should occur here - ever. Maybe overcompensating for the M.2 Shield debacle? Whatever the reason, this is certainly a competent cooling solution, and it will be included inside their Threadripper X399 MEG Creation motherboard - an outrageous motherboard, with an outrageous M.2 cooling solution. Balance is brought back to the world. Naturally, the company also has plans to offer their expansion M.2 card as a standalone product.

Cryorig at COMPUTEX 2018 showed the most complex and impressive M.2 SSD cooling solution the market has ever seen with their Frosbit cooler. The Frostbit cooler, which the company had already teased going into the show, is the world's first M.2 cooling solution to feature heatpipe cooling technology - the heatpipe transfers heat from the M.2 SSD through its heatpipe loop and dissipates it in a large volume heatsink. This should alleviate any thermal throttling issues which some NVMe, M.2 SSDs are plagued with with inefficient airflow setups. The secondary, heat-dissipating heatsink can be adjusted so as to avoid contact with other components. This design really brings memories of OCZ's Reaper memory kits, as well as some other after-market modding solutions for RAM memory sticks which featured similar heatpipe designs.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, today announced that its RC100 Series of NVMe (NVM Express ) M.2 solid state drives (SSDs) is now available. First introduced earlier this year at CES 2018, the new RC100 Series is geared toward the retail DIY market and features a powerful yet cost-effective design to make the benefits of NVMe storage accessible to more users than ever before. The Toshiba RC100 Series is well-suited to the entire spectrum of mainstream computing - from gaming desktops and notebooks to mini-PCs (NUCs) and everything in between. The new drives are available in capacities of 120, 240 and 480 gigabytes.

While the performance advantages of first-generation NVMe drives are well known, this high performance has come at an equally high cost - until now. By leveraging its state-of-the-art 64-layer, 3-bit-per-cell TLC (triple-level cell) BiCS FLASH technology and an in-house-developed controller, Toshiba Memory Corporation was able to fit an entire SSD within a single BGA package. The RC100 Series balances cost and performance and bridges the gap between SATA and enthusiast-grade NVMe SSDs. A compact design also enables the RC100 to fit onto an M.2 2242 (22x42mm) PCB, making it one of the smallest SSDs commercially available.

Intel launched the Optane 905P SSD in the more practical M.2-22110 (110 mm long) form-factor, following up on its early-May launch in the add-in card (AIC) form-factor. These drives take advantage of the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface and NVMe protocol, and feature the company's latest generation 3D X-point memory. The drive likely comes in capacities of up to 480 GB, with transfer rates of up to 2600 MB/s reads, up to 2200 MB/s writes, and 575k/550k 4K random access speeds. The USP here is endurance, with 10 DWPD, and 1.6 million hours MTBF.

COLORFUL Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is proud to announce the addition of two new options for its CN600S line of solid-state drives. COLORFUL is adding the CN600S 240GB and CN600S 480GB drives featuring Intel 64-layer 3D NAND. Those looking for a cost-effective high-performance, high-capacity storage solution for low-profile applications including notebooks and other M.2 capable devices. The improved speed and capacity of the COLORFUL CN600S allows it to be used in a wider range of applications including gaming, professional use or HTPC.

The COLORUL CN600S is equipped with the SMI 2263XT controller, features a M.2 2280 design standard and is rated for transfer speeds up to 2 GB/s reads and 1.5 GB/s write performance. The SMI 2263XT uses the PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and can deliver 4x faster performance than SATA3 for reading, accessing and opening applications and games. The COLORFUL CN600 M.2 PCIe SSD is focused in offering the most compelling cost-benefit ratio in the market.

QNAP Systems, Inc. has extended the lineup of QM2 PCIe expansion cards with new models that support up to four M.2 SSDs slots on a single card. QM2 cards support either M.2 SATA SSDs or M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs to enable SSD caching for boosted IOPS performance or to form an auto-tiering volume for optimal storage performance. QM2 cards also allow QNAP NAS users to maximize both storage capacity and performance by installing M.2 SSDs without occupying any 3.5-inch drive bays.

"When faced with a performance bottleneck, the random read/write speed of the hard drives in a NAS is one of the decisive performance factors," said Joan Hsieh, Product Manager of QNAP, continuing "QM2 cards can greatly boost the performance of QNAP NAS with PCIe slots, while the flexible configuration of SSD caching and I/O-aware Qtier all helps multiply NAS performance."

Ahead of Computex 2018 CRYORIG announces new M.2 cooler Frostbit and RGB enhanced C7 RGB CPU Cooler. CRYORIG's Frostbit is not only the industry first aftermarket M.2 NVMe SSD cooler with dual heatpipes, it allows full adjustment of the Secondary Heatpipe and large volume Heatsink. The C7 RGB is based on CRYORIG's award winning ITX cooler C7, with a 12v RGB lighting enhanced 92 mm fan. Both products will be shown at CRYORIG's Computex booth at Nangang Exhibition Hall I0527.

Apacer introduced the AS2280P2, a mid-range M.2 NVMe SSD. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drive features PCI-Express gen 3.0 x2 interface, taking advantage of the NVMe protocol. It features 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and comes in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB. The 120 GB variant offers sequential transfer rates of up to 1550 MB/s reads, with up to 530 MB/s writes; both the 240 GB and 480 GB read at speeds of up to 1650 MB/s, and differ with write speeds. The 240 GB variant writes at speeds of up to 950 MB/s, and the 480 GB up to 1000 MB/s. All variants offer 4K random access performance of up to 92,160 IOPS. Backed by 3-year warranties, the 120 GB variant is priced at 45.90€, the 240 GB variant 77.90€, and the 480 GB variant 156.90€.

Samsung Electronics, today introduced the Samsung 970 PRO and EVO, the third generation of its industry-leading consumer solid state drive (SSD) lineup. Having led the market with the first consumer-focused NVMe SSD in 2015, Samsung continues to push the performance barriers with this latest generation of SSDs that are built for tech enthusiasts and professionals so that they can enjoy higher bandwidth for intensive workloads on PCs and workstations.

"Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs," said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market with groundbreaking performance, superior reliability and best-in-class capacity."

PC gaming is increasingly immersive, with richer and more intense visual content than ever before, and gamers are faced with making technology choices to maximize their experience. To push leading-edge performance, lower power consumption and extended durability for PC gaming systems, Western Digital Corporation today introduced a high-performance Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD featuring the company's own SSD architecture and controller. The drive accelerates data for PC applications to enable users to quickly, access, engage and capture today's high-resolution video, audio and gaming content.

With growing demand for rich content, PCs must have the capability to run intensive applications and enable the 4K/Ultra HD graphics and video content experiences. To move this immense amount of data quickly and seamlessly, Western Digital developed a new breed of SSDs to help remove the traditional storage bottleneck. This M.2 drive features a new NVMe architecture and controller, which optimally integrates with Western Digital 3D NAND. Western Digital's new vertically integrated SSD platform was engineered from the ground up, specifically architected to help maximize performance for NVMe SSDs, with advanced power management, durability and endurance for the growing range of applications benefiting from NVMe technology.

As a global leader in small form factor computer technology, Shuttle always seems to be expanding their portfolio of products. Shuttle has unveiled an Intel Gemini Lake based fanless XPC slim DL10J, which is more geared towards for business use cases like digital signage and multi-display solutions. To meet the diverse applications of Internet of Things, the DL10J offers 4G/LTE network support via M.2 2230 expansion slot.

Powered by Intel Gemini lake Celeron J4005 processor, the DL10J is capable of supporting 4K/UHD content with Intel integrated graphics GPU engine, makes this model ideal for digital signage applications. At a body thickness of just 43mm, the new DL10J is equipped with a vast array of connectivity for a wide range of commercial uses; it features built-in Gigabit LAN, two COM ports, four native 2.0, two USB 3.1 Gen 1, and optional 4G/LTE SIM card adaptor. In terms of storage there is SATA 6G, M.2 interfaces. Triple displays are provided by HDMI, DisplayPort and D-sub outputs. Plus, the VESA mount complaint makes the DL10J fully integrate into diverse and space-critical environments.

MSI, the world-leading gaming motherboard brand, is proud to release new BIOS updates that allow MSI Intel motherboards to support CPU-Attached RAID. By using CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0, CPU-Attached RAID can provide better read/write speeds, which improves storage performance for RAID. MSI also created M.2 Genie, a brilliant feature to make setting up RAID 0 for M.2 much easier and less time consuming with fewer steps to connect the M.2 devices and enjoy higher speed.

Before experiencing unmatched transfer speed using CPU-Attached RAID, make sure your compatible MSI motherboards has been updated to the latest BIOS version. Updated BIOS version as below could support CPU-Attached RAID. Downloads are available on the motherboards' product pages.

Samsung unveiled an M.2 variant of its flagship high-performance Z-SSD. Targeted at workstations, HPCs, and AI servers, the Z-SSD lineup is built around Samsung's proprietary Z-NAND flash memory, that offer "up to 10 times" higher cell read performance than conventional 3D V-NAND (found on drives such as the 960 Pro). This performance is then traded off for the lowest possible latencies and response-times, which can help certain AI applications. The Z-SSD M.2 is built in the M.2-22110 (110 mm-long) form-factor, and features PCI-Express gen 3.0 x4 interface, and takes advantage of the NVMe protocol.

The drive appears to feature an 8-channel controller that's similar to the one that drives the company's PM983 SSD, and not quite the 16-channel controller found on the larger AIC variant of this drive. Available in capacities of 240 GB and 480 GB, the drive offers sequential transfer rates of up to 3200 MB/s reads, with up to 2800 MB/s writes; with an endurance of 30 DWPD. Like its larger siblings, the Z-SSD M.2 comes with a bank of capacitors to offer power-loss protection. The company didn't reveal availability or pricing information.

At the Open Compute project Summit, Intel previewed their upcoming Optane SSD DC P4801X, the company's true M.2, Optane-based SSD for enterprise deployments. Intel has managed to reduce the footprint for their flagship, U.2 form-factor Optane SSD DC P4800X, while increasing the available NAND capacity from their current caching solutions (800p and 900p Optane SSDs).

The new, upcoming M.2 SSD's controller features a 7-channel architecture to improve performance as much as possible, deployed in 375 GB drives, through use of seven quad-die packages of 3D XPoint memory. For the moment, there are no pricing or performance metrics to be talked about. However, this solution marks the first in a general consumer-available form-factor, and could be prototyped for a future, mainstream-hitting Optane SSD.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking and connectivity semiconductor solutions, today announced that it is launching innovative NVM Express (NVMe)-based chipset solutions that will accelerate the time to market for application-optimized data center SSD implementations. These new, highly-versatile building blocks can optimally address current and emerging workload storage requirements, spanning capacity, latency, performance, power and cost, to enable tailored SSD solutions for specific cloud and enterprise workloads.

The proliferation of cloud services and new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, is driving various workloads in the data center. These evolving and expanding workloads can have differing storage requirements that emerging SSD form factors are targeted to address. Marvell has developed innovative NVMe chipsets capable of powering the larger Enterprise Data Storage Form Factors (EDSFF), Next Generation Small Form Factors (NGSFF) and various customized form factors, providing the ability to increase storage capacity, performance and overall workload efficiencies.

Intel launched its "Hades Canyon" NUC way back in January 2018, but in the run up to its availability slated for Spring (very soon); the company shared a picture of its motherboard. The non-rectangular board is curved to the shape of the chassis, and is designed to utilize every square cm of precious PCB real-estate. The board has components soldered on both sides. The top side has the various slots (memory and M.2), ports, and headers; while the bottom side has the main Core i7-8709G MCM, the chipset, and some VRM components powering the two. Intel made sure some of the rear I/O ports utilize cutouts in the PCB, so they don't add a precious few millimeters. The NUC's main cooling system, inspired by gaming notebooks, takes up most of the bottom side of the chassis, making contact with the MCM, the PCH, and VRM.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, has enhanced its portfolio of solid-state drives (SSDs) for the data center with a new, 3D flash memory-based lineup of PCI Express NVMe and SATA SSDs in multiple form factors. The new CD5, XD5 and HK6-DC SSDs enable infrastructure managers to address performance and workload demands by offering robust performance and reliability with lower operating power for read-intensive applications such as NoSQL databases, big data analytics and streaming media.

"Demand for flash storage in data centers continues to grow rapidly - with capacity shipped into the enterprise expected to increase at a 58 percent CAGR through 2021," said Jeff Janukowicz, IDC Research Vice President for Solid State Drives and Enabling Technologies. "In order for hyperscale, virtualization, automation/orchestration and software-defined storage applications to thrive, cloud data centers must meet specific workload requirements. Toshiba's latest data center SSDs are designed to help customers address these demanding environments and realize the most value from their flash storage."

GIGABYTE today rolled out the CMT2014, an add-on card that converts a PCI-Express gen 3.0 x16 slot into four 32 Gbps M.2 PCIe slots, using PCIe lane-segmentation on the motherboard's end (it doesn't have any bridge chip on its end). This is similar in function, concept, and design to the ASRock Ultra Quad M.2, and the ASUS Hyper M.2, but lacks any mechanism to cool the drives. You get four M.2-22110 slots with PCI-Express gen 3.0 x4 wiring, two of these slots face forwards, and the others backwards.

If you have M.2-2280 (or smaller) drives installed on the slots that face backwards, you can physically (and irreversibly) break off a piece of the card to reduce its length from 21 cm to around 18.5 cm. Other features include power/activity LEDs for each of the four slots, and temperature sensors positioned where most SSDs have their controllers located. The company didn't reveal pricing, but to prevent RMAs from people who can't get it to work on their motherboards lacking lane segmentation, it mentioned that the card is only intended for Xeon "Purley" platform, for now.

Intel today announced the Optane 800p series M.2 NVMe cache SSD. This series succeeds the original Optane Memory series, which came in 16 GB and 32 GB capacities. The new Optane 800p comes in 58 GB and 118 GB, and offers acceleration to a HDD or slower SSD-based machine, just like the original. It can also be used as a standalone SSD since it's big enough to hold an OS installation and some software. Intel also encourages buying two or more of these drives for NVMe RAID.

The drive is built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, and takes advantage of PCI-Express gen 3.0 x2 interface. Both the 58 GB and 118 GB variants have identical performance numbers from Intel: up to 1450 MB/s sequential reads, up to 640 MB/s sequential writes, up to 250,000 IOPS (8 GB span) random reads, and up to 145,000 IOPS (8 GB span) random writes. Endurance is where 3D XPoint memory begins to shine, both variants have their endurance rated at 365 TBW. Available now, the Optane 800p 58 GB is priced at USD $129.99, while the 118 GB variant goes for $199.99.

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.

ATP Electronics, a leading manufacturer of high-performance industrial memory and storage solutions, spearheads the implementation of industrial temperature (iTemp) support on its latest NVMe M.2 solid state drive modules. The new SSD modules support a wide operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C to capably address the power and heat issues common in fanless embedded systems as well as extreme temperature variations in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, enabling them to perform reliably in harsh environments.

When operating at high speeds in high-throughput scenarios, onboard thermal sensors can detect abnormal temperature elevation and automatically enable a mechanism that adjusts performance to cool the system. According to Peter Huang, ATP Head of Embedded Solid State Drive Business Unit, "ATP Dynamic Thermal Throttling intelligently regulates speed and power to reduce heat without aggressive declines in performance, unlike other thermal solutions that cause abrupt drops and thus compromise stability." Additionally, the low typical power consumption of 3.3V makes ATP's NVMe M.2 SSDs energy efficient, translating to longer drive usage and cost savings.