Japanese firm ELSA is out with a low-profile graphics card based on the NVIDIA GeForce 210 GPU, this one uses a PCI-Express 2.0 x1 interface, for broader compatibility. It makes for an ideal match with PCs that have PCI-Express x16 slots populated. The card retains the simple PCB layout of most of its PCI-E x16 counterparts. The GPU holds 16 shader cores, and a 64-bit wide memory interface, with which it connects to 512 MB of DDR2 memory on this card. Output connectivity includes DVI and HDMI. The company seems to believe the PCI-E x1 interface to be a big incentive to its target buyers, and hence priced it at the JPY equivalent for US $137.

DFI LANParty today introduces its new motherboard, the Blood Iron BI P43-T34, after the launch of the high-end P55 motherboard. BI P43-T34 makes LANParty Blood Iron series a more complete product line. For those who like LANParty products, it is the best value motherboard.

To provide consumers with better value platform, BI P43-T34 is equipped with exclusive LANParty ABS II, CPU auto upgrade technology. CPU performance can be automatically promoted!! As long as users choose ABS II started while boosting system at the first time, the system's performance can be upgraded immediately. Therefore, users do not have to spend a lot of time and effort to set up for better performance. That is, even with limited budget, consumers still can obtain higher performance easily and fast.

Just as ASUS was readying its first wave of socket LGA-1156 motherboards, the company picked up interest in offering SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 as a feature set. With the P7P55D Premium motherboard, the company even used a PCI-Express 2.0 bridge chip to ensure the SATA 6 Gb/s controller - the Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2 - got a PCI-E 2.0 x1 link, which other manufacturers end up wiring a PCI-E 1.1 x1 link from the P55 PCH. In a bid to propagate the design, the company had also designed an addon card that works on the same principle. The the card has finally taken shape in the form of the ASUS U3S6 (USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s), complete with its missing USB 3.0 controller that provides two SuperSpeed 5000 Mbps ports. The interface bottleneck for the NEC µPD720200 USB 3.0 controller is also reduced by provision of a PCI-E 2.0 x1 link. Both connectors are wired to a PLX PEX8613 3-port/12-lane PCI-E 2.0 bridge chip, which takes in four PCI-Express lanes (typically PCI-E 1.1 lanes from the southbridge or P55 PCH), and gives out the required two links. Although there is no word on the card's price yet, PCSTATS reckons something around $30 likely. In that case, the card would be a steal deal, considering recently announced SATA 6 Gb/s addon cards by HighPoint that hold just the Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2, are priced over $60.

HighPoint Technologies - an industry pioneer of innovative SATA and SAS RAID host adapter manufacturing, today unleashes the Rocket 600 series - the industry's first SATA 6 Gb/s host adapter based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology. The Rocket 600 series delivers the next generation of SATA performance with robust SATA connectivity and will be available at the beginning of November 2009.

The Rocket 600 series brings a new level of cost effective pricing and will help drive mass adoption to the next generation of SATA 6 Gb/s technology. They are fully industry standard AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) compliant and deliver Out-of-Box Ready installation for the majority of operating systems. The Rocket 600 series are backward compatible to PCI-Express 1.0 technology and (SATA 3 Gb/s & 1.5 Gb/s) devices. They use the same cable and connectors as previous SATA generations to ease integration.

Gigabyte is readying a new socket LGA-1156 motherboard, the GA-P55A-UD4. Bearing resemblance with the GA-P55-UD4, the motherboard features upgraded connectivity, with support for USB 3.0, and SATA 6 Gb/s. The new model also features an upgraded CPU VRM, with a 12+2 phase design compared to the 8+2 phase design on the GA-P55-UD4. USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s features are provided using additional controllers on board. A Marvell-made SATA 6 Gb/s two-port controller replaces the familiar Gigabyte GSATA2 controller, while an NEC-made controller provides two USB 3.0 ports on the rear-panel. The USB 3.0 ports are color-coded blue, and share the port cluster with the lone gigabit Ethernet connector, while the SATA 6 Gb/s connectors are color-coded white, next to the usual six SATA 3 Gb/s ones the P55 PCH provides.

The rest of the feature-set remains largely same, with four DDR3 DIMM slots to support up to 16 GB of memory, two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (electrically x8 when both are populated) supporting ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI, Dolby Home Theater supportive onboard audio, among other standard issues. The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 will not replace GA-P55-UD4 from the market, it will coexist, albeit priced higher. It remains to be seen if this is the only "P55A" motherboard Gigabyte sells.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today announced the Z-Drive m84, a PCI-Express Solid State Drive (SSD) designed to offer the performance of OCZ's Z-Drive product line to enthusiasts for a more affordable price point and availability in the mainstream market segment versus the enterprise channel. The Z-Drive m84 is the answer to the demand from end-users to have access to this state-of-the-art storage solution.

"The OCZ m84 Z-Drive is the newest addition to our line of PCI-E solid state drives and is designed to offer consumers a high performance yet aggressively priced solid state solution," said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "While the previously released p84 and e84 Z-Drives were intended specifically for enterprise applications, the m84 delivers much of the same performance but at a price point that is competitive with standard SSD drives. This is the first time that such a high performance PCI-E based SSD that is optimized for media editing, gaming, and workstation productivity, has been so within the reach of power users."

ASUS is readying its most affordable ATX motherboard based on the Intel P55 chipset yet, the P7P55 LX. Supporting socket LGA 1156 processors, the P7P55 LX is intended to be priced even lower than the P7P55D LE (under 100 EUR). Everything about this board is thin and lite: narrower PCB, solid-state capacitors confined only to important VRM circuits, 5 phase CPU power circuit, and other basic features. The product however, doesn't leave out some ASUS exclusives such as MemOK, ExpressGate, and TurboV.

For expansion, there's one PCI-Express 2.0 x16, one PCI-E x16 (electrical x4), two PCI-E x1, and three PCI. All six SATA 3 Gbps ports are assigned as internal ports. An additional controller provides an IDE connector. 8-channel audio with optical SPDIF output, and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of the feature-set. Expect the board to be out soon.

Dutch PC specialist Nexus added two new power supply models to its lineup, the RX-5300 (530W) and RX-6300 (630W). Both feature modular cabling, which is rounded and sleeved. The main units on both measure 150 x 86 x 158 mm, and are cooled by 135 mm fans. The cable cluster includes all common connectors, including 6 Molex, 2 floppy, 6 SATA, one 6 pin and a 6+2 pin PCI-Express connectors. The +12V circuit is of a single-rail design. The company rates the overall minimum efficiency of the PSU at 82% which meets the standards of 80 Plus Bronze. The two will reach stores soon, although the pricing isn't known.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the Z-Drive, a PCI-Express Solid State Drive (SSD) designed to meet the stringent demands of enterprise computing clients. Unlike other solutions, the Z-Drive provides a cost-effective formula of performance, reliability, and upkeep for enterprise customers and their applications which require the benefits of solid state drive technology, but have previously been hesitant to adopt competing products due to the sheer cost of implementation.

"Traditional enterprise storage technology typically requires overly complex infrastructure as well costly maintenance, and is often unable to deliver the level of performance required by OEM applications," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The new OCZ Z-Drive is an all-in-one high performance plug-and-play bootable PCI-E solid state drive that addresses these challenges head on, and meets the demands of the complete range of enterprise storage and data access requirements. The Z-Drive is designed not only to be higher performing and more reliable than conventional solutions, but also to significantly reduce both the maintenance and overall TCO for our clients."

Matching high-end graphics accelerators in terms of size, the OCZ Z-Drive PCI-Express solid state drive (SSD) was begging for a makeover. After a recent design, the leaner Z-Drive shed quite some cubic centimeters. The reverse side of the PCB holds the RAID controller, while the obverse side holds the storage components of the drive, from the looks of it. The Z-Drive connects to the system using a PCI-Express x4 interface, and houses MLC NAND flash. It comes in capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB, with a 256 MB buffer, and offers read/write speeds of up to 878 MB/s (read) 781 MB/s (write). A 4-pin Molex connector is needed to power the drive. With a rated MTBF of 900,000 hours and 2 year warranty, the Z-Drive is bound to make for a very high-end purchase. For reference, the last picture is that of the older Z-Drive.

ASUS, known for its single-socket workstation motherboards, is preparing the first enterprise-grade socket LGA-1156 motherboard. The ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer builds on the features of its socket LGA-1366 cousins, by offering as many as five PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, a massive 16+3 phase CPU VRM, support for DDR3-2133 by overclocking, and the latest multi-GPU standards support.

Based on the Intel P55 chipset, the P7P55 WS SuperComputer makes use of a PCI-E bridge chip that allows it to hold at least four PCI-E 2.0 x16 devices (electrical 4x PCI-E x8), with a PCI-E x16 electrically x4. Both 3-way SLI and 4-way CrossFireX are supported. Connectivity is care of two gigabit Ethernet controllers, 8 USB 2.0 ports on the rear-panel, and another six internal, Firewire, and 8-channel audio with digital IO ports and DTS support.

ASUS includes its own design enhancements, including XtremePhase VRM, TurboV EVO voltage management, and a probe microchip. It doesn't look like ASUS will add this to its first wave of motherboard launches that coincide with those of Intel's first LGA-1156 processors, but expect this to be out at least in October.

PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group), the organisation responsible for development of PCI specifications announced that generation 3 PCI-Express (PCI-E 3.0), is off its target launch time from late-2009 to Q2 2010. Although work on the bus is almost finished, there seems to be problems with implementing backwards-compatibility with older generations of PCI-E. Assuming PCI-E 3.0 is standardised in Q2 2010, one can expect implementing products (motherboards and expansion cards supporting PCI-E 3.0) only by a year later.

PCI-E 3.0 packs features that overcome the bottlenecks of PCI-E 2.0, such as the removal of the 8P/10b encoding scheme that added at least 20% data overhead for the 5 GT/s PCI-E 2.0, reducing it to 4 GT/s effective. At 8 GT/s the new bus will have effectively twice the bandwidth.

IDT (Integrated Device Technology,) a leading provider of essential mixed signal semiconductor solutions that enrich the digital media experience and Micron Technology, Inc., one of the world's leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced they have entered into an alliance to develop PCI Express Solid-State Drive (SSD) technologies for the server, storage and embedded markets.

As part of this alliance, IDT and Micron will co-develop enterprise flash controllers with a PCIe host interface optimized for Micron's flash devices and future generation RealSSD solid-state drives. Combining Micron's extensive experience in flash design and SSD development with IDT's proficiency in PCIe solutions and memory interface products will enable devices to achieve lower latency, greater performance and new levels of storage integration.

MSI's lineup of LGA-1156 motherboards has a new high-end entry in the making, apart from a seeming higher-end G9P55-DC which was recently pictured. The P55-GD80 fills the lineup, perhaps a notch below it, and the other MSI LGA-1156 motherboards that lack an NVIDIA nForce 200 chip and 3-way SLI support. The P55-GD80 was pictured in all its glory (read: release grade chipset cooling), sourced by SAV-Computer. The picture reveals a PCB layout very similar to the G9P55-DC, with differences in the CPU power circuit, overclocker-friendly features, and the storage connectivity.

The board uses a 10-phase CPU power circuit with standard solid-state capacitors, compared to the 11-phase circuit with flat-bed ML capacitors on the G9P55-DC. This board surprisingly has more overclocker-friendly features, such as on-board controls for clock-speeds, clear-CMOS, OC-Genie, a DIP switch to control voltages, and voltage-sensing points that make measuring voltages convenient. Apart from the Intel P55 PCH, it uses an NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip that broadcasts 16 PCI-Express lanes (from the processor root complex) to 32 lanes on the PCI-E x16 slots. Apart from the six SATA II ports the PCH provides, an additional controller provides two internal and one external SATA ports, and one IDE connector. Two gigabit Ethernet connections, 8-channel audio, Firewire, and around 13 USB ports make for the rest of the package. The board supports Intel Lynnfield and Clarkdale processors.

Galaxy is readying another variant of the GeForce 9600 GT Low Power Edition. Prior to this, the company had launched the 9600 GT Low Power, Low Profile (LPLP edition), and the 9600 GT Green Edition. Unlike the two, the new variant uses a full-height PCB, and a cooler made by Cooler Master, that doesn't span into more than one expansion slot.

The card draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot, and uses a 2+1 phase power design. Under the cooler is a 55 nm G94 GPU, with clock speeds of 600/1625 MHz (core/shader). The 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory is passively cooled under the cooler's air-flow. It is clocked at 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR). Output is care of DVI, D-Sub, and audio-relayed HDMI connectors. It's pricing and availability isn't disclosed yet.

Scythe Europe hereby officially announces the supply of the in-house developed Kamariki 4 Power Supply series. The early stage production samples were first displayed at this year's CeBit in Hannover, Germany and gathered a lot of attention of visitors and press representatives.

The Kamariki series is entering the next level as the 4th version and is now available for the worldwide market. In Japan, Scythe is one of the market-leading brands for High-End Power Supplies and Cooling Components for many years where the essential experience and know-how is coming in which were gathered successfully over these years. Kamariki 4 PSU is available in a Plug-in (modular) version with detachable power cables for more convenience and also available in a standard version with non-detachable power cables. For better usability, 45 to 55 cm long cables are wrapped by robust and flexible mesh. Each version is available in 450, 550, and 650W models. In order to comply with market demands and the GreenIT movement, Scythe Kamariki 4 PSU Series are fully conform to 80Plus Standards (20/50/100% system load).

Photofast is on a roll with its G-Monster series solid-state storage, with product launches on a monthly basis. This time around, the company is readying two products that are unique in their own ways. First up, is the G-Monster-3.5, the company's first SSD in the standard 3.5" form-factor. The drive uses internal RAID to achieve high-capacities. While most other SSD manufacturers would simply stripe two SSD modules in internal RAID 0 configurations, Photofast used an internal RAID 5 configuration that ups reliability. The array is completely abstract to the host machine, which only sees it as a single drive. The drive uses a standard SATA II interface. It comes in capacities of 64, 128, 256, 512 GB, and 1, 2 TB. As far as its performance goes, the company rates the read/write speeds around 270 MB/s. The drive will be backed by a one-year warranty.

Next up, is the G-Monster ExpressCard/54 SSD. This drive serves the purpose of expandable, removable storage for notebooks, that performs on par or faster than the hard-drive. The card comes in the standard 54 mm ExpressCard form-factor. It can function in both PCI-Express and USB 2.0 modes for the slot. When in PCI-Express mode, the drive provides stellar read/write speeds of 170/100 MB/s, and in USB 2.0 mode, 36/30 MB/s. It comes in 32, 48, and 64 GB variants, and boasts of 1.5 million hours MTBF. It will be backed by a standard one-year warranty. There is no word on the pricing and availability.

Although Intel X58 chipset based mother board is sold at a relatively higher price in the market, BIOSTAR still has an excellent reputation for TPOWER series, in which TPOWER X58 and TPOWER I45 are very popular with a lot of power users. TPOWER X58A, one of BIOSTAR's top X58 motherboards, is on sale now. It is coincident that the price of Core i7 processors are recently falling, so TPOWER X58A is also a top choice for power users to pursue ultimate performance.

With adoption of ATX-size board, TPOWER X58A, based on Intel X58 + ICH10R chipset, supports Socket 1366 interface and newest Core i7, the CPU that is brand new Nehalem architecture. The motherboard supports Triple Channel Mode 2000 / 1600 / 1333 memory module, with Max Memory Capacity 24GB. It provides three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, supporting ATI Hybrid CrossFireX and nVIDIA SLI technology; one PCI-Express x1 slot and two PCI slots for expansion; Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 Channels HD audio for high quality of networking and multimedia.

NEC unveiled the first add-on cards based on its recently announced µPD720200 USB 3.0 host controller. This is the typical route taken by a company to propagate the standard in an environment where motherboard vendors and chipset makers haven't yet embraced it. For the desktop segment, the reference-design PCI-Express x1 add-on card provides two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports that are backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, 1.1, and 1.0. NEC also released an add-on card for notebooks, in the ExpressCard-34 form-factor based on the same controller, offering the same two ports. With these reference designs, NEC plans to propagate add-on card vendors to design their own cards based on the NEC µPD720200 controller. Typically, these cards should be priced around the $15~20 mark. A successor to USB 2.0, USB 3.0 offers 10-times the bandwidth (4.8 Gbps), although it will take a while for devices to use all that bandwidth, let alone support the standard. Perhaps this is why the company seems to find PCI-Express x1 sufficient as its system interface.

Gigabyte has its Odin Pro PSU lineup for about two years now. The company prepared a new model to top the it, with up to 1200W of power output, modular cabling, and a USB data connection to the system it powers. Perhaps a monitoring and/or control software is packed along. The Odin GT 1200W measures 150 (W) x 180 (L) x 86 (H) mm, and weighs in at 2.5 kg (around 5.5 lbs). It is said to feature high-grade Japanese capacitors, and four +12V rails that belt out 99A, 1188 W. It has a rated efficiency of above 80%. Also featured is active power compensator (Active PFC). Cables include six 6+2 pin PCI-Express, along with ten SATA power, and eight Molex connectors. A 140 mm fan cools the unit. The SLI-certified PSU is expected to hit stores soon.

Remember EPoX? A reminiscent of that company now operates under the name SUPoX, and seems to have an entire range of PC motherboards including the Core i7 compatible AP58+ GTR. The company is gearing up to cater to the LGA-1156 socket processors with a new feature-rich motherboard based on the Intel P55 chipset called AP55+ GTR. The socket supports Core i5 series processors, along with support for Intel Flexible Display Interface (FDI), that relays display handled by embedded graphics controllers on Intel processors to their DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI outputs. The PCI-Express x16 slots (electrical configuration not known) support ATI CrossFireX, although NVIDIA SLI support for most LGA-1156 motherboards largely remains unknown. Along with support for as much as 16 GB of DDR3 memory, the motherboard provides connectivity in the form of gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, and WiFi. The motherboard should release towards the end of Q3 2009.

Leadtek has been toying with the idea of bringing Toshiba's SpursEngine HD video encoder to the masses. The company earlier unveiled one of the first consumer add-on cards to sell this technology, and now has an external video encoder unit called Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100. The device connects to a host PC using PCI-Express cabling. It weighs 194x45x90 mm, and 0.7 kg (1.54 lbs).

SpursEngine is a video encoding concept originally conceived by Toshiba, which uses a modified CELL Broadband Engine chip to handle HD video on some of its premium laptops. It is said to accelerate PEG4-AVC/H.264, MPEG-2 video encoding, although performance figures are yet to surface. The SpursEngine processor makes use of 128 MB of Rambus XDR memory. The pricing and availability for HPVC1100 are yet to be known.

ASUS today proved that TV quality and CPU bandwidth do not have to be trade-offs with the launch of its new ASUS My Cinema-EHD3-100/NAQ/FM/AV/MCE RC PCI-express Dual TV card. Designed for users seeking to watch and record both digital (ATSC/QAM) and analog (NTSC) TV channels simultaneously without taking a CPU hit, the ASUS My Cinema-EHD3-100/NAQ/FM/AV/MCE RC is embedded with a MPEG2 hardware encoder that dramatically reduces CPU loading while guaranteeing high quality video. With the ASUS My Cinema-EHD3-100/NAQ/FM/AV/MCE RC PCI-express Dual TV card, any PC can easily be turned into a smart multimedia center.

Recently there has been a boom in production of PCI-Express SSD cards. The cards offer fast storage by coupling arrays of SSDs across dedicated storage controllers to achieve high bandwidths. With market-heavyweights such as OCZ in the ring, this little class of storage products is here to stay. Fresh out with its first G-Monster PCI-E SSD that offers godly read/write speeds of 750/700 MB/s, Photofast is looking to push the bandwidth envelope with the G-Monster Promise. This SSD card "promises" bandwidth that scrapes the 1 GB/s mark, a significant milestone for fixed-storage.

The 3+ slot monstrosity packs 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, or even 1 TB of data. It uses MLC NAND-flash chips, along with a storage controller that has 256 MB of dedicated ECC DDR2 memory. The controller uses PCI-Express x8 to connect to its host. The device assures 2.5 million hours of MTBF, and read/write speeds of 1000 MB/s. All of this comes at a price, US $1616 for the 128 GB variant, $2002 for 256 GB, $3015 for 512 GB, and $4534 for 1 TB, in Japan, where it will start selling later this month.

There is a new X58 "SuperComputer" motherboard, this time not from ASRock, but from ASUS. The company is ready with a new LGA-1366 single-socket workstation motherboard that concentrates quite heavily on its PCI-Express expansion slots. THe motherboard packs seven full-length PCI-Express slots. To support these, ASUS used a clever design: two 16-lane PCI-Express channels from the X58 northbridge provide connectivity to an NVIDIA nForce 200 (BR-03) chip each. Each of these chips in turn broadcast the connection to two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots (blue slots). The blue slots with a neighbouring black slot further have PCI-E switching logic that can divert 8 lanes to the black PCI-E x16 slots, when populated. As a result, it has seven slots worked out in all. The board supports ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI.

A large heatsink cools the lower cluster of chips that include the board's ICH10R southbridge, and the two nForce 200 chips. Heatpipes distribute heat to an elaborate array of heatsinks over the northbridge and the board's VRM areas. The board features six DDR3 memory slots for supporting up to 24 GB of memory. Storage is care of the southbridge and an additional controller to provide extra internal SATA ports along with the eSATA connectivity. 8-channel audio, and two gigabit Ethernet controllers, and an ASUS-exclusive system diagnostics card make for the rest of the equation. The P6T7 SuperComputer is yet to hit stores.