Crucial has reportedly discontinued the MX500 line of SATA SSDs after nearly 7 years of market presence. The MX500 is arguably the most popular line of SATA 6 Gbps SSDs, and comes in both the 2.5-inch and M.2-SATA form-factors. The drive continued its run into 2020s given its extremely low price-per-GB, and reasonable levels of performance to serve as a warm storage solution in client PCs. The market is changing, with the advent of cheap QLC NAND NVMe SSDs, an increase in the number of NVMe slots on today's motherboards, and a reduction in SATA ports, which mean that it is time for Crucial to retire the MX500. The MX500 is still in stock with retailers, and comes in capacities of up to a respectable 4 TB, although at prices similar to NVMe Gen 3 or Gen 4 drives based on QLC NAND, such as Crucial's own P3 Plus. The 4 TB variant of the P3 Plus Gen 4 NVMe SSD in fact costs less than the 4 TB MX500, but with significantly higher performance.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today announced that it has added support for QuTS hero, QNAP's ZFS-based NAS operating system, to the popular TS-253E and TS-453E NAS models. The TS-x53E series is powered by an Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core processor (burst up to 2.6 GHz), which will be available and supported by QNAP for an extended period (up to 2029).

The 2-bay TS-253E is currently the QNAP NAS model with the fewest drive bays that support QuTS hero. Now small-sized organizations can also benefit from ZFS technologies to optimize applications that require utmost reliability, such as data integrity with features like Self-healing and WORM (Write Once, Read Many Times), snapshots (up to 65,536 versions), and inline data deduplication for maximizing storage efficiency. Businesses also can deploy a zero RPO disaster recovery plan by leveraging real-time SnapSync that achieves real-time data synchronization between two NAS.

Toshiba today introduced the updated N300 series 3.5-inch internal SATA hard drives targeting NAS applications. These drives come with new product branding the company introduced with its recent S300 series HDDs for surveillance/NVR applications. The drives come in capacities of 2 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB, 8 TB, 10 TB, 12 TB, 14 TB, 16 TB, 18 TB, 20 TB, and 22 TB, with the higher capacity models—12 TB and above—being helium-filled, to reduce power/noise characteristics. All models in the series come with CMR (conventional magnetic recording), which ensures predictable write and rewrite performance. The drives come with 7,200 RPM spindle-speed, and depending on the capacity variant, between 64 MB to 512 MB of write cache. The drives come with SATA 6 Gbps host interface, and offer sequential transfer speeds of up to 281 MB/s reads, with up to 268 MB/s writes, with an MTBF rated between 1-1.2 million hours.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched new entry-level business NAS models including 4-bay TS-432X and 6-bay TS-632X, tailored for personal studio and SMBs to optimize workflows and collaboration. Featuring a quad-core processor, high-speed 2.5GbE/10GbE ports, and PCIe expansion capabilities, both new models excel in performance and versatility to streamline multi-device file backups, data security, and file management while also simplifying data storage, search, and sharing tasks.

Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, stated "With the rising popularity of 10GbE applications, the TS-432X and TS-632X offer ideal solutions for small to medium-sized businesses seeking smaller-capacity 10GbE NAS options. Users can benefit from a versatile storage solution featuring multiple LAN ports and PCIe expandability, all within a modest budget."

Radxa is a Chinese manufacturer of various Arm based devices and something of a minor competitor to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The company has just launched its latest product which is called the ROCK 5 ITX. As the name implies, it's a Mini-ITX form factor motherboard, which in itself is rather unusual for Arm based hardware to start with. However, Radxa has designed the ROCK 5 ITX to be a NAS motherboard and this is the first time we've come across such a product, as most Arm based boards are either intended for hobby projects, software development or routers. This makes the ROCK 5 ITX quite unique, at least based on its form factor, as it'll be compatible with standard Mini-ITX chassis.

The SoC on the board is a Rockchip RK3588 which sports four Cortex-A76 cores at up to 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz. This is not exactly cutting edge, but should be plenty fast enough for a SATA drive based NAS. The board offers four SATA 6 Gbps connectors via an ASMedia ASM1164 controller, each with an individual power connector next to it. However, Radxa seems to have chosen to use fan-header type power connectors, which means it'll be hard to get replacement power cables. The board also has a PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 slot for an NVMe drive. The OS boots from eMMC and Radxa supports its own Roobi OS which is Debian Linux based.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched the TS-216G NAS, a high-performing and substantial 2-bay NAS designed for individuals, families, and workgroups. The ARM quad-core processor with a 2.5GbE port, 4 GB RAM, and NPU (Neural network Processing Unit) takes 2-bay NAS performance to the next level. Not only can it streamline backup from multiple devices and improve overall data security, but also creates a comprehensive file management center for home or work users - making the TS-216G one of the most cost-effective and high-efficiency 2-bay NAS on the market.

The built-in NPU, designed for AI applications, can remarkably accelerate image recognition for the AI-powered QuMagie smart photo management, especially when users import hundreds or thousands of photos at a time. It also reduces CPU workloads, resulting in higher computing performance and lower power consumption for the TS-216G.

TerraMaster today rolled out the D4-320, a 4-bay USB DAS enclosure. This is essentially a 4-bay sibling of the D2-320 enclosure that the company released in January. The enclosure features four 3.5-inch caddies with SATA 6 Gbps backplanes, and hotplugging capability. These are connected to a SATA AHCI controller, with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 upstream link that has 10 Gbps bandwidth, and support for UASP (USB-attached SCSI). A type-C cable is included with the DAS. The drive cage is cooled by a 120 mm fan that draws air through the caddies, and exhausts from a vent at the back. TerraMaster says that it put a design focus on optimizing this fan, and reducing the noise and vibration of the device with a full-house. It's important to note here, that the DAS has no RAID function, so each of the four disks and their volumes are individually mounted by the host. There are link/activity LEDs for each drive. TerraMaster includes a first-party data backup software. Available now, the TerraMaster D4-320 is priced at $190.

Jonsbo over the weekend introduced the N4 White and N4 Black, a series of cube-shaped Micro-ATX cases designed for DIY NAS server builds. The case has eight drive caddies, six of which are 3.5-inch, and two 2.5-inch. All 8 bays come with SATA 6 Gbps backplanes, so you can hot-plug them. These drive caddies, along with an SFX PSU bay, and a 120 mm fan vent, make up the lower 60% of the case. The upper 40% holds a Micro-ATX motherboard tray with four half-height expansion slots. Besides low-profile expansion cards, you can have a CPU cooler as tall as 70 mm up there.

The lower compartment has a perforated front panel covering the drive caddies, while the front side of the upper compartment has a classy wood embellishment. This wood embellishment has the power/reset buttons, a type-A USB 3.2 port, and a USB 3.2 type-C. The upper compartment has panel perforations along the sides and top. The Jonsbo N4 comes in two trims as we mentioned—black and white. The case measures 286 mm x 300 mm x 228 mm (WxDxH), weighing 3.75 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing information.

PC OEM giant Acer has a growing lineup of retail channel PC products, including DIY enthusiast PC hardware under its Predator brand. The company showed some of this off at the 2023 Computex, in a booth organized by its memory products OEM BIWIN. First up, we have the Predator Hermes RGB line of high-end DDR5 memory kits. These feature elaborate aluminium heatspreaders with RGB LED illumination. We caught one of these in action, with a multi-zone RGB lighting. The Hermes RGB comes in 32 GB (2x 16 GB), and 64 GB (2x 32 GB) kits, and in speeds of DDR5-6800, DDR5-7200, DDR5-7600, DDR5-7800, and DDR5-8000, with CAS latencies ranging between 32 to 36T, and module voltages between 1.40 V to 1.45 V.

Among the consumer storage products showed off by the company include the MSC300 line of UHS-I microSDXC cards capable of 160 MB/s sequential speeds, which comes in capacities ranging between 32 GB to 256 GB. Among the SSD products shown were stuff we are already familiar with, including the FA100 Gen 4 NVMe SSD, RE100 Gen 3 NVMe SSD, the SA100 and RE100 SATA 6 Gbps SSDs; the SD100 lines of DDR4 and DDR5 SO-DIMM memory for laptops; CFE100 line of CFexpress cards, and and handful USB flash drives (UFDs).

It appears that the microATX form factor is the way to go when it comes to AMD A620 chipset based motherboards and ASUS has no less than three new models, although one is technically with or without WiFi. The new models are the TUF Gaming A620M-Plus, the TUF Gaming A620M-Plus WiFi and the Prime A620M-A. All three boards sport six layer PCBs with what appears to be fairly basic power regulation, although ASUS doesn't mention how many phases either model has on its product pages. All boards feature a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, as well as two M.2 NVMe slots that support PCIe 4.0 x4 based drives. All models also have four DDR5 DIMM slots, four SATA 6 Gbps ports and front panel connectors for a 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port and two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports.

Around the back is where things differ a bit, as the TUF boards have two DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI port, as well as two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 port and a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port courtesy of a Realtek chip, as well a BIOS FlashBack button. The Prime board on the other hand replaces one DisplayPort output with a VGA connector for some reason and gets to make do with Gigabit Ethernet. The connectivity options aren't what we'd call impressive, but appears to be par for course compared to ASUS' competitors' products. Pricing appear to be in the range of €139-169.

Cost-effective Socket AM5 motherboards are finally on the horizon, as the first marketing pictures emerged of an ASRock-branded motherboard based on the yet-unreleased AMD A620 chipset. A successor to the A520 and A320, the A620 provides the bare-minimum feature-set for the platform, and cuts out certain premium features such as CPU overclocking. The chipset limits the x16 PEG connection from the processor to Gen 4, although motherboard vendors are free to provide just Gen 3 x16. The CPU-attached M.2 NVMe interface, too, is limited to Gen 4. This ASRock motherboard appears to be offering a Gen 3-capped M.2 NVMe slot, going by the "Hyper M.2" branding that ASRock uses for Gen 3 M.2 slots. The board offers an additional M.2 NVMe slot that's wired to the A620 chipset, and interestingly, an M.2 E-key slot for WLAN modules.

The ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2 from the pictures below, is a Micro-ATX motherboard that draws power from a 24-pin ATX and a single 8-pin EPS. It offers the simplest possible 6-phase CPU VRM, with what look like 50 A DrMOS. Besides the two M.2 NVMe slots, the only storage connectivity on offer are two SATA 6 Gbps ports. Display connectivity include DisplayPort and HDMI. We count at least four type-A USB 3.x ports on the rear I/O, besides one USB type-C, and a USB 3.x internal header. 1 GbE wired networking, and 6-channel HD audio using the most basic CODEC, make for the rest of the connectivity. An interesting touch is USB BIOS Flashback, with a button on the rear I/O, which sets even the oldest inventories of this board up for future-generation Socket AM5 Ryzen processors. Motherboards based on the A620 are expected to be priced well under the $100-mark.

Sabrent introduced the EC-U2SA, a portable USB-to-SATA and U.2 backplane dongle that's designed for zero interface bottlenecks for SATA. The device uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface with 10 Gbps bandwidth and UASP (USB-attached SCSI), to ensure no bottlenecks for a connected SATA 6 Gbps drive. For SATA SSDs, the dongle can be used on its own, where the drive is powered by the power drawn from the USB port. For HDDs, you'll need to connect an additional power source using a 2-pin DC jack, in the form of an included 10 W power adapter. The U.2 backplane features a PCIe x2 interface, which means even with the 10 Gbps USB upstream connection, there will be heavy interface bottlenecks. Luckily it passes through several NVMe functions to the OS, including TRIM command. Available now, the EC-U2SA is priced at $34.99.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today introduced the high-capacity TS-1655 tower 2.5 GbE NAS that can accommodate twelve 3.5-inch hard drives and four 2.5-inch solid-state drives. Designed with a hybrid storage architecture that balances performance and cost, the TS-1655 integrates 8-core computing power, 2.5 GbE high speed and PCIe expansion to improve business efficiency for cross-team file sharing, collaboration, backup and disaster recovery, and virtualization.

"The TS-1655 strikes a cost-performance balance with the HDD/SSD hybrid storage design, while also supporting RAID 50/60 that provides high-capacity NAS users with higher data protection and optimum storage space utilization," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "Moreover, its SSD-focused design includes built-in M.2 NVMe PCIe slots and dedicated 2.5-inch SSD bays to drive performance-demanding business applications while enabling tiered storage for maximized cost-efficiency."

Taiwan-based memory products OEM Datotek has been in business selling flash memory and DRAM products since 2004, with one of its most notable clients being HP. At the 2023 International CES, the company showcased its latest-generation memory products spanning not just HP-branded flash drives, but also flash drives under its own marquee, besides M.2 NVMe and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs; and PC memory spanning DDR5 and DDR4 generations. The company sells various vanilla (JEDEC spec) DDR5 and DDR4 memory modules in both standard U-DIMM and SO-DIMM form-factors. For gamers and enthusiasts, the company has the Ares line of premium DDR5 and DDR4 memory products, which come in overclocked speeds such as DDR5-6000 or DDR4-4000, including with RGB LED illumination.

Among its SSD products are a new PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD under the Ares brand, Gen 4 NVMe drives under the Ares Dark Sword brand, and various Gen 3 NVMe SSDs under the main Datotek brand. We also spotted several USB 3.2 portable SSDs, as well as 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gbps ones under the main brand. The idea here is to attract more brands for OEM partnerships the way rival Biwin makes SSD and DRAM products for various top brands (such as HP and Acer).

Mushkin at the 2023 International CES showed off its Vortex Redline and Vortex LX M.2 NVMe SSDs. The Vortex Redline is the company's top PCIe Gen 4 drive, combining an Innogrit IG5236 NVMe 1.4 controller with 3D TLC NAND flash, to offer transfer speeds of up to 7415 MB/s. The Vortex Redline comes in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. The Vortex LX is a more value-oriented product, based on an unnamed Innogrit-sourced DRAMless controller. This drive features a PCIe Gen 4 interface, but offers slightly lower performance that the company didn't disclose.

The star attraction at the Mushkin booth was its Epsilon SSD that features a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 + NVMe 2.0 interface, a Phison E26-series controller, and next generation 3D NAND flash memory (possibly 232-layer). The drive features active cooling from a fan-heatsink, and while the company didn't talk about performance, drives based on this controller are known to offer up to 12 GB/s of sequential transfers. Lastly, the company showed off its lineup of 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gbps SSDs in capacities ranging all the way up to 16 TB, which are meant to be HDD replacements, and "warm" storage devices.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, and storage solutions innovator, today launched the TS-x62 NAS series. Powered by Intel Celeron dual-core processors, the series includes the 2-bay TS-262 and 4-bay TS-462 models. Both models feature a 2.5GbE port and two M.2 PCIe slots for SSD caching, enabling higher transfer speeds and faster data access to supercharge diverse storage applications. There is also a PCIe Gen 3 slot allowing users to expand NAS functionality with a range of QNAP PCIe cards. Multimedia stored on the TS-x62 can be streamed throughout the home, an enjoyed directly on a TV or monitor with the HDMI 2.1 output.

"We are pleased to have worked with QNAP to release the TS-x62 series which covers various use scenarios for home users, such as 4K media streaming, centralized storage, and efficient file backup. The Intel Celeron N4505 processor delivers attractive performance for home NAS models with its greater collaboration and multitasking capability," said Jason Ziller, General Manager, Client Connectivity Division at Intel Corporation.

Here's one of the first pictures of a mechanical HDD with NVMe interface. Seagate is apparently in production of an Exos-series Enterprise HDD featuring U.2 NVMe interface where one would expect SAS 12 Gbps. We seriously doubt if the HDD is fast enough to take advantage of U.2 NVMe (at least 32 Gbps per direction), but the move to NVMe probably has to do with the decline of older interface standards such as SAS 12 Gbps and SATA 6 Gbps in the enterprise space for cold-storage, and that future generations of rackmount DAS and NAS enclosures could increasingly feature U.2 backplanes, phasing out SAS and SATA. This is like when optical drives switched over to SATA despite not needing the bandwidth SATA had to offer (optical discs barely move a few dozen MB/s, for which even ATA33 IDE was sufficient). We don't know how the Seagate Exos drive handles NVMe internally—whether there is a new native NVMe controller, or whether this is really just a SAS 12 Gbps drive with a PCIe-to-SAS bridge chip.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched the 4-bay TS-464 and 6-bay TS-664 quad-core 2.5 GbE NAS designed for professionals and office users with high-speed demands. With M.2 NVMe SSD slots, PCIe Gen 3 expandability for 10 GbE or 5 GbE connectivity and 4K HDMI output, the TS-x64 enables not only installing a QM2 card for M.2 SSD caching, but also convenient virtual machine display and smooth multimedia streaming. The TS-x64 also supports Snapshots to help protect data from ransomware threats.

"By integrating Intel's Celeron high-performance processor and providing 2.5 GbE speeds, M.2 PCIe Gen 3 slots and PCIe Gen 3 expansion slots, QNAP's TS-x64 includes cutting-edge hardware to fulfill high-bandwidth data transmission and virtualization applications," said Meiji Chang, General Manager of QNAP. "We are excited to see QNAP adopt the latest Intel Celeron N5105/N5095 quad-core processors for its new NAS series, allowing SMB users to take advantage of the flexible I/O and performance capabilities of the processor for their performance-demanding applications," said Jason Ziller, General Manager, Client Connectivity Division at Intel Corporation.

BIOSTAR finalized the design of its flagship Socket AM5 motherboard, the X670E Valkyrie. While the PCB design appears identical to the board BIOSTAR showed at Computex 2022, there are some aesthetic improvements, such as some ARGB lighting elements with acrylic diffusers on the large VRM heatsink and the chipset heatsink. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, and two 8-pin EPS connectors. Powering the CPU is a 22-phase VRM that uses 105 A DrMOS. The Socket AM5 is wired to four DDR5 slots, two PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x16/NC or x8/x8), and a couple of M.2 Gen 5 slots.

Storage options on the BIOSTAR X670E Valkyrie include two M.2 slots with PCI-Express 5.0 x4 wiring, two additional M.2 slots with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring, and six SATA 6 Gbps ports. Besides the Gen 5 x16 slots from the CPU, there's one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical x4) slot wired to the chipset, and an M.2 E-key slot for the WLAN card. There's no WLAN module included with the board, but there's preparation that includes two coaxial antenna jacks, and a cable leading up to the M.2 E-key slot. Wired networking comes from a 2.5 GbE interface powered by an Intel i225 controller. The board is expected to go on sale alongside Ryzen 7000 series processors, in September.

ASRock today introduced the WRX80 Creator, a Socket WRX8 motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series workstation processors. Built in the E-ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, a 6-pin PCIe, and two 8-pin EPS connectors. The star attraction with this platform is 8-channel DDR4 memory, with all eight memory slots on this board featuring a dedicated memory channel. There are seven PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, from which five operate at full x16 bandwidth, and two can subtract 8 lanes each from two of the other x16 slots. So x16/x16/x16/NC/x16/NC/x16, or x16/x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x16.

Storage connectivity on the ASRock WRX80 Creator include two M.2 PCIe Gen 4 slots, and a U.2 port, besides eight SATA 6 Gbps. Networking interfaces include two 10 GbE, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and a 1 GbE used by the IPMI controller. Speaking of which, an ASPEED AST2500 provides basic display and various remote management capabilities. USB connectivity includes two 40 Gbps USB4 ports with mini-DP inputs for DisplayPort passthrough, four 10 Gbps USB 3.2, and a number of 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. A premium onboard audio solution featuring a Realtek ALC1220, and TI NE5532 headphones amp, makes for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the new QXP-1600eS-A1164 quad-port external SATA expansion card. Designed for QNAP TL series SATA JBOD, the QXP-1600eS-A1164 is compatible with QNAP NAS, Windows /Ubuntu PCs and servers with a PCIe port. Each SATA lane directly connects to a single SATA drive to deliver excellent transfer performance.

"The new QXP-1600eS-A1164 SATA expansion card doesn't need any drivers and provides a more convenient solution than its previous generation. It can be used with a QNAP TL SATA JBOD for expanding the capacity of NAS or PCs to provide future-proof scalability." said Candice Chiang, Product Manager of QNAP. The QXP-1600eS-A1164 can be used with QNAP SATA JBOD (supported from QTS 4.5.4 or QuTS hero h4.5.4), including setting RAID parameters and creating a storage pool using the Storage and Snapshots app. When the QXP-1600eS-A1164 is installed in a Windows or Ubuntu device, the QNAP JBOD Manager desktop utility can be used to quickly obtain and view information about the JBOD status, health, fan speed, and check for firmware updates.

Although 20 TB hard drives aren't a new thing by now, Western Digital's latest drive for NAS appliances are doing things a bit differently by incorporating WD's OptiNAND technology. The WD Red Pro family is Western Digital's higher-end family of NAS drives and have a generally good reputation in the market. The drive is made up out of nine ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) platters, each coming in at 2.2 TB. As with the previously launched drives in the Red Pro family, we're looking at a 7,200 rpm drive with a SATA 6 Gbps interface. The internal transfer rate is said to reach up to 268 MB/s which makes it the second fastest drive in the series, just behind the 18 TB version.

What makes the 20 TB SKU unique in the Red Pro series though is the inclusion of 64 GB of WD's own iNAND flash. Western Digital's iNAND could be considered a DRAM-less SSD in a single chip package and in this case, it's used as a large chunk of cache for the hard drive. One other benefit of the OptiNAND technology according to WD is that up to 100 MB of data in the 512 MB DRAM write cache that the drive also has, can be flushed to the iNAND in case of an unexpected power cut to the drive. This could help save important data that is in transit during a worst case scenario and seems like a great addition to a hard drive that's targeting NAS applications. The WD Red Pro 20 TB is on sale now for US$499.99.

Back in May, pictures surfaced of a curious-looking Micro-ATX motherboard featuring a so-called "AMD 4700S" SoC. At the heart of these boards were an SoC not unlike the one that powers the Xbox Series X, except that the integrated GPU is completely disabled, with no onboard display outputs. The board is very likely a means for AMD to harvest Xbox Series X/S SoCs with broken iGPUs. It now turns out that the board is an official AMD product, named "AMD 4700S 8-core Processor Desktop Kit."

The board provides an 8-core/8-thread CPU based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, no iGPU, but a PCI-Express x16 slot that's electrically PCI-Express 2.0 x4, a handful USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, two SATA 6 Gbps ports, onboard 1 GbE LAN and 6-channel HD audio. The SoC comes with its own unspecified amount of onboard memory in the form of hardwired DDR4 memory chips surrounding it; there are no additional memory slots. The Xbox Series X SoC features a 256-bit wide memory bus, so it will be interesting to see if AMD has maximized it. AMD didn't reveal pricing or availability information, although they way this is marketed, the board will very likely be available in the retail channel.

Samsung today has officially taken the lid off their latest consumer-oriented SATA SSDs, the 870 EVO. The 870 EVO series from Samsung don't push the maximum storage density ceiling on traditional SATA consumer drives, topping out at a maximum 4 TB, but they do achieve that ceiling whilst making use of Samsung's 128-layer TLC (Triple-Layer-Cell) NAND, which offers increased endurance (and higher theoretical performance than) more widespread QLC-based SSDs (of which Samsung launched the 870 QVO back in July 2020).

Samsung quotes SATA sequential read and write speeds of 560 MB/s and 530 MB/s respectively, with a "variable SLC" cache (which means it decreases in maximum size as the available free drive space decreases). The drives are also quoted at 98K IOPS Random Read, and 88K IOPS Write, and feature the company's Intelligent TurboWrite to maintain the interface's SATA 6 Gbps saturation as long as possible before sustained performance degradation appears. Samsung claims the 870 EVO also delivers a nearly 38% improvement in random read speeds over the previous 860 model, and quotes a (TBW) rating of 2,400 TB (or a 5-year limited warranty, whichever comes first) for its 4 TB model. The 870 EVO is available in either 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, or 4 TB capacities, with the drives' RAM buffer scaling almost accordingly (512 MB DDR3 for the 256/512 Gb models, 1 GB for the 1 TB, 2 GB for the 2 TB drive, and 4 GB for the 4 TB one. Pricing starts at $49,99 for the 256 GB model; 500 GB for $79.99, 1 TB for $139.99; 2 TB for $269.99; and 4 TB for $529.99.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today introduced the TS-h973AX QuTS hero NAS that features an AMD Ryzen V1000 series V1500B quad-core 2.2 GHz processor and 10GbE/2.5GbE connectivity. It has four 2.5-inch SSD slots - with two slots supporting both 32 Gbps high-performance U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSDs or economical SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs for tackling latency-sensitive applications. Running the dependable ZFS-based QuTS hero operating system, the TS-h973AX delivers business-critical features and enables up to petabyte capacity per shared folder, providing a high-performance yet cost-efficient NAS solution.

"When viewing similar AMD Ryzen NAS on the market, the 9-bay TS-h973AX stands almost unchallenged with its dual U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSD slots for optimal I/O and low latency, and 10GbE/2.5GbE connectivity," said Jason Hsu, adding "from entry-level storage needs to large-scale Big Data storage, I/O-demanding applications, and cross-team collaboration - the ZFS-based TS-h973AX is perfect for tackling challenges faced by businesses of all sizes."