ASUS today announced the TUF Gaming A2 SSD enclosure for gamers seeking a superfast and reliable storage solution. The enclosure features USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 connectivity to deliver data transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbps—twice that of TUF Gaming A1. With IP68-rated water- and dust-resistance plus durability that meets U.S. MIL-STD-810H standards, TUF Gaming A2 keeps the SSD safe in almost any environment. Additionally, its silicone-rubber exterior provides superior on-the-go protection for the SSD. The Q-Latch mechanism allows for easy, tool-free SSD installation, while an efficient thermal management system ensures outstanding cooling to ensure consistent performance. With broad compatibility across PC, Mac, mobile devices, and the latest game consoles, TUF Gaming A2 is perfect for anyone looking to maintain an extensive library of games.

Exceptional SSD performance
TUF Gaming A2 doubles the data transfer speeds of its predecessor, TUF Gaming A1, with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connectivity delivering up to 20 Gbps of bandwidth. Even though the latest AAA titles often exceed 100 GB in size, it takes just 90 seconds to transfer an entire game from the SSD to a console such as ROG Ally, or to any other popular gaming platform. When it comes to installing or removing the M.2 SSD, the innovative Q-Latch makes it easy, without requiring specific tools. The latch design employs a simple locking mechanism to secure the drive, so there's no need for screws. Additionally, TUF Gaming A2 features both PCIe NVMe and SATA interfaces, and can accommodate various 2242/2260/2280 SSD form factors while providing up to 4 TB of storage capacity.

TrendForce's latest reports reveal that the second quarter of 2024 saw a significant increase in demand for enterprise SSDs due to the increased deployment of NVIDIA GPU platforms and rising storage needs driven by AI applications, along with a surge in demand from server brands. The surge in demand for high-capacity SSDs for AI applications—coupled with suppliers' inability to adjust capacity in the first half of the year—resulted in a supply shortage that drove average enterprise SSD prices up by more than 25% QoQ. This price increase led to a revenue growth of over 50% for suppliers.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, demand from North American CSP customers continues to rise, and server brands show no signs of slowing down their orders, further boosting procurement volumes of enterprise SSD. With supply shortages persisting into the third quarter, TrendForce forecasts a 15% increase in contract prices compared to the previous quarter, with supplier revenues expected to grow by nearly 20%.

Toshiba Electronic Components Taiwan Corporation (Toshiba) announces the Mx11 family of helium-sealed high-capacity HDDs. The Mx11 family includes the MG11 Series, which provides capacities of up to 24 TB using conventional magnetic recording (CMR), and the MA11 Series which offers up to 28 TB capacities with shingled magnetic recording (SMR).

The new Mx11 family is designed to deliver new levels of density and power efficiency to customers tasked with controlling (or managing) operational costs while meeting the relentless demands of data growth. Built on a common architecture, both products feature a 10-disk, helium-sealed, standard 3.5-inch 7,200rpm design that leverages Toshiba's innovative flux control microwave assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. Engineered for higher performance and 24/7 reliability, the Mx11 family is designed with a 1GiB buffer, a workload rating of 550 TB per year, an MTTF/MTBF of 2.5 million hours, and an AFR of 0.35%.

Exascend, a service-oriented provider of innovative storage and memory solutions, proudly announces the expansion of its 2.5-inch SATA SSD series - SA4, SI4, and SE4 - to an unprecedented 15.36 TB capacity. This advancement redefines the limits of SATA SSD storage, catering demanding applications like digital/network video recorders and media post-production.

The new 15.36 TB SSDs are engineered for efficiency across diverse environments. The SE4 series operates in standard temperatures from 0°C to 70°C, while the SA4 and SI4 series feature robust coatings for extreme temperatures ranging from -40°C to +85°C, ensuring reliability in both enterprise settings and harsh conditions.

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) announces the release of its MG10-D Series, a family of air-filled conventional magnetic recording (CMR) HDDs supporting SAS and SATA interfaces and capacities of up to 10 TB. Crafted with precision engineering and over 50 years of Toshiba experience, the MG10-D Series delivers improved performance and power efficiency over prior generations. With sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drive (SED) options, valuable data is safeguarded by a storage solution known for its robust performance and unwavering dependability.

Built for the increasing application demands of enterprise server and storage solutions, the MG10-D Series delivers a new level of performance. For example, compared with the previous model, the new 10 TB MG10ADA10TE provides an approximately 13% better maximum sustained transfer speed of 268MiB/s and doubles the cache buffer size to 512MiB. It also reduces power consumption in active idle mode by approximately 21%, to 5.74 W. Architected to deliver improved total cost of ownership (TCO), the new MG10-D Series fits seamlessly into a wide variety of business-critical applications, such as email, data analytics, data retention, and surveillance.

Currently, only Phison offers widely available performance PCIe 5.0 NVMe controllers for consumer SSDs, although the competition is heating up and Chinese SSD controller makers MaxioTek and InnoGrit, as well as Taiwanese Silicon Motion either have or will be releasing competing controllers this year. However, it also looks like Taiwanese Realtek will be joining the fray, albeit a tad late, as their upcoming RTS5782 PCIe 5.0 NVMe controller, but the company didn't reveal a release schedule. Although Realtek is known as a more budget friendly chipmaker, regardless of the product segment, the RTS5782 will be an 8-channel controller with support for 3600 MT/s NAND, and it will have a dedicated DRAM cache using either DDR4, LPDDR3, LPDDR4 or LPDDR4x memory. It's said to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 12 GB/s, with random read and write IOPS hitting 2500K.

Realtek is also working on a pair of new DRAM-less models, the PCIe 4.0 RTS5776DL and the PCIe r5.0 RTS5781DL, both having support for 4-channel flash, but still supporting NAND speeds of up to 3600 MT/s. Engineering samples of the RTS5776DL are expected to be available before the end of this year, and it's said to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 7400 MB/s and random read and write IOPS of 1200K. The RTS5781DL will enter the engineering sample stage in the beginning of 2025 and will up the sequential read and write performance to 10 GB/s and the random read and write IOPS to 1400K. In addition to the new NVMe controllers, Realtek also had its RTS5736DL on display at Computex, which the company claims is the world's lowest power DRAM-less SATA SSD controller, that also supports size of up to 8 TB. Realtek claims the RTS5736DL is an ideal solution to pair with a USB 3.x bridge chip for external drives.

Transcend, a premier manufacturer of embedded memory products and storage solutions, is proud to announce the launch of the all-new MTS570P, a Power Loss Protection (PLP) SSD aimed at enhancing storage reliability for embedded systems. Engineered with a compact form factor without compromising on performance, it is an ideal solution for edge servers, IoV systems, network switches, POS machines, and various other types of edge devices.

Power Loss Protection (PLP) stands as a critical feature in modern embedded systems, particularly when used in rugged environments. Its main purpose is to safeguard data integrity during unstable power supply or unexpected power loss/failure, ultimately enhancing overall system reliability and safety by providing a stable and secure storage solution.

The PC master race has yielded many interesting activities for enthusiasts alike, with perhaps the pinnacle of activities being overclocking. Usually, subjects for overclocking include CPUs, GPUs, and RAM, with other components not actually being capable of overclocking. However, the enthusiast force never seems to settle, and today, we have proof of overclocking an off-the-shelf 2.5-inch SATA III NAND Flash SSD thanks to Gabriel Ferraz, a Computer Engineering graduate, and TechPowerUp's SSD database maintainer. He uses the RZX Pro 256 GB SSD in the video, a generic NAND Flash drive. The RZX Pro uses the Silicon Motion SM2259XT2 single-core, 32-bit ARC CPU running up to 550 MHz. It has two channels at 400 MHz, each with eight chip enable interconnects, allowing up to 16 NAND Flash dies to operate. The SSD doesn't feature a DRAM cache or support a host memory buffer. It has only one NAND Flash memory chip from Kioxia, uses BiCS FLASH 4 architecture, has 96 layers, and has 256 GB capacity.

While this NAND Flash die is rated for up to 400 MHz or 800 MT/s, it only ran at less than half the speed at 193.75 MHz or 387.5 MT/s at default settings. Gabriel acquired a SATA III to USB 3.0 adapter with a JMS578 bridge chip to perform the overclock. This adapter allows hot swapping of SSDs without the need to turn off the PC. He shorted two terminals in the drive's PCB to get the SSD to operate without its default safe mode. Mass Production Tools (MPTools), which OEMs use to flash SSDs, were used to change the firmware settings. Each NAND Flash architecture has its own special version of MPTools. The software directly shows control of the Flash clock, CPU clock, and output driving. However, additional tweaks like Flash IO driving with subdivisions need modifications. Control and Flash On-Die Termination (ODT) and Schmitt window trigger (referring to the Schmitt trigger comparator circuit) also needed a few modifications to make it work.

ADATA Industrial, the world's leading brand for industrial-grade embedded storage, officially released today its SATA 31D series of industrial-grade solid-state drives including 2.5-inch ISSS31D, M.2 2280 IM2S31D8, and M.2 2242 IM2S31D4, designed for retail terminals and embedded systems.

The SATA 31D series of industrial-grade SSDs utilize 112-layer 3D TLC flash memory developed by WDC, boasting a P/E Cycle of 3,000 which is comparable to MLC. The 31D series also offers a variety of ultra-thin and compact mainstream specifications such as SATA 2.5-inch, M.2 2280, M.2 2242, and various capacity options from 128 GB to 2 TB. 112-layer 3D NAND (BiCS5) 31D series SSDs all support thermal throttling technology, which reduces SSD transmission performance in stages to effectively mitigate the risk of data damage due to overheating. Furthermore, a LDPC ECC error correction mechanism and End-to-End Data Protection technology ensure reliable data transfer and improve data integrity. The 31D series is eminently suitable for POS systems, information kiosks, digital signage, and embedded equipment.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the new PCIe JBOD storage enclosures TL-Rx00PES-RP series, featuring PCIe Gen 3 x8, and providing up to 64 Gb/s data transfer speed. Users can expand existing NAS storage volumes to petabyte-class by connecting multiple TL-Rx00PES-RP series, without requiring RAID-rebuilding on the host NAS. The TL-Rx00PES-RP series supports SATA drives, allowing businesses to choose from a wide range of enterprise hard drives. This series is ideal for businesses who want to archive/back up virtualization applications, surveillance recordings, large data, and multimedia.

"Technological advancement usually comes at the cost of increased storage requirements. Organizations which handle particularly large data sets, such as research institutions and media production companies, require easy-to-scale solutions. QNAP presents the TL-Rx00PES-RP series as a petabyte-class storage solution for them. The TL-Rx00PES-RP series supports SATA drives, which are budget-friendly and available with large capacities," said Jerry Deng, Product Manager of QNAP.

As new applications, use cases and connected devices multiply, Western Digital's enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) remain critical for helping data center customers design more cost-efficient, scalable and sustainable infrastructure. When combined with the emergence of generative AI and the multitude of innovative applications it is enabling, the demand for high-capacity, low-power and reliable storage is poised to surge.

Western Digital leverages numerous technology innovations - ePMR, OptiNAND, UltraSMR and more - to deliver predictable capacity growth in scalable, highly reliable products. Western Digital is now shipping its new 10-disk 24 TB CMR HDD family for hyperscale, cloud and enterprise data center customers. Sampling since August, the new 28 TB SMR HDD is also ramping, adding to the company's SMR leadership position and momentum as its 26 TB SMR HDD exabyte shipments reached nearly half of its data center exabytes shipped in the first quarter fiscal year 2024.

Swissbit, a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade flash memory solutions, today announced the release of its new product line of SATA SSDs. The series X-73, X-75 and X-78 are powered by cutting-edge industrial 112-layer 3D NAND technology, bringing unprecedented reliability and extended lifespan to the world's most crucial networks. The latest portfolio is built with Swissbit's dedication to quality and innovation. The new portfolio not only offers reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) thanks to its extended product life cycle, but also comes with powersafe SSDs - Swissbit's industry-leading power loss protection feature.

The expanded SSD product line includes M.2 2242, M.2 2280, Slim SATA MO-297, and 2.5" form factors, and offers a wide capacity range from 40 GB up to 1.92 TB. With an industry-leading 100k P/E cycles, the high endurance versions in pSLC mode are aimed at addressing the increasing market demand for durable and reliable data storage solutions.

Durabook, an innovator in purpose-built, rugged computing solutions, today announced the launch of the next-generation S15 Semi-Rugged Laptop equipped with the latest Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake platform. The combination of this powerful CPU, coupled with a comprehensive set of connectivity options, security support, and its capability for further expandability makes this semi-rugged laptop with its large screen the perfect support for professional field services personnel running ever more sophisticated applications in challenging conditions.

The laptop's 15.6" Full HD display may be the first thing to turn the head of a field service professional, but the CPU performance of the S15 Semi-Rugged Laptop with Intel Core i7 and i5 processors that are up to 206% faster than previously is an eye-opener. Looking past the handsome rugged exterior, at the Intel Iris Xe Graphics package, ultra-reliable connectivity, and the ability to operate as a workstation configured with up to three storage drives, this is the ideal rugged laptop for field services workers.

TrendForce research reveals that, due to the impacts of high inflation and economic downturn, CSPs are adopting more conservative strategies when it comes to capital expenditure and consistently reducing their annual server demand forecasts. Currently, CSPs in China have reported a decline in cloud orders compared to last year, leading to a subsequent decrease in annual procurement volumes for enterprise SSDs. In North America, some clients have postponed mass production timelines for new server platforms while ramping up investments in AI servers. These factors have resulted in enterprise SSD orders falling below expectations. Consequently, global enterprise SSD revenue hit an all-time low in the second quarter, totaling just $1,500 million—a QoQ decrease of 24.9%.

Demand for AI servers remains strong in the third quarter, while orders and shipment momentum for general-purpose servers have yet to show signs of recovery. This continues to put pressure on the purchasing volume of enterprise SSDs, and annual bit volume is expected to be lower than last year. Meanwhile, vendors have once again reduced capacity utilization to slow down inventory growth. Server customers still maintain high inventory levels, and their purchasing momentum remains insufficient. This is expected to lead to an approximate 15% QoQ decline in the average price of enterprise SSDs in the third quarter, which may further result in a lackluster revenue performance for the peak season.

IBASE Technology Inc. (TPEx: 8050), a leading provider of embedded computing solutions, introduces the IB837 3.5" single board computer that is designed for a wide range of IoT applications, including industrial automation, smart retail, healthcare, smart city and edge AI solutions, combining powerful processing capabilities with extensive connectivity options.

At the heart of the IB837 is the onboard Intel Celeron N & J series (formerly Elkhart Lake) processor, offering a good balance of performance and power efficiency. With support for up to 16 GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory, the SBC ensures smooth multitasking and efficient operation, delivering exceptional performance while consuming minimal power for applications requiring a compact form factor.

Synology is proud to announce the launch of its Plus Series SATA HDDs, specifically designed to meet the reliability, endurance, and performance requirements of 24/7 storage in Synology entry-level and mainstream systems. These hard drives have been rigorously tested and validated with Synology systems to ensure consistent performance in multi-user environments. The Plus Series joins the existing Enterprise Series lineup of hard drives, bringing the convenience of Synology hard disk drives to even more users.

"Designed with Synology systems in mind, these drives are perfect for users who need dependable storage with the added convenience of DSM firmware updates and a single window of support for all system issues," said Peggy Weng, Product Manager at Synology. Synology Plus Series HDDs offer a perfect balance of reliability and convenience for home and small office users, providing a dependable solution to meet their storage needs, whether for file sharing, data backup, or surveillance recording.

Keen-eyed hardware tipster momomo_us this week spotted that an upcoming AMD data center "Siena Dense" CPU has received verification, in the general sense, for SATA and PCI support - courtesy of the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO). The information dump was uploaded to SATA-IO's online database on April 6 of this year - under the heading: "AMD EPYC 8004 Series Processors." As covered by TPU mid-way through this month the family of enterprise-grade processors, bearing codename Siena, is expected to be an entry-level alternative to the EPYC Genoa-X range, set for launch later in 2023.

The EPYC Siena series is reported to arrive with a new socket type - SP6 (LGA 4844) - which is said to be similar in size to the older Socket SP3. The upcoming large "Genoa-X" and "Bergamo" processors will sit in the already existing Socket SP5 (LGA 6096) - 2022's EPYC Genoa lineup makes use of it already. AMD has not made its SP6 socket official to the public, but industry figures have been informed that it can run up to 64 "Zen 4" cores. This new standard has been designed with more power efficient tasks in mind - targeting intelligent edge and telecommunication sectors. The smaller SP6 socket will play host to CPUs optimized for as low as 70 W operation, with hungrier variants accommodated up to 225 W. This single platform solution is said to offer 6-channel memory, 96 PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes, 48 lanes for CXL V1.1+, and 8 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched new NVR Network Surveillance Servers - the QVP-85B with eight 3.5-inch SATA drive bays and Intel Core i5 6-core processor, and the QVP-63B with six 3.5-inch SATA drive bays and Intel Core i3 quad-core processor. The QVP-85B and QVP-63B run QVR Pro surveillance software supporting eight free IP camera channels. Offering an economic and high-performance software and hardware integrated video surveillance solution, the QVP-85B and QVP-63B fulfill requirements for secure, reliable and centrally-managed video surveillance storage for small businesses and offices.

"The QVP-85B and QVP-63B provide an easy-to-use UI for convenient surveillance management and is widely compatible with up to 95% of IP cameras on the market," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "users can also take advantage of flexible licensing plans for expanding video channels and QVR Center for large-scale deployments based on needs."

EK, the premium water-cooling gear manufacturer, is launching a new distro plate for the Lian Li O11D XL chassis. The distro has a built-in EK-Quantum Lumen screen, a 7" IPS monitor that can be seen from the front of the case. It is designed to provide advanced water cooling with the latest 3rd-generation SATA-powered D5 pump, removing the need for additional 4-pin Molex cables. The Reflection² series distribution plates are EK-Matrix7 compliant.

The EK-Quantum Reflection² PC-O11D XL D5 PWM D-RGB - Screen Edition is a custom water-cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution that seamlessly fits into the front of the case showing off a beautiful 7" IPS screen with an aluminum frame. This waterway is also equipped with six innovative push-in ports that come with female G1/4" threaded adapters. The idea is that users can easily assemble the whole radiator + fittings + tubing combo and use these push-in adapters to simply slide it into the distribution plate. The bottom radiator is mounted via a special metal bracket.

Back in October of last year, pictures from an ASUS event in China appeared online, showing off a pair of mATX motherboards that had most of its peripheral and power connectors on the reverse side of the motherboard. Now it appears that ASUS has decided to launch such a product, in the shape of the unforgettably named TUF Gaming B760M-BTF WiFi D4. The BTF part in the model name stands Back To (the) Future, although ASUS is most likely not allowed to use that term due to copyright restrictions, so it had to make do with BTF. Regardless of naming, the interesting part here is that all of the power connectors, the four SATA ports, the USB-C and USB 3.0 headers, as well as multiple other headers and one of three M.2 slots, are on the reverse side of the motherboard. This is all done to allow for cleaner cable management.

Other noteworthy features on the board include a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4 and one x1 slot, three USB-C ports, of which one is capable of 20 Gbps speeds and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. As this is a mid-range board, we presume ASUS wants to test the waters so to speak, to make sure there's a market for such a product. However, one major hurdle is the small fact that there aren't any suitable chassis in the market and the product page even mentions that "This motherboard is compatible with specific case models", without going into any details. Presumably, ASUS will offer a suitable chassis, or have some partner(s) lined up that will provide a suitable chassis. Gigabyte announced something similar in May last year, but decided to team up with system integrators, something ASUS might be planning on as well.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini computer solutions company, today announced a new Simply NUC branded mini PC product family called Chapel Rock. The ultracompact long life mini PC is built for several use cases, from embedded units like kiosks and vending machines, to edge devices like security systems and sensor arrays. Chapel Rock brings the same reliability and customizability as its predecessor, Chimney Rock, with upgrades like dual 2.5Gb Ethernet and the all-new 12th Gen Intel Architecture. Simply NUC is currently taking orders on Chapel Rock with units expected to ship by the end of March.

"Since launching our long life NUC product line, our customers have successfully leveraged these mini PCs for an array of applications where longer development cycles are required for validation and certifications," said Aaron Rowsell, Simply NUC CEO, "and we're thrilled to extend our long life NUC offering with Chapel Rock."

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. announces its proud participation in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2) program. As part of the program, KIOXIA SSDs provide robust flash storage in HPE Edgeline and HPE ProLiant servers in a test environment to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"By bringing KIOXIA's expertise and its SSDs, one of the industry's leading NAND flash capabilities, with HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, together we are pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery and innovation at the most extreme edge."

On January 7th, the Minisforum UM773 was launched in China with the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor and received widespread praise from consumers. Now, the new version of UM773, UM773 Lite, has arrived globally with a more affordable price. Considering that users usually connect external keyboards and mouses, the two USB 3.2 ports have been replaced with USB 2.0 ports. All other design will be the same as UM773. The price, however, will be more favorable.

The new UM773 Lite features the new AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, AMD Radeon 680M Integrated Graphics, DDR5 dual-channel memory, PCIe 4.0 SSD, and the most advanced USB4 Type-C port. The Ryzen 7 7735HS is one of AMD's new Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, with a based clock of 3.2 GHz and a maximum turbo clock of 4.75 GHz and a default TDP targeted at 54 W. The RDNA2 Radeon 680M integrated GPU has 12 CUs up to 2.4 GHz.

Sabrent introduces our new USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) for normal use and cloning. The USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) is designed to make your life easier with a dual-drive, tool-free installation. It supports an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 2.5"/3.5" SATA SSD/HDD in single- or dual-drive mode for data transfer and offline cloning with clear LED indicators. The M.2 drive is kept cool during operation to prevent throttling with an integrated M.2 heatsink and includes a thermal pad. No matter your storage, this docking station has you covered.

The included power adapter improves reliability during operation with 3.5" HDDs and high-power SSDs. Transfers are possible over a 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2) backward-compatible interface. Type-C/Type-A to Type-C USB cables are included to work with a wide range of devices, and the docking station is designed for Windows and macOS machines. SSDs are fully supported with TRIM and UASP for the best performance and reliability. Easy, convenient, and backed by Sabrent.