There has been a fair bit of confusion about AMD's upcoming AM5 platform when it comes to connectivity and we're going to break things down and explain what the difference is between the B650 and X670 boards. We're also going to cover the processor connectivity, since that's an integral part of any motherboard these days. All the information in this article is based on what we've been told by various sources during Computex.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

Many companies, including Intel and AMD, have stopped product shipments to Russia amidst the war in Ukraine in the past few months. This has left the Russian state without any new processors from the two prominent x86 designers, thus slowing down the country's technological progress. To overcome this issue, it seems like the solution is embedded in the Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs. According to the latest report from Habr, a motherboard designer called Dannie is embedding Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs into motherboards to provide the motherland with an x86-capable processor. More precisely, the company had designed a BX-Z60A micro-ATX motherboard that embeds Zhaoxin's KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC with eight cores based on LuJiaZui microarchitecture. The SoC is clocked at a frequency range of 2.1-2.7 GHz, carries 4 MB of L2 cache, 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0, and has integrated graphics, all in a 25 Watt TDP.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, it supports two DDR4 memory slots, two PCIe x16 connectors, M.2-2280 and M.2-2230 slots, and three SATA III connectors for storage. For I/O you have USB ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA/D-Sub, GbE, 3.5-mm audio, and additional PS/2 ports. This is a pretty decent selection; however, we don't know the pricing structure. A motherboard with KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC like this is certainly not cheap, so we are left to wonder if this will help Russian users deal with the newly imposed restriction on importing US tech.

Capture the perfect visuals without compromise: Sabrent's CFexpress Type B Cards are fast and come in a convenient range of capacities. Never miss a shot, and don't be held back by slow media - the card's fast, low-latency flash communicates over an x2 PCIe 3.0 interface to ensure you can keep on creating. Our cards also have a variety of features to maintain the integrity of the storage, so you have one less thing to worry about.

These cards perform up to 1,700 MB/s for reads and 1,500 MB/s for writes, pushing the limits of the CFexpress form factor. They also support standards most commonly seen in SSDs like TRIM, SMART, encryption, and even upgradeable firmware. Also, backward compatible with appropriate devices. All this while being power-efficient to maintain your battery life and prevent overheating.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card, the latest offering in the company's popular line of USB PCIe adapter cards. The new Allegro card features eight external USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports and fits neatly inside a single-width card space. The Sonnet card is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers with an available x16 PCIe slot, and Mac and Windows computers with Thunderbolt ports when installed in a Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion system with an available x16 PCIe slot.

Sonnet's Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card enables users to connect and power up to eight high-performance USB peripherals to their computer at the same time and provides a full 10 Gbps connection through each port. The Allegro card supports USB bus-powered SSD, SSD RAID, and hard drive devices with up to 7.5 watts of power to every port, without the user having to connect auxiliary power to the card or AC power adapters to the devices for operation.

Netac has recently announced four new NVMe SSDs aimed at various market segments with the NV7000, NV5000, NV3000 RGB, and NV3000. The NV7000 is a flagship PCIe 4.0 drive featuring a composite aluminium alloy fin heatsink design and boasting sequential read and write speeds of 7200 MB/s and 6850 MB/s, respectively. The flagship SSD also features random read/write speeds of 940K and 1000K IOPS and is offered in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations. The NV500 is another PCIe 4.0 drive with lower performance coming in at 5000 MB/s and 4400 MB/s for sequential read/write and will be available in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities.

The NV3000 RGB is a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD featuring an ARGB heatsink compatible with all mainstream motherboard lighting ecosystems. The drive is equipped with an independent DRAM cache allowing it to reach sequential read speeds of 3500 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 2100 MB/s and will also be offered in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB models. The NV3000 features reduced performance than its RGB counterpart with max speeds of 3100 MB/s and 2100 MB/s and is only available in 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB sizes.

Driven by forces such as the pandemic, geopolitics, and the digital transformation of everyday life, there has been a shortage of global foundry production capacity for nearly two years and shortages have been especially severe for mature 1Xnm~180nm nodes, according to TrendForce's investigations. Although all foundries are furiously increasing capital expenditures to expand capacity, unrealized future expansion does not ease existing supply issues. In addition, the uneven distribution of supply chain resources that has exacerbated the shortage of parts and components has yet to be definitively alleviated. Circumstances as a whole will continue affecting shipments of related whole devices. Only the PC category is expected to emerge largely unscathed in 1Q22.

Moving into 1Q22, TrendForce states, due to the limited increase in production capacity, the market's supply situation is expected to be approximately the same as in 4Q21. However, some end products have entered their traditional off-season cycle and the slowdown in demand momentum is expected to alleviate the immediate pressure on OEMs and ODMs regarding supply chain stocking.

congatec - a leading vendor of embedded and edge computing technology - introduces the 12th Generation Intel Core mobile and desktop processors (formerly code named Alder Lake) on 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules. Featuring the latest high performance cores from Intel, the new modules in COM-HPC Size A and C as well as COM Express Type 6 form factors offer major performance gains and improvements for the world of embedded and edge computing systems. Most impressive is the fact that engineers can now leverage Intel's innovative performance hybrid architecture. Offering of up to 14 cores/20 threads on BGA and 16 cores/24 threads on desktop variants (LGA mounted), 12th Gen Intel Core processors provide a quantum leap [1] in multitasking and scalability levels. Next-gen IoT and edge applications benefit from up to 6 or 8 (BGA/LGA) optimized Performance-cores (P-cores) plus up to 8 low power Efficient-cores (E-cores) and DDR5 memory support to accelerate multithreaded applications and execute background tasks more efficiently.

MinisForum is a small mini PC manufacturer, known for their Ryzen series of mini PCs. Earlier this month they released information about their upcoming Ryzen 5000X series mini PC which will come with a dedicated graphics card. Finally today they have unveiled this Intel chip mini PC: TH50. MinisForum's previous Intel chip mini PC was the TL50, which came with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor and was launched in May this year. The new model, called the TH50, is more powerful than the TL50, comes with Windows 10 Pro and is compatible with Windows 11.

The EliteMini TH50 is powered by the 11th generation Intel Core i5 processor "Intel Core i5-11320H" and is compliant with Intel Iris Xe Graphics with built-in graphics for high performance to handle everyday slightly higher load task use; the Intel Core i5-11320H processor with built-in Intel Torch Xe graphics allows you to toy with light games with lots of high quality images, and by lowering the image quality setting, even slightly heavier games can be played comfortably. It performs well in content editing software such as Photoshop and Premiere as well as popular games such as APEX and GTA5.

The first mainstream Z690 boards have made an appearance online in the shape of ASUS' Prime Z690-P series. As with most of ASUS' Prime boards, these are fairly basic boards, but shouldn't leave the average user wanting for much, although ASUS has made a rather odd layout decision on these boards that we can't quite grasp.

The four models on display are the Prime Z690-P WiFi D4, Prime Z690-P D4, Prime Z690-P and Prime Z690M-Plus D4. The last model doesn't strictly belong to the Prime Z690-P family, but it follows a pretty similar overall design. The Prime Z690-P is obviously the only DDR5 SKU among the four boards, although from what we can tell, there are no other differences between it and the equivalent DDR4 model.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, presents its line-up of 8-bay storage servers designed to meet the needs of modern businesses for enterprise virtualization, data-intensive applications, and service continuity. TerraMaster's Rackmount NAS Series is equipped with the latest technologies and advanced securities to deliver efficient performance with excellent data security making it ideal for business and government use.

The TerraMaster 8-Bay Rackmount NAS Series support up to 1000 user accounts with RBAC rights management and Windows ACL. This allows easy user and access rights management. The 8-Bay Rackmount NAS Series supports 2.5" and 3.5" drives and comes fitted with four RJ-45 1 GbE LAN ports. All models also come with one PCIe 3.0 X16 slot and two PCIe 3.0 x8 slots offering expansion flexibility for 10GbE NIC cards or dedicated RAID cards.

With the 15.6 and 17.3 inch XMG APEX gaming laptops, XMG is positioning a new model series below its own high-end range consisting of the NEO and PRO series. These new laptops combine mobile AMD eight-core processors up to the Ryzen 9 5900HX with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards up to the RTX 3070. The company is simultaneously introducing the XMG FOCUS, a new product series in the entry-level segment. Intel's Core i7-11800H and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti offer decent gaming performance, while good connectivity and memory round off the overall package. All four new models feature an IPS display with 144 Hz.

Until now, the XMG APEX 15 in the older E20 generation represented uncompromising desktop CPU performance, with processors up to the Ryzen 9 3950X in a laptop. Although XMG is already working on a direct successor under a slightly different name, it is unleashing the XMG APEX 15 and APEX 17 of the M21 generation for the time being with the currently fastest eight-core mobile processors from AMD. The laptops are available with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H as well as with the slightly faster Ryzen 9 5900HX from the 54 watt TDP class, as well as with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or RTX 3060 in the respective maximum TGP configuration (RTX 3070: 125 watts plus 15 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0; RTX 3060: 115 watts plus 15 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0).

AAEON, a leader in industrial PC solutions, announces the BOXER-6642-CML fanless industrial box PC. Powered by 10th Generation Intel Core desktop processors, this innovative solution delivers higher performance with greater value in a low-profile form factor perfect for deploying in tight spaces.
The BOXER-6642-CML is the first fanless industrial PC from AAEON to offer the 10th Generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7/i9 and Intel Celeron processors (formerly Comet Lake) up to 35 W TDP. Utilizing a desktop socket-type chipset, the system delivers greater performance value compared with systems deploying mobile chipsets. Additionally, the system the system can be easily scaled or upgraded to match the performance needs of any application. With up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory, the BOXER-6642-CML ensures top end processing performance to support a wide range of industrial applications.

One key feature of the BOXER-6642-CML is its low-profile industrial design. At only 54 mm in height, the system can fit into any tight space, making it easier to deploy right where it's needed. The system also features a wide voltage input (10 to 35 V) and provides consistent operation without loss of performance in temperatures from 0°C up to 45°C. The BOXER-6642-CML is built with fanless construction, keeping dust and other contaminants out, allowing for reliable, long lasting operation.

Axiomtek - a world-renowned leader relentlessly devoted in the research, development and manufacture of series of innovative and reliable industrial computer products of high efficiency - is proud to announce the MANO540, a Mini-ITX motherboard powered by the FCLGA1200 10th Gen Intel Core i9/i7/i5/i3 processor (codename: Comet Lake) with the Intel H410 chipset. It also supports two 260-pin DDR4-2933/2666/2400 SO-DIMM sockets for up to 64 GB of memory. With a small form factor of 17 x 17 cm, this industrial motherboard is an excellent choice for space-constrained environments. The advanced MANO540 is specifically designed for performance-demanding applications with its excellent reliability as well as communication and edge computing capabilities.

"Axiomtek's MANO540 supports ubiquitous high-speed data transfer interfaces, including PCIe 3.0, USB 3.2 Gen1 and SATA-600. It also features one M.2 Key B slot for USB 3.2 interface 5G module. The expansion is provided by one PCIe x16, one M.2 Key E slot and one full-size PCI Express Mini Card slot for wireless devices such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth," said Kenny Lin, the product manager of the Product Planning Division at Axiomtek. "This industrial motherboard is integrated with Intel integrated Gfx graphics engine with UHD 4K resolution and provides rapid video acceleration and dual-view capability through the DisplayPort, HDMI 2.0 and VGA. Axiomtek also offers the ECM500, an industrial chassis designed for the MANO540 to help shorten the time to market."

The all-new AS-T10G2 is here, bringing increased efficiency and speeds to the much beloved AS-T10G. The AS-T10G2 uses the AQC-107 controller, which offers increased performance, and lower power requirements. Using the Lockerstor 16R Pro, transfer rates were found to be up to 1127 MB/s when reading and 1124 MB/s when writing. The AS-T10G2 also supports IP, TCP, UDP checksum offload to reduce CPU usage for a more efficient experience.

The AS-T10G2 is equipped with a 10 Gbps 8p8c RJ-45 Ethernet port. The AS-T10G2 supports automatic switching between all major Ethernet speeds and is compatible with four lanes of PCI Express 3.0. Pop it into an ASUSTOR NAS running ADM 4.0 or a PC to upgrade network speeds to 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The AS-T10G2 is compatible with both full-height and half-height computers, making it compatible with almost any device featuring a PCI Express slot, ensuring affordable, yet high speed networking for both homes and businesses.

ASRock has been accommodating the mining craze and the company is today launching its H510 Pro BTC+ motherboard designed to host a suite of GPUs. More precisely, the company has released a motherboard with six full-size PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. Measuring at the huge 50.1 x 22.4 cm, the motherboard is anything but small. There is room to install any triple-slot GPU with ease, as the slots are spaced out nicely. However, to feed all six GPUs at full speed, you would need as many as 96 lanes. That is why only the first slot runs at full x16 speed, while others are stuck at x1 speeds. The H510 chipset can not support 96 lanes naturally.

To power the board, you need a double 24-pin PCIe power connector. The power is regulated by four-phase power delivery with 50 Amp chokes. There is one SATA III connector and an M.2 PCIe 3.0 slot for M.2 SSDs that are up to 110 mm long. The motherboard is available for purchase at Newegg at the price tag of $279.

Tachyum Inc. today announced that it has taken delivery of an IO motherboard for its Prodigy Universal Processor hardware emulator from manufacturing. This provides the company with a complete system prototype integrating CPU, memory, PCI Express, networking and BMC management subsystems when connected to the previously announced field-programmable gate array (FPGA) emulation system board.

The Tachyum Prodigy FPGA DDR-IO Board connects to the Prodigy FPGA CPU Board to provide memory and IO connectivity for the FPGA-based CPU tiles. The fully functional Prodigy emulation system is now ready for further build out, including Linux boot and incorporation of additional test chips. It is available to customers to perform early testing and software development prior to a full four-socket reference design motherboard, which is expected to be available Q4 2021.

AAEON, an industry leader of AI and IOT solutions, is excited to celebrate the launch of Intel's latest scalable platform, the 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (formerly Ice Lake-SP). As an associate member of the Intel IoT Solutions Alliance, AAEON is excited to bring this new technology to market with the ARES-WHI0 industrial ATX server board and other future products.

The 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors deliver the next generation of high-end computing performance and support for vital data integrity and security technologies. This new generation of Xeon SP brings higher processing speeds and Intel's Deep Learning Boost technology, allowing for greater acceleration and more efficient processing for AI server applications.

ATP Electronics, the global leader in specialized storage and memory solutions, has announced the launch of its tiniest NVMe flash storage offering: the N700 Series PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe solid state drives (SSDs, which are available as M.2 Type 1620 heatsink ball-grid array (HSBGA) package. Complying with M.2 specifications, the M.2 Type 1620 HSBGA measures just 16 (L) x 20 (W) x 1.6 (H) mm, supporting high-speed PCIe 3.0 interface x4 lanes and NVMe protocol to deliver up to 32 Gb/s bandwidth at 8 Gb/s per lane. The soldered-down design makes them vibration-proof, while the 291-ball packaging takes up minimal space within tightly confined systems.

For customers who prefer a removable and field-replaceable design, ATP can accommodate the HSBGA onto an M.2 2230 module with the same firmware and NAND configuration. Both variants are suitable for thin and light systems in embedded, industrial and mobile applications. N700 Series SSDs are built with 3D triple-level cell (TLC) configured as pseudo single-level cell (pSLC) NAND flash. By storing only one bit per cell, they increase the reliability and endurance of the NAND flash memory, while benefiting from the lower cost compared with native SLC, due to the higher cell density.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the SF3 Series - SxS PRO X Card Reader, the latest model in its family of professional media readers and the upgraded replacement for its popular original model in the lineup. The SF3 Series - SxS PRO X Card Reader features dual card slots and a dual-port 40Gbps Thunderbolt interface. Developed to support the requirements for shooting stable 4K video at high bit rates, SxS PRO X is the latest SxS memory card created by Sony for use as onboard recording media in some of their latest pro digital video cameras and camcorders.

Compatible with Mac and Windows computers, the SF3 Series - SxS PRO X Card Reader ingests footage from all SxS media at up to their maximum supported speeds. Designed for demanding workflows, SF3 Series card readers are built with rugged aluminium enclosures and dual 40 Gbps Thunderbolt ports, enabling users to stack and connect up to six readers in a daisy chain to their computers through a single cable and ingest footage from four, six, or more cards simultaneously.

ASUS today announced Mini PC PB62, a durable computer that delivers powerful performance to provide flexibility, expandability and performance to suit a range of business applications, including digital signage, point-of-sales (POS) system, kiosks and intelligent vending machines. Mini PC PB62 is powered by the latest desktop-grade up to 11th Generation Intel Core processor and fast DDR4 3200 MHz memory.

Engineered for performance: 11th Gen Intel Core, DDR4 3200 MHz memory and Intel Optane
With the latest up to 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, Mini PC PB62 is caters for with support for either a 35- or 65-watt CPU - so it's ready to be specified for supreme efficiency or maximum performance. PB62 also has built-in support for Intel Optane H20 memory, the technology that greatly improves storage speeds, enables frequently-used documents, pictures, videos and applications to be accessed more quickly while improving overall system performance to maximize productivity and efficiency.

AMD has four weeks ago acknowledged that there was a problem with 500 series motherboard chipsets. The problem has occurred with a few chipset functions like USB connectivity, USB 2.0 audio crackling (e.g. DAC/AMP combos), and USB/PCIe Gen 4 exclusion. To fix these problems, consumers were forced to either put up with problems or lower the PCIe standard from Gen 4 to Gen 3 and switch USB protocol revision from 3.0 to 2.0. This of course wasn't the ideal solution, especially for bandwidth-heavy applications. Users have submitted many reports to AMD, and the company appears to have found a root cause of these issues. AMD has published a Reddit thread, that reports that the company found a solution to the problem and that we are going to see a fix for it in a form in AGESA BIOS update.

AMD RedditAMD has prepared AGESA 1.2.0.2 to deploy this update, and we plan to distribute 1.2.0.2 to our motherboard partners for integration in about a week. Customers can expect downloadable BIOSes containing AGESA 1.2.0.2 to begin with beta updates in early April. The exact update schedule for your system will depend on the test and implementation schedule for your vendor and specific motherboard model. If you continue to experience intermittent USB connectivity issues after updating your system to AGESA 1.2.0.2, we encourage you to download the standalone AMD Bug Report Tool and open a ticket with AMD Customer Support.

Intel announced their 'mainstream' 670p PCIe 3.0 QLC SSD family earlier this week with pricing more in line with what you would expect for PCIe 4.0 drives. Intel announced three 670p models with 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities, the advertised speeds varied with sequential reads of 3500 MB/s on the 1/2 TB models and 3000 MB/s for the 512 GB variant. Sequential write speeds were quoted as 1600 MB/s for the 512 GB, 2500 MB/s for the 1 TB, and 2700 MB/s for the 2 TB model. The latest QLC memory also brought a write endurance increase of 23% and the SSD's all came with a five-year warranty.

While these drives all offered respectable performance their pricing did not reflect their 'mainstream' target market with the drives priced at 90 USD, 155 USD, and 330 USD for the 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB models respectively. It would appear that retailers are taking it upon themselves to correct this by reducing prices by up to 24% on the new drives. Newegg currently has the drives listed for 69.99 USD, 129.99 USD, and 249.99 USD which represents a price drop of 20 USD for the 512 GB, 25 USD for the 1 TB, and 80 USD for the 2 TB version. These new prices make the 670p series a much more viable PCIe 3.0 SSD however, it is yet to be seen if these are the new official prices or just a discount from an individual retailer.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

Sonnet Technologies today announced the launch of the Echo III Desktop and Echo III Rackmount, the newest members of the company's award-winning family of Thunderbolt 3 to PCI Express (PCIe ) card expansion systems. The Echo III Desktop is a full-size desktop chassis that enables the use of up to three high-performance PCIe cards with computers equipped with Thunderbolt ports, while the Echo III Rackmount offers the same support and features in a rack-mountable 2U enclosure. Replacing the popular Echo Express III-D and III-R (including HDX Editions), the new Echo systems have been upgraded with the addition of a mode switch that enables the use of multiple Avid Pro Tools|HDX PCIe cards and new cooling fans for even quieter operation. Both of these units have been Avid-qualified.