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.

Intel today released their mainstream answer to users' fast, NVMe-based storage needs, the SSD 760p. We've already covered this new consumer, mainstream SSD series in our news pieces; however, information and press decks have now come directly from Intel, allowing us a clearer picture of how Intel sees its products to fit into the consumer market - and hopefully, in consumer's choices.

Transcend Information, Inc., a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade products, is proud to announce the release of 2.5-inch and M.2 form factor industrial solid-state drives featuring 3D TLC NAND flash memory. 3D TLC NAND flash memory has performance that can rival Planar (2D) MLC NAND flash, but at a very competitive price point. The new line of industrial SSDs also boast SLC caching, a RAID engine, low-density parity check (LDPC), and other features that make for a stable, long-lasting product ready for write-intensive industrial and embedded applications.

Built with high-quality 3D TLC NAND flash memory
This all-new series of SSDs uses high-quality 3D TLC NAND flash memory. 3D NAND flash breaks through physical limitations on Planar NAND by stacking layers of memory cells to allow for greater capacities and performance. Compared to Planar NAND, 3D NAND is faster, more reliable, and delivers greater performance. Devices manufactured with 3D NAND are price competitive, making them an excellent choice for embedded systems.

The next step in Intel's Optane product launch could be right around the corner, as retailers have started listing the company's upcoming Optane MEM M10 cache drives up for pre-order. If you'll remember, these products were first leaked in some Intel product roadmap slides, where they appeared identified as "System Acce. Gen 1.0". Whether or not today's workloads and faster SSD-based storage require the introduction of a faster caching solution is up for debate; however, Intel seems to think there is room in the market for these caching solutions, even if the vast majority of users would be much better served by acquiring a higher capacity SSD as their primary drive (especially if they're coming from the HDD world).

These new Optane MEM M10 cache drives will come in capacities ranging from 16 GB to 64 GB. The M10 modules will take the M.2 2280 form-factor and deliver data through the PCIe 3.0 interface. Prices are being quoted at $47.58 for the 16 GB model, $82.03 for the 32 GB model, and $154.37 for the largest, 64 GB model. These should ensure lower latency and higher throughput than traditional SSDs do, due to their caching of users' more heavily requested data; however, due to the very nature of these caching solutions, and the memory footprint available for them, it's likely most users will hit severe performance bottlenecks, at the very least, on the 16 GB model.

ASRock introduced a pair of mini-ITX desktop motherboards implementing Intel's new Celeron "Gemini Lake" SoCs. The ASRock J4105-ITX and J4105B-ITX, as their names suggest, are powered by Celeron J4105 "Gemini Lake" SoCs, which combine a quad-core "Goldmont Plus" CPU ticking at 2.50 GHz, with new Intel UHD 600 Graphics. The integrated graphics features hardware-acceleration of 10bpc HEVC video encoding and decoding in addition to new DRM standards, which should enable Netflix 4K, and other on-demand video services at 4K UHD resolution. The J4105-ITX and J4105B-ITX are similar, but for the latter featuring legacy connectivity such as LPT and RS232 COM ports, replacing 8-channel HD audio with 6-channel, and a DVI port. While the former has a PCIe x1 slot, the latter has an x16 slot with x2 wiring.

The board draws power from a 24-pin ATX connector. The SoC is cooled by a fan-less heatsink, and is wired to DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, supporting up to 8 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2400 memory. The 22 mm M.2 slot that has x1 wiring, is recommended only for a WLAN card. Storage connectivity includes four SATA 6 Gbps ports on the J4105-ITX, and two ports on the J4105B-ITX. Both boards come with gigabit Ethernet. Display outputs include DVI, HDMI, and D-Sub on the J4105-ITX; while the J4105B-ITX features D-Sub and HDMI. Both boards are expected to be priced around $170, given that the SoC itself costs $107.

Hot on the heels of Samsung updating its website with its next performance-segment SSD 860 Pro series, with its range-topping 4 TB variant, a similar pre-launch website update revealed the company's next mainstream SATA SSD, the 860 EVO. The drive will be available in three form-factors, 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch, M.2-2280, and mSATA; all with SATA 6 Gbps interface. The 2.5-inch version comes in 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB variants; while the M.2-2280 version comes in just 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB variants; and the mSATA version in 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB variants. The drives combine Samsung's latest generation 3D VNAND flash memory built in the 10 nm-class sliicon fabrication process, with an updated controller and refined firmware.

The 860 EVO offers sequential transfer rates of up to 550 MB/s, with up to 520 MB/s sequential writes, up to 97,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 88,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The new-generation flash is rated for "8 times higher" endurance than the 850 EVO series; with up to 2,400 TBW. Samsung is reinforcing its faith in the drive by backing it with 5-year warranties. The company is introducing the new TurboWrite feature, which is a user-configurable SLC cache. You can set anywhere between 12 GB to 72 GB of the NAND flash to function as SLC, so the controller can juggle hot data in and out of it, for improved performance, using the Samsung Magician software.

Autobuy, a popular online shopping site in Taiwan, recently listed Intel's upcoming 760p and 660p M.2 NVMe SSDs on their store. The SSD 760p will be manufactured under Intel's 64-layer 3D NAND technology and feature TLC (triple-level-cell) NAND. It's obviously the faster of the two with a sequential read speed up to 3,200 MB/s and a write speed up to 1,600 MB/s. The drive offers random access reads up to 350,000 IOPS and writes up to 280,000 IOPS. Intel will offer this model in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. TigerDirect listed the pricing for them at $96, $120, $240, $448, and $893, respectively.

The SSD 660p is Intel's budget-friendly this time around. Therefore, it will use QLC (quad-level-cell) NAND despite being manufactured with the same technology as its older brother. This SSD can reach up to 1,800 MB/s in sequential read and up to 1,200 MB/s in sequential write speeds with random access read and write performance in the range of 150,000 IOPS. Surprisingly, Intel won't be offering this model in the 128 GB and 256 GB capacities. Instead, the lowest capacity model will start from 512 GB and make its way up to 2 TB. Unfortunately, pricing wasn't available at the time of this article.

We headed to the GIGABYTE Aorus booth at the 2018 International CES to check out the only motherboard based on AMD's upcoming 400-series chipset visible in the entire show, the Aorus X470 Gaming 7. We snapped a lot of pictures. The first thing that caught our attention is the board's updated styling, which resembles the one GIGABYTE introduced with its Intel Z370-series motherboards. The second thing of course, was two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, confirming that AMD has indeed addressed 300-series chipset's greatest shortcoming - lack of PCIe gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. Since the AM4 SoC puts out 4 gen 3.0 general purpose lanes of its own, which wired to one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot on 300-series motherboards, the new 400-series boards will have at least two of these slots, one wired to the AM4 SoC, and another to the chipset.

The Aorus X470 Gaming 7 could become the company's flagship socket AM4 product based on AMD X470 chipset. It's been designed as such. Built in the ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors. A 12-phase VRM supplies power to the AM4 SoC. It's interesting to note that GIGABYTE chose some very high-current chokes for the chip's main voltage domains. The VRM heatsinks, too, are elaborate aluminium fin-stack types, with the two heatsinks spreading heat over a heat pipe. Is this a telltale sign that certain Ryzen 2 parts could have >95W TDP? The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated), and one of the two M.2 slots (we're guessing the top M.2-22110 slot). Both it, and the bottom M.2-2280 slots have included heatsinks. Other expansion slots include an x16 (electrical x4) slot wired to the chipset, and two x1 slots, which are all gen 3.0.

Silverstone at CES 2018 also showcased some number of cases and storage solutions that the company hopes to carve its way through the market with. There's an interesting 4x M.2 Drive bay, for instance, which occupies a traditional 3.5" bay but gives users the option to mount up to 4x M.2 SSD drives; there's a 2.5" SSD expansion bay (EXB01) that allows for hot-swapping of SSDs mounted on the rack; an M.2 to PCIe adapter with embedded heatsink and LEDs, as well as a PCIe Gen3 x16 to an NVMe drive adapter.

Crucial at CES 2018 has unveiled their M.2 version fo the prize-winning MX500 drive (you can read TPU's review of the MX500 2.5" drive here). The new M.2 SATA SSDs bring a much needed form-factor for Crucial's SSD line, with capacities ranging from 250 GB, passing through 500 GB, and ending in the 1 TB mark. All capacities have the same performance rating: 560 MB/s sequential read, 510 MB/s sequential writes, 90K random write and 95K random read IOPS.