ASUS today unveiled the ThunderboltEX 3-TR its latest 2-port Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) add-on card for ASUS Intel 400-series chipset motherboards that feature the TB3 header. The full height add-on card features a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface, and puts out two Thunderbolt 3 ports in the type-C format. There are two mini-DisplayPort inputs so you can add DisplayPort passthrough from your graphics card for each of the two Thunderbolt ports. ASUS even includes a pair of short-length miniDP to standard DP cables. It also includes a USB 2.0 cable, and a cable for the TB3 header on your compatible ASUS motherboard. Under the hood is an Intel "Titan Ridge" JHL7540 2-port Thunderbolt 3 controller. The card requires a 6-pin PCIe power input. For now its compatibility list includes all Intel Z490 and H470 chipset motherboards by ASUS that feature the TB3 header.

Sabrent, a company focused on making storage devices and PC accessories, today announced the release of the world's first 8 terabyte NVMe SSD delivered in the M.2 form factor. The new SSD dubbed Rocket Q 8 TB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD is a real treat for all SSD enthusiasts. Besides its staggering capacity, it has plenty of features as well. Built on top of 3D QLC NAND Flash memory chips, the Rocket Q SSD is supposed to deliver very high speeds on PCIe 3.0 x4 bus. With up to 3.4 GB/sec reads, and up to 3 GB/sec writes, the SSD is pushing the limits of the PCIe 3.0 x4 bus that it is designed to work for.

Rocking a Phison's E12S controller, it is supposed to maintain high speeds even on random 4K reads and writes. The company didn't reveal too many details about the performance, however, we can wait for some reviews. The SSD is PCIe 3.1 Compliant, NVMe 1.3 Compliant, and supports SMART and TRIM commands. With a purchase of this SSD, you get a free copy of Sabrent Acronis True Image for Sabrent Software for easy cloning. Pricing and availability are unknown.

Asetek, the creator of the all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler and the global leader in liquid cooling solutions for gaming PCs and DIY enthusiasts, today announced its Rad Card GPU Cooler, bringing liquid cooled GPUs to space constrained PC cases. Asetek's Rad Card GPU Cooler, the industry's first slot-in PCIe radiator card, is first available in Dell-Alienware's newly introduced Alienware Aurora R11 PC.

Space concerns are a real issue for PC manufacturers, leaving GPU air cooling as the only option, until now. Asetek took this challenge head-on, innovating a new approach to radiator technology that reimagines the shape and location of the radiator. The Asetek Rad Card GPU Cooler fits into your motherboard's PCIe slot, just like any other add-in card. By utilizing PCIe slots, Asetek has defined a way to overcome PC manufacturers' dilemma of finding additional space inside the case for a liquid cooled GPU heat exchanger (HEx).

Update May 18th: This card may not be limited to just OEMs with Asetek tweeting "Not all of them made it to Alienware. Not what to do with these...". Asetek is very open about seeking feedback and is watching demand for this product from consumers, possibly even getting ready for a giveaway so it will be exciting to see what comes from this.

NVIDIA today launched the NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX -6 Lx SmartNIC—a highly secure and efficient 25/50 gigabit per second (Gb/s) Ethernet smart network interface controller (SmartNIC)—to meet surging growth in enterprise and cloud scale-out workloads.

ConnectX-6 Lx, the 11th generation product in the ConnectX family, is designed to meet the needs of modern data centers, where 25 Gb/s connections are becoming standard for handling demanding workflows, such as enterprise applications, AI and real-time analytics. The new SmartNIC extends accelerated computing by leveraging software-defined, hardware-accelerated engines to offload more security and network processing from CPUs.

ADATA today announced the Falcon line of SSDs in the M.2-2280 form-factor, with NVMe 1.3 protocol support, leveraging PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface. The drives are characterized by an aluminium heatspreader on top of the NAND flash chips and controller, which isn't just an adhesive metal peal, but a 1 mm-thick metal plate. The Falcon comes in capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB; and uses 3D NAND flash memory (likely QLC).

The ADATA Falcon offers sequential speeds of up to 3,100 MB/s reads, with up to 1,500 MB/s writes; and up to 180,000 IOPS 4K random access. The 2 TB variant offers 1,200 TBW endurance, the 1 TB variant offers 600 TBW, the 512 GB variant 300 TBW, and the 256 GB variant 150 TBW. ADATA is backing the drives with a 5-year warranty. The company didn't reveal pricing.

ASUS has apparently begun listing motherboards on the as-of-yet-unreleased, as-of-yet-undetailed AMD A520 chipset. Lower in the chipset rung than AMD's X570 and B550 chipsets, the A520 is expected to not offer any dedicated PCIe 4.0 lanes by itself - at most, motherboards will support the same 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes offered by AMD's CPUs, with the rest I/O being PCIe 3.0-based in order to further cut platform and chipset costs.

All of the A520 chipset motherboards listed by ASUS seem to be in the mATX form-factor - which again makes sense, as having the most basic chipset in order to cut costs and then using the same PCB real-estate as more expensive chipset solutions doesn't seem like a wise choice. The listed motherboards are the
PRIME A520M-A; PRIME A520M-E; PRIME A520M-K; TUF GAMING A520M-A; and TUF GAMING A520M-PLUS. As you can see, these motherboards are set in the ASUS TUF and Prime product lines - there's no mention of any Strix-branded products.

Since the debut of its plans to create a custom Operating System and make itself independent from everyone, Huawei has been working hard to bring that idea to life. Creating custom software and custom hardware solutions, Huawei's engineers have been rather busy. And now, Huawei aims to be the new player in the Chinese PC industry, replacing the already available solutions that have foreign technology with potential backdoors that could represent a threat to Chinese information security. So to prepare for that, Huawei is creating a custom OS called HarmonyOS that will accompany custom hardware solutions.

The HarmonyOS was announced last year at Huawei Developer Conference 2019 (HDC 2019) as a project Huawei is working on. However, it seems like that project will become some of the more important things the company is working on. A well-known person for tipping about the latest industry news on Weibo said that Huawei is preparing to launch custom PCs very soon for domestic (Chinese) audience. Huawei is supposedly working with major cities and regions in China to supply its infrastructure with new solutions. And what those solutions will be? Well, Huawei plans to combine the HarmonyOS with its already launched Kunpeng Desktop Board.

Creative rolled out the Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus, a discrete internal sound card with PCIe interface. The card is a step up from the Sound BlasterX AE-5, and is positioned below the AE-7 the company debuted in June 2019. The new AE-5 Plus uses the same Sound Core 3D audio processor as the rest of the AE series, but with an ESS Sabre Ultra DAC carried over from the AE-5, which offers 122 dB SNR, sound resolution of 32-bit 384 kHz, and 0.00032% total harmonic distortion. Much like the AE-5, it lacks user-replaceable OPAMPs. What sets the AE-5 Plus apart is support for Dolby Digital Live and DTS encoding, just like the AE-7 and AE-9, which is something the original AE-5 lacks. It also only comes in a black color-scheme, unlike the AE-5. The company didn't reveal pricing, although we expect it to be around 10-15% pricier than the $149 AE-5.

TEAMGROUP announces two new PCIe M.2 Solid State Drives, the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO-Z330 and ZERO-Z340 M.2 SSDs. Both Intel and AMD compatible and support the latest PCIe Gen3 x4 interface. It uses patented graphene copper foil cooling module and made with professional technology to achieve a thin and lightweight structure with less than 1 mm of thickness. Specially built in black and gold for gaming laptops and high performance desktops, this is a weapon of choice for gamers who want to conquer the gaming world.

T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO-Z330 and CARDEA ZERO-Z340 M.2 SSDs, the two graphene high-speed solid state drives are using the latest PCIe Gen3 x4 high speed interface with the NVMe 1.3 standard and has patented graphene copper foil cooling modules. The extremely thin and lightweight structure can eliminate device interference during installation. The two M.2 SSDs have continuous read/write speeds up to 2100 MB/s reads with up to 1700 MB/s writes; and 3400/ 3000 MB/s respectively, providing different solutions for different usage needs of gamers.

For those of us on older desktops with plenty of PCIe slots to go around, and a brand new 802.11ax router in the house to drive a swanky new gigabit fiber Internet connection, TP-Link released the Archer TX3000E, a PCI-Express add-on card that gives your desktop 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. The product consists of three components, the add-on card, an antenna assembly, and cabling. The add-on card features PCI-Express 2.0 x1 (5 Gbps per direction) host interface, and uses an Intel AX200 WLAN controller that's passively cooled by a heatsink.

The Archer TX3000E supports dual-band 802.11ax, with up to 2402 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, and up to 574 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, along with support for WPA3. Besides PCIe, a 4-pin USB 2.0 cable connects to one of your motherboard's vacant USB 2.0 headers, for the Bluetooth 5.0 component to work. The desktop antenna assembly features two multi-directional antennae, and a magnetized base. Available now, the Archer TX3000E is priced at 79.90€.

Intel's upcoming Rocket Lake-S desktop platform is expected to arrive sometime later this year, however, we didn't have any concrete details on what will it bring. Thanks to the exclusive information obtained by VideoCardz'es sources at Intel, there are some more details regarding the RKL-S platform. To start, the RKL-S platform is based on a 500-series chipset. This is an iteration of the upcoming 400-series chipset, and it features many platform improvements. The 500-series chipset based motherboards will supposedly have an LGA 1200 socket, which is an improvement in pin count compared to LGA 1151 socket found on 300 series chipset.

The main improvement is the CPU core itself, which is supposedly a 14 nm adaptation of Tiger Lake-U based on Willow Cove core. This design is representing a backport of IP to an older manufacturing node, which results in bigger die space due to larger node used. When it comes to the platform improvements, it will support the long-awaited PCIe 4.0 connection already present on competing platforms from AMD. It will enable much faster SSD speeds as there are already PCIe 4.0 NVMe devices that run at 7 GB/s speeds. With RKL-S, there will be 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes present, where four would go to the NVMe SSD and 16 would go to the PCIe slots from GPUs. Another interesting feature of the RKL-S is the addition of Xe graphics found on the CPU die, meant as iGPU. Supposedly based on Gen12 graphics, it will bring support for HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4a connectors.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in data solutions, today announced the latest in high-performance solutions for multi-user NAS environments, adding to their award-winning IronWolf SSD product line. Seagate's IronWolf 510 is an M.2 NVMe SSD with caching speeds of up to 3 GB/s for NVMe-compatible systems and is ideal for creative pros and business NAS needing 24x7 multi-user storage that is cache enabled.

The IronWolf 510 SSD meets leading top NAS manufacturer requirements of one drive write per day (DWPD), allowing multi-user NAS environments to do more with their data with lasting performance. The IronWolf 510 SSD is reliable with 1.8 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) in a PCIe form factor, two years of Rescue Data Recovery Services, and a five-year limited warranty. IronWolf Health Management helps analyze drive health and will soon be available on compatible NAS systems.

The B550 chipset has been absent for a while, meaning that mid-tier motherboard models were lacking and that space is about to be filled. So far, the only thing we got was a B550A chipset, which lacked proper support for PCIe 4.0 connection, based on the refreshed B450 chipset. The B550A supports only one PCIe 4.0 slot, the one connected directly to CPU, while the regular, non-A version is said to deliver proper PCIe 4.0 configuration. The first picture of AMD's upcoming B550 motherboard has appeared.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have a picture of a B550 motherboard manufactured by SOYO, a Chinese motherboard manufacturer, and the brand behind Maxsun. Pictured below is a Micro-ATX format motherboard featuring two x16 PCIe 4.0 slots and one smaller, x1 slot. There are two DDR4 slots, along with M.2 PCIe 4.0 connector. Additionally, it has some interesting dragon-inspired masking as well.

The PCI-Express gen 6.0 specification reached an important development milestone, with the publication of its version 0.5 first-draft. This provides important pointers to PCI-SIG members on what features and design changes gen 6.0 hopes to bring, and what its all important number is - bandwidth. PCIe gen 6.0 quadruples per-lane bandwidth over gen 4.0 to 64 GT/s (double that of gen 5.0), resulting in bi-directional bandwidth of 256 GB/s in an x16 configuration.

The spec also introduces a new physical layer change, with PAM4 (pulse amplitude modulation) signaling replacing NRZ (non-return to zero), a key ingredient in the generational bandwidth doubling effort. Despite this, PCIe gen 6.0 retains backwards-compatibility with all older generations of PCIe, which could mean the PCIe slot on motherboards may not look any different. PCIe gen 6.0 also introduces FEC (forward error-correction), and has similar per-channel reach as PCIe gen 5.0. Our older article on Intel's proprietary CXL outlines a key feature of PCIe gen 5.0 besides its bandwidth doubling over gen 4.0 - scalability. Although targeting completion in 2021, it could take several more years for the technology to transcend enterprise computing segments and reach the client. PCI-SIG anticipates the need for gen 6.0 kind of bandwidth in the industry by 2025.

MSI got bored of old dark/gray/white laptop designs and decided to spice things up a bit. Say goodbye to the old boring laptops and enter the MSI Prestige 14 Limited Edition Rose Pink laptop. Designed as a premium-looking machine, it has decent specifications to back up the good looks. Equipped with a 14-inch IPS display comes in two variants, a 1080p version, and 4K edition, and it has 100% coverage of the AdobeRGB spectrum. With such specifications, we know that it is targeting the professional content creators.

Under the hood, there is Intel's 10th generation Core i7-10710U "Comet Lake" processor paired with 16 GB of LPDDR3 2133 MHz RAM running in single-channel mode. For graphics, NVIDIA's GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU is on board with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. Storage is limited to 512 gigabytes of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD space, as there is no room for expansion. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi 6 powered by Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 wireless adapter. When it comes to the IO, the Prestige 14 laptop is rocking two USB 2.0 adapter along with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, one 3.5 mm headphone jack, and one Micro-SD card reader. There is also a 3-cell 50 Whr battery powering the system. Price-wise, this laptop is retailing for around $1399 on stores like Amazon and Newegg.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have information that GIGABYTE has listed its upcoming motherboards for AMD and Intel platforms. Starting with AMD's upcoming mid-range chipset, the B550 model is supposed to bring PCIe 4.0 connectivity options to lower-priced motherboard variants. So far, only high-end chipset versions like X570 had PCIe 4.0 support, while the mid-range option was lacking. GIGABYTE has prepared a total of six B550 AORUS models, along with a GAMING series which is supposed to be a tier below AORUS models. The B550 chipset will span all motherboard sizes, including ATX, Micro-ATX, and Mini-ITX.

In the EEC listing, GIGABYTE also submitted Intel's upcoming Z490 motherboards for Comet Lake-S CPUs. In the listing, we see a total of 15 motherboards listed with an unusable entry. Again the W480 chipset appears, which is meant to power workstation motherboards. This chipset will go inside a new motherboard lineup called the "VISION" series. While we don't know what this new series brings, we know that both the workstation enabled W480 chipset and regular Z490 chipset will be a part of it.

ASUS has released a ROG-branded riser cable for your graphics card, which will allow you to display it in different configurations on your case. Whether you make a custom solution or have a case that supports vertical graphics cards already, the ROG Strix Riser Cable is the perfect solution. There is no RGB lighting, but ASUS has equipped the ROG Strix Raiser Cable with EMI shielding and special PCB layout to prevent any signal losses from the extended travel distance between your graphics card and your boards' PCIe slot.

The ROG Strix Riser Cable also includes ASUS' patented Safe Slot design, which they employ in their motherboards for securely fastening your graphics cards to your system. The ROG Riser Cable supports PCIe 3.0 x16 signaling, and is available for a relatively hefty €49.99.

European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a Europe's project to kickstart a homegrown development of custom processors tailored towards different usage models that the European Union might need. The first task of EPI is to create a custom processor for high-performance computing applications like machine learning, and the chip prototypes are already on their way. The EPI chairman of the board Jean-Marc Denis recently spoke to the Next Platform and confirmed some information regarding the processor design goals and the timeframe of launch.

Supposed to be manufactured on TSMC's 6 nm EUV (TSMC N6 EUV) technology, the EPI processor will tape-out at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, and it is going to be heterogeneous. That means that on its 2.5D die, many different IPs will be present. The processor will use a custom ARM CPU, based on a "Zeus" iteration of Neoverese server core, meant for general-purpose computation tasks like running the OS. When it comes to the special-purpose chips, EPI will incorporate a chip named Titan - a RISC-V based processor that uses vector and tensor processing units to compute AI tasks. The Titan will use every new standard for AI processing, including FP32, FP64, INT8, and bfloat16. The system will use HBM memory allocated to the Titan processor, have DDR5 links for the CPU, and feature PCIe 5.0 for the inner connection.

It's finally here: a high-end PCI-Express gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD by Samsung, made end-to-end by homebrew components. When it releases sometime later this year with a possible technical reveal in Q2, the SSD 980 will be possibly the only client-segment M.2 NVMe PCIe gen 4 SSD to feature MLC (2 bits per cell) NAND flash memory. This also means that the highest capacity on offer is just 1 TB. The company also put out sequential transfer rates: up to 6,500 MB/s reads, with up to 5,000 MB/s writes. The biggest payoffs of MLC would be sustained write performance and endurance (in its capacity class, compared to TLC and QLC).

Next up, is the Portable SSD T7 Touch, a successor to the T5 from 2017. This drive comes in an in-built fingerprint reader, letting you secure its data with your fingerprints. The drive is also a much needed update to the T5, which still uses 64-layer TLC NAND; and possibly uses the latest generation 96-layer V-NAND. The drive is built with an aluminium case that's drop-resistant up to 2 m. A single USB 3.2 connection handles power and data. The drive includes type-C to type-C and type-C to type-A cables, and will be compatible not just with PCs, but also Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

ASUS today rolled out the Pro WS X299 SAGE II, a redesign and refresh of its WS X299 SAGE series quasi-workstation motherboards, designed for those who want to use Intel's 10th generation Core XE "Cascade Lake-X" HEDT processors in a workstation-like environment (CEB form-factor) and can make do without ECC memory. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and two 8-pin EPS power connectors, along with an optional 6-pin PCIe power input to stabilize add-on card power delivery. An 8-phase VRM conditions power for the socket LGA2066 processor. The board employs PLX PEX8747 bridge chips to convert two x16 PCIe gen 3.0 links from the LGA2066 processor to four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots with full bandwidth, or seven slots with x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 wiring.

Storage options on the ASUS Pro WS X299 SAGE II include three U.2 ports, two M.2 slots (one right below the PCH heatsink, and the other vertical); and eight SATA 6 Gbps ports. Network connectivity includes two 2.5 GbE interfaces driven by a pair of Intel i225-LM controllers. USB connectivity includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports driven by an ASMedia controller (from which one is type-C), a second such controller driving an internal port, and eight USB 3.2 gen 1 ports from the X299 PCH. A high-grade onboard audio solution featuring Realtek S1220A HDA codec, headphones amp, ground-layer isolation, and audio-grade capacitors, make for the rest of this board. The company didn't reveal pricing.

The leading global motherboard & graphics card manufacturer, ASRock, a pleasure to launch brand new compact Mini PC - Mars Series. Supports up to Intel Core i5 Quad-Core processor, 32 GB DDR4-2666 MHz, PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, 2.5-inch hard drive, and wireless connectivity; all implies into 0.7-liter chassis with 26 mm height.

ASRock Mars offers abundant USB devices connectivity, features a total of 7 USB ports, including one Type-C port; In addition, the native SD card reader and dual display outputs to provide more productive and convenience.

Today, MAINGEAR is pleased to announce that the all-new Intel 9th Gen Core i9-9900KS flagship processor is now available across its product line of award-winning custom gaming PCs and workstations. Created to be the ultimate gaming processor, the i9-9900KS features up to 5.0 GHz all-core turbo frequency across 8 cores and 16 threads — gamers looking for the ultimate power boost need look no further. MAINGEAR products featuring the i9-9900KS offer an unmatched level of performance that takes your gaming and streaming experience to the next level!

To celebrate this amazing achievement in processing power, MAINGEAR is offering the i9-9900KS in select desktop configurations, like the award-winning VYBE, with a Limited Edition VYBE 9900KS Edition — in extremely limited quantities. Powered by an 8-core Intel Core i9-9900KS, this special offering is a top-tier gaming machine and the best way to experience the incredible performance the i9-9900KS has to offer. The VYBE 9900KS Edition combines this monstrous processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, ASUS ROG Ryujin 360 RGB AiO CPU Liquid Cooler with color display that helps users keep temperatures low and all-white VYBE chassis.

With 64 Gbps bandwidth per lane, 256 Gbps in x4, and a whopping 1 Tbps in x16 (128 GB/s per direction), PCI-Express 6.0 will debut in 2021 as 5G adoption hits critical mass in markets across the globe, to support server nodes, high-bandwidth network infrastructure, and lighting fast I/O for HPC and AI applications. Development of the new standard is already underway, with the specification having achieved a pre-release version 0.3, according to the PCI-SIG, the body that develops and maintains the PCI IP.

Further development, prototyping, and testing of the standard will run through 2020 as drafts of the standard are dispatched to interested parties. With the specification published in 2021, the first devices implementing it could arrive the following year. Granted, very few devices need 1 Tbps bandwidth, but the exercise of doubling bandwidth every 3 or so years has its maximum impact on devices that only have wiring for one PCIe lane, and directly impacts bandwidth of other I/O specifications that are derived from PCIe, such as USB, Thunderbolt, CXL, etc.

Intel has finalized design of its next-generation Xeon Scalable enterprise CPU socket for its "Sapphire Rapids" processors. Called LGA4677, the socket succeeds LGA3647, and is bound for a 2021 market release. Intel will have transitioned to its advanced 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node on the CPU front, and has adopted an "enterprise-first" strategy for the node. LGA4677 will be designed to handle the extremely high bandwidth of PCI-Express Gen 5, which doubles bandwidth over PCIe gen 4.0, and adds several enterprise-specific features Intel is rolling out in advance as part of its CXL interconnect. These details, along with a prototype LGA4189 socket, was revealed at an exhibit by TE Connectivity, a company that manufactures the socket. The additional pin-count could enable Intel to not just deploy PCI-Express Gen 5, but also expand I/O in other directions, such as more memory channels, dedicated Persistent Memory I/O, etc.

We've known for some time that AMD's mainstream-segment B550 chipset wouldn't bring all the bangs and whistles of its bigger, enthusiast-class cousin X570. For one, it wouldn't make sense to increase development and implementation costs of both the chipset and motherboards built for mainstream enthusiasts by adding PCIe 4.0 support and the more stringent signaling and power requirements the new standard entails. As such, B550 reportedly cuts down fully on PCIe 4.0 support, as well as on the latest USB standards, to offer a product that's sufficiently rounded up on I/O while offering overclocking support for users that demand it.

Reportedly, AMD's B550 will only support up to 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 devices, 6x USB 2.0, 4 + 4 SATA3 connections, and the interlink between the chipset and the CPU occurs via a 4x PCIe 3.0 interface, which means there's less bandwidth for communication between the CPU and the chipset than on X570 - not that that was a real problem on AMD's previous-gen Ryzen products, though, so that's more of a technicality at this point. Ryzen 3000 CPUs still offer 4x PCIe 4.0 ports, though, so these could be used for speeding up a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, for instance. The launch of B550-bound products is expected towards October.