Still using an old case with not much front-panel connectivity? This one's for you. Japanese peripherals maker Ainex announced the PF-213CR3, a 3.5-inch front-panel that adds a plethora of connectivity. It includes two common USB 2.0/1.1 ports, two high-powered (800 mA) USB 2.0/1.1 ports (yellow), which allow quicker charging of smartphones and tablets, a USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, a multi-format card reader, and a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed port. The device draws power from a SATA power connector, to drive its card-reader and high-power USB ports. It connects to the system over standard USB 2.0/1.1 front-panel header, standard USB 3.0 header, and common HDMI. Slated for December 18, it is priced at 3,980¥ (US $48).

It will be towards the end of 2013, when Western Digital will have 5 terabyte (or 5000 GB) models of its NAS-optimized WD Red, and energy-efficient consumer-optimized WD Green lines of consumer hard drives. According to launch plans unearthed by Russian website AlwaysMoreDigital, the 5 TB WD Red (model: WD50ERFX) and 5 TB WD Green (WD50EZRX) will be launched in Q4 (in or after October 2013). A little earlier than that, the two lines will be updated with 4 TB variants, the WD40ERFX and WD40EZRX. All four drives feature 64 MB of cache, SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and are built in the 3.5-inch form-factor.

Thin and light with long battery life, Acer America today announced availability of the new TravelMate B113 notebook PC for U.S. and Canadian customers. An ideal solution for institutional customers, the TravelMate B113 meets all the needs for productivity, communication and mobility needed in today's e-learning environment.

"Acer has had great success with the 11.6-inch form factor in the education market because their compact size is ideal in a classroom setting, even for the youngest of students," said Michael O'Beirne, Acer senior director, commercial product marketing. "The TravelMate B113 notebook is an important addition to our notebook portfolio, as it combines everything educators and students need, including exceptional performance, durability and reliability for a best-in-class mobile experience."

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., the industry's leading SATA 6Gb/s RAID HBA manufacturer, announces the availability of their second generation SATA 6Gb/s storage controllers - the RocketRAID 600L series. HighPoint's RocketRAID 600L series HBA's represent the industry's most comprehensive, and affordable selection of 6Gb/s SATA PCIe host controllers. Powered by industry-proven RAID technology, SATA port multiplier support, and an intuitive RAID Management Suite, HighPoint RocketRAID 600L HBA's are the ideal SATA 6Gb/s storage solution for any PC and Mac computing platform.

Have tons of hard-drives plugged to internal ports in your machine? Want control over which ones stay on, and don't trust your OS or apps to wake random drives up from their slumber, stepping up noise and power draw? Orico has a solution for you. The HD-PW6102 is an accessory that fits into any of your multiple empty 5.25-inch drive bays, and gives you manual switches to six SATA power cables. The device draws power from two 4-pin Molex connectors, and gives out six SATA power cables, which are sleeved. Each of the six cables can be manually plugged out of the box.

To use the HD-PW6102 properly, the SATA controller needs to be set in AHCI mode, with hot-plugging enabled. The device manually gates power to drives to turn them off. With AHCI hot-plugging enabled, you can use the "safely remove hardware" menu in your system tray to deactivate a drive before switching it off with the device. To use the drive again, simply switch it on, and the OS mounts it like any other PnP storage volume. In addition to push-switches, it has power indicators for each of the six drives. The main body and front bezel are made of brushed aluminum. The accessory started selling in Orico's homeland China, where it's priced at 373 RMB (US $60).

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, and South Korean fabless semiconductor company Novachips Inc. announces a development project to make the dedicated Automotive Solid State Drive (SSD) based on Novachips SATA 6Gbps SSD controller, NVS3600.

Super Talent is a leading manufacturer and provider of Automotive SSD that currently delivers the SATA 3 6Gbps-based automotive SSD as the main storage device of the AVN system mounted on a luxury car. It is the world's first SSD mounted on the AVN system for regular cars.

Acer America today announced new commercial desktop PCs designed specifically for businesses, schools and government agencies. Fast processing, a tool-less design and essential security and management tools make the new Veriton Series desktops ideal for powering mainstream productivity applications in professional environments.

The Acer Veriton L4620G is an ultra small form factor (ULSF) desktop with prices starting at $599. This platform is compatible with the Acer ErgoStand that is easy to set up and connect to a range of Acer monitors to create a streamlined all-in-one system. Other new models include the Acer Veriton X4620G, a small form factor (SFF) desktop and the Acer Veriton M4620G, a mini tower, both with prices beginning at $619. All models come with a three-year warranty and support up to a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor, which provides significant application and graphics performance benefits compared to prior generations.

I-O Data of Japan introduced a pair of new Blu-ray drives, the BRD-S16X and BRD-UT16X. The two are capable of writing Blu-ray ROM discs at 16X, and can write four-layer Blu-ray XL discs at lower speeds. The BRD-S16X is built in the internal 5.25" form-factor, with SATA 3 Gb/s interface. The BRD-UT16X, on the other hand, is the same drive built into an external USB 3.0 enclosure, measuring 158 x 220 x 50 mm, weighing about 1.1 kg. Both drives feature 4 MB write cache. Bundled software includes Corel WinDVD 10, Roxio Blu-ray Creator, and Nero 12 OEM.

In addition to the 16X BD-R write speeds, the two can burn double-layer BD-R at 12X, triple- and quad-layer BD-Rs and BD-R LTH at 6X; single-, double-, and triple-layer BD-RE at 8X, 6X, and 4X, respectively. The BRD-S16X is priced at 14,280¥ (US $173.7), while the BRD-UT16X will go for 19,845¥ ($242.4). The two are slated for market release in December.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the availability of its new SATA III-based Vector SSD Series featuring the company's next-generation Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller. OCZ's worldwide technology hardware and firmware teams developed the new controller silicon and firmware completely in-house to enable full design control over the Vector SSD Series roadmap, while delivering exceptional I/O performance, enhanced reliability and endurance, and a host of differentiated features to empower high performance laptops, desktops, and workstations with superior storage capabilities.

OCZ Vector SSDs provide exceptional input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance and the cutting-edge Barefoot 3 controller consistently delivers superior sustained performance over time regardless of whether the data streams are in compressed or uncompressed formats. As a result, this groundbreaking SSD series provides faster file transfers and boot-ups, and a quicker, more responsive storage experience.

In addition to cooking up some new platter-based storage, Buffalo has introduced two optical drives capable of burning a Blu-ray disc (BD-R to be exact) at up to 16x speed. Seen below, the BRXL-16FBS-BK (internal, SATA connectivity) and BRXL-16U3 (external, USB 3.0) have support for BDXL discs, and also deliver writing speeds of 12x for BD-R DL, 6x for BDXL, 2x for BD-RE, 16x for DVD-R/+R, 8x for DVD-R DL/+R DL/+RW, 6x for DVD-RW, 5x for DVD-RAM, 48x for CD-R and 24x for CD-RW.

The BRXL-16FBS-BK and BRXL-16U3 cost $255 and $322, respectively, and come with a software bundle which includes PowerDVD10 BD edition, PowerDirector 8 HE, PowerProducer 5, Power2Go 7, PowerBackup 2, InstantBurn 5 and MediaShow 5.

Buffalo Inc. has today announced the OP-HD4.0T/LS, a 4 TB replacement hard drive for the LinkStation Pro Duo and CloudStation NAS servers (and other 4 TB-supporting devices). This RAID1-ready 3.5-inch drive features a SATA interface, has a recommended price tag of about $679 and is set to start shipping at the end of this month.

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced its highest performance, highest capacity desktop hard drive, the WD Black 4 TB, 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive. Shipping immediately, the fast performance and ultimate capacity of the award-winning WD Black drives make them perfect for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 64 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive.

On Monday, gaming PC builder CyberPowerPC blurted out pictures of a fascinating new cubical case from Cooler Master. The case turns out to be the HAF-XB. Measuring 442(W) x 330(H) x 423(D)mm, the case supports ATX, micro-ATX, and mini-ITX motherboards, and features a compartmentalized design. The motherboard tray is arranged on the top compartment, along the plane of the base. The top compartment is spacious enough for CPU coolers that are 180 mm tall, and graphics cards that are 334 mm long. Two 120 mm front intake fans and a 120 mm rear spinner maintain positive air pressure within the compartment.

The bottom half of the case is dedicated to storage and PSU bays. These include two 3.5-inch hotswap SATA caddies, which can be internally converted to six 2.5-inch bays, and two 5.25-inch drive bays. In addition to the push-pull fans of the top compartment, the case features a 200 mm top exhaust, and provision for two 80 mm rear exhaust fans. The case is expected to be priced at US $100. Find a complete review at the source.

Going into 2013, Intel's tough balancing act between keeping a low power/thermal envelope, and advancing performance, all while staying on the 22 nm silicon fab process, will be care of its Core "Haswell-ULT" processor. The chip will feature some radical changes to traditional Intel processor design, which will help it achieve its design goals. According to a deck of leaked slides scored by Expreview, Intel plans to use additional C-states that drop the processor's base clock, and redesign the processor package to accommodate the PCH silicon, reducing the board footprint.

To begin with, Haswell-ULT will be designed to support 24 MHz base clock speed, which running in "deep" energy-saving idle states. Modern processors with FSB replacement interconnect technologies such as QuickPath Interconnect and HyperTransport need a base clock to time other components on the processor, and for low-level communications, while a bulk of the data is transported by the primary interconnect. Intel found a way to turn off the 100 MHz base clock signal (which is also used to time the PCI-Express root complex and integrated graphics core), and replace it with a 24 MHz clock, when the processor is idling. As the processor returns to lower (more active) C-states, the 100 MHz base clock is reapplied. The 24 MHz base clock is activated by three new power states, C8, C9, and C10, introduced by Haswell-ULT. The third slide below details what happens to the various components in the new C-states.

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., a leading SAS/SATA HBA and storage solutions manufacturer, proudly announces that its entire line-up of 6Gb/s SAS and SATA RAID PCI-Express 2.0 host bus adapters are Windows 8 ready: RocketRAID 4500 Series SAS 6Gb/s Hardware RAID HBA's, RocketRAID 2700 series SAS 6Gb/s Host RAID HBA's, RocketRAID 600 Series SATA 6Gb/s Host RAID HBA's, and RocketU Series USB 3.0 HBA's. HighPoint has actively supported every major Windows operating system from the early days of 3.1, to the recent debut of Windows 8. Our extensive line of 6Gb/s SAS RAID, 6Gb/s SATA RAID, and USB 3.0 HBA's are ideal storage solutions for any Windows 8 platform.

TDK Corporation has developed the GBDriver RS4 series of NAND type flash memory controllers with support for 3 Gbps serial ATA. Sales will begin in January 2013.

With an effective access speed of 180 MB/sec, the GBDriver RS4 is an advanced high-speed SATA controller chip. It is fully compatible not only with the latest 1xnm generation and 2x nm generation 16 kB/page SLC (single level cell) and MLC (multi level cell) NAND type flash memory, but also with 8 kB/page and 4 kB/page structures. This allows the customer to select the optimal flash memory for the respective application, providing the flexibility to configure high-speed SATA storage with a capacity ranging from 512 MB to 1 TB.

As big data, high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud-computing applications push the demand for real-time access of data into the zettabytes, Intel Corporation announced today its next-generation data center solid-state drive (SSD), the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3700 Series, designed to remove storage bottlenecks and maximize multi-core CPU performance. The Intel SSD DC S3700 Series delivers fast, consistent performance and low latencies along with strong data protection and high endurance to help IT personnel support today's most demanding data center applications.

"Today's data explosion creates unique storage challenges for data center professionals," said Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager for the Intel Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Solutions Group. "High latencies and slow storage I/O can cripple data centers' ability to deliver exciting big data or cloud-computing applications with fast, low latency data access. Intel's next-generation Intel SSD DC S3700 Series breaks through SSD limitations for the data center on all fronts - fast, consistent performance, strong data protection and high endurance -- so IT professionals can deliver on their most demanding technology initiatives."

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today confirmed its OWC Data Doubler Kit is compatible with the new 2012 Mac mini announced by Apple earlier this week. The 'do-it-yourself' kit enables mini owners to add a second internal 2.5" SATA hard drive up to 1.0TB or a high-performance Solid State Drive to complement the existing internal factory drive. Fully supported with all required parts, tools, and a step-by-step 'how-to' video, users can add an OWC Mercury 6G SSD up to 480GB in capacity starting from $83.99. With this kit, users can enjoy near instantaneous booting and application launches along with an incredible boost to overall system and application performance thanks to real-world sustained data rates of up to 559MB/s. While OWC highly recommends its Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSDs for the 6.0Gb/s data bus equipped 2011-2012 Apple mini, this DIY kit is fully compatible with all 9.5mm or smaller 2.5" Serial ATA SSDs, including the largest capacity in the 3G speed class OWC Mercury Electra 960GB SSD.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced that it is producing advanced solid state drives (SSDs) that are designed specifically for use in servers and enterprise storage systems. These drives - the SM843 and the SM1625 - will be particularly useful as high-speed storage for a wide range of server and storage applications that depend on extremely fast data writing including social media in the cloud, SQL database logs, media streaming, virtualization, video on demand and online transaction processing (OLTP).

Samsung's new data center and enterprise SSDs deliver extremely high performance with low power consumption in providing the most efficient storage solutions for data center applications," said Myungho Kim, vice president of memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will aggressively produce its new line-up of SSDs beginning this month to accelerate SSDs' move into not only the server but also the storage marketplace, as we continue to affirm our leadership in the SSD market."

MSI designed the new Hetris H61 Ultra, a 10 liter commercial barebones desktop for the European market. Measuring 330 x 94 x 320 mm, its chassis houses an Intel H61 chipset-based socket LGA1155 motherboard, which supports Core/Pentium/Celeron processors based on the 32 nm "Sandy Bridge" and 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" micro-architectures. It features two 240-pin DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 8 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1333 MHz memory. Among the drive bays in the chassis are a 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA bay for hard drives, and a 5.25-inch bay for optical drives.

The Hetris H61 Ultra packs an 80 Plus-compliant 270W power supply. It features a PCI-Express riser that allows you to install up to two PCIe expansion cards along the plane of the motherboard. Connectivity includes 6-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports on the front, four USB 2.0/1.1 ports on the rear, a pair of serial COM ports, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, eSATA 3 Gb/s, and display connectivity that includes DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. The Hetris H61 Ultra could also be sold with a number of entry-level CPU, memory, and HDD combinations.

Eurocom, is shipping a complete line of high performance, fully upgradeable Mobile Workstations specifically designed for the modern Engineer. Supporting the most powerful mobile professional graphics solutions including the NVIDIA Quadro K5000M and K3000M, Eurocom Mobile Workstations are able to run the most demanding engineering and design software with ease, while on the go.

"We have customers running Dassault Systemes Solidworks, Siemens Solid Edge, Creo Elements Pro, CATIA and Autodesk Inventor software suites on the go with our line of Mobile Workstations. Thanks to our support of NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions, our Mobile Workstations are able to handle a wide range of professional grade software suites" Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

Intel Corporation announced today it is shipping its first solid-state drive (SSD) using industry leading 20-nanometer (nm) NAND flash memory process.

The new Intel Solid-State Drive 335 Series (Intel SSD 335 Series) uses the smallest, most efficient multi-level cell NAND flash on the market, allowing Intel to advance its 300 Series client/consumer SSDs to the next-generation technology. SSDs offer users an overall PC performance boost accelerating productivity applications and other computing activities, such as Web surfing, movie watching, video chatting and content creation.

QNAP Systems, Inc. announced today a major expansion of the number of compatible peripherals available for its family of Turbo NAS products. The major additions include a Seagate 2.5-inch 1TB internal SATA hard drive and 2.5-inch 1TB external storage device, two Arkeia Software 3rd party software apps and seventy network cameras.

Pioneer announced the BDR-208JBK, an internal SATA Blu-ray writer drive, which the company claims to have the highest Blu-ray writing speed. The drive can write Blu-ray ROM (BD-R) at 15X, dual-, triple-, and quad-layer BD-R at 14X, 8X, and 6X, respectively. BD-RE discs are written at 2X, DVDs at 16X, and CDs at 40X. The drive features PureRead3+, which lets the drive correct read errors on scratched discs. The drive includes a suite of software by Cyberlink, including PowerDVD 10, PowerDirector, Power2Go 7, InstantBurn 5, and LabelPrint 2.

Icy Dock is proud to introduce the MB981U3N-1SA USB 3.0 2.5" / 3.5" SATA & IDE Hard Drive Adapter. This adapter is an ultra portable yet space saving solution for users who require high transfer speed with multiple hard drives to swap, whether it is IDE / SATA or a 2.5" / 3.5" form factor.

The MB981U3N-1SA accepts almost all kinds of drives including ATA (IDE), SATA, 2.5", 3.5" hard drives and SSDs. It allows universal adaptability with modern PCs or Macs via SuperSpeed USB 3.0. With a theoretical maximum of 5Gb/s, you get the lightning fast transfer performance you need to finish your tasks fast. With USB 3.0 capable of backwards compatibility, the adapter can be used in older systems that only have USB 2.0. This is the best interface to date with reliable compatibility for many different systems.