RAIDMAX today announces the VAMPIRE, a full tower case with all the features a PC building enthusiast could want: tool-free design, convenient top I/O panel, zero-clutter cable management, water cooling support, and SSD hot swap functionality. Supporting motherboard form factors up to XL-ATX, the VAMPIRE is an ideal chassis for those looking for a spacious no hassle-case.

To minimize installation, upgrade and maintenance stress the VAMPIRE has several tool-less features. This case holds up to five 5.25" drives and seven 2.5" SSD/3.5" HDDs that are easily set into place with a tool-less mounting mechanism. The side panels and PCI slot covers use thumbscrews. Also, the fan filter on the bottom of the PSU can be easily pulled out for cleaning. For overclockers who wish to add top case fans or radiators, the metal mesh can be removed without tools.

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., a leading SAS, SATA and USB 3.0 HBA and storage solutions manufacturer, Proudly announces the next generation of eSATA storage devices; boosting performance from 3 Gb/s to 6 Gb/s - the RocketStor 5322 Dual 6 Gb/s eSATA Storage Dock. HighPoint's innovative dual-dedicated 6 Gb/s eSATA architecture optimizes the transfer speeds of 6 Gb/s SATA storage devices. Each of the RocketStor 5322s dual 6 Gb/s SATA bays is built for today's fastest SATA storage devices, and deliver twice the performance of eSATA 3Gb/s storage docks - up to 12 Gb/s of aggregated transfer bandwidth.

HighPoint's no-compromise approach to eSATA technology aims to revolutionize desktop and workstation storage. The RocketStor 5322 overcomes the known performance shortfalls of existing 3 Gb/s eSATA devices and delivers dual-dedicated 6 Gb/s eSATA host connectivity. Each 6 Gb/s SATA bay is capable of fully leveraging the performance potential of today's high-speed SATA 6 Gb/s SSD's.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its UltraDrive MX2 for those that crave the need for speed in a computing environment.

With sequential read and write speeds up to 240 MB/sec, UltraDrive MX2 allows firms to cover bases from lightning fast transaction speeds for database servers to faster load times in high end gaming rigs. The UltraDrive MX2 also supports the latest garbage collection and TRIM features which are designed to keep this SSD running at peak performance.

The Slidebook S20, the ideal mobile work station and leisure companion, just hit the market. Its elegant streamlined exterior, all-in-one design, Intel's third generation Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, and all-weather, long-life battery meet are designed to meet your work and leisure needs and make the Slidebook S20 stand out from the crowd of other ultrabooks.

Another MSI ingenious design, the Slidebook S20 not only offers all the audiovisual, multimedia, reading, and gaming enjoyment of a tablet, it also sports a keyboard, USB, and HDMI capabilities of a mobile office notebook. This chicly mobile machine satisfies the needs of both on-the-go businesspeople and students and the extended battery power ensures that you have plenty of time to do what you're doing. Ideal for Internet browsing, social networking, and word processing, the Slidebook S20 is the perfect choice for anybody on the go. The S20's design with keyboard and sliding cover eliminates the limitations most people feel when they use tablets. MSI's innovative, user-friendly design have you the user in mind.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that the Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq") has accepted the Company's plan to regain compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1) (the "Rule") which will permit the continued listing of the Company's stock on the Nasdaq Capital Markets.

On December 17, 2012, the Company submitted to Nasdaq a plan to regain compliance with the Rule. After reviewing the Company's plan to regain compliance, Nasdaq granted an exception to enable the Company to regain compliance with the Rule. Under the terms of the exception, on or before February 28, 2013, the Company must file its 10-Q for the period ended August 31, 2012 and all other delinquent periodic reports, as required by the Rule.

On taking apart the Acer S7 Ultrabook, The SSD Review discovered a strange new SSD form-factor, which bears the label of Lite-On, and carrying the model number "CMT-256L3M." This is perhaps the first mSATA SSD with two independent SSD subunits, one on each side. The mSATA interface itself is modified to have two SSD ports. The drive registers on the system BIOS as two individual drives, which is then run as a 256 GB (physical) RAID 0 volume by the BIOS and operating-system.

Each of the CMT-256L3M's two subunits feature a Marvell 88S9175 controller, which supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface, two 64 GB dual-channel 24 nm toggle NAND flash memory chips by Toshiba, and a Nanya-made DRAM cache chip. Putting the drive through sequential-friendly benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark shows a sequential read speed of the drive (combined with its two subunits) to be around 877 MB/s, with sequential writes up to 672 MB/s. Multi-subunit SSDs aren't new, most high-end consumer SSDs from the pre-TRIM, pre-SandForce era used to be dual- to quad-subunit drives. The CMT-256L3M is the first one in the super-compact mSATA form-factor, and its performance numbers could impress more Ultrabook designers.

InnoDisk, a global leader in Industrial Flash and DRAM Storage Solutions, announces two whitepapers that present our solutions for Wear Leveling & Read Disturbance, Garbage Collection & TRIM for solid state drives (SSD's). InnoDisk is a service-driven organization, and is proud to provide useful, technical documentation to our customers and colleagues.

InnoDisk's wear leveling architecture and technology delivers an innovative method of spreading write/erase operations on an SSD evenly across blocks. By using system buffer blocks along with sophisticated block swapping and a configurable wear leveling performance frequency setting, SSDs using this technology can prolong their lifespan and prevent read disturbance.

Currently, 1U server is a compact standard rack server with low cost and consumption. It is ideal for being deployed in computer facilities or Internet Data Center demanding higher density space or in industrial computers for special application. To meet these demands, Apacer launched the next-gen SATA modular SSD, SDM4 7P/180D LP2 (SATA Disk Module 7Pin/180 Degree Low Profile 2) specially designed for 1U server.

This product provides storage solutions featuring mini customization, Write Protect Switch, built-in power supply connector, wide-temp operation and high reliability.This meets customers' demands on space configuration within small mechanisms and creates operation environments with excellent reliability.

NEC Japan rolled out the world's thinnest Ultrabook, the 15.6-inch LaVie X (model: LX850/JS). It is just 12.8 mm thick (375 x 255 x 12.8 mm), weighing 1.59 kg. NEC achieved its thickness thanks to innovations in cooling that spreads cooling components apart. It features an LED backlit IPS LCD screen featuring 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution, Intel Core i7-3517U processor, 4 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD storage, and Windows 8. Connectivity includes two USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0 +HS, HDMI display-output, SDHC/SDXC card slot, and a 2-megapixel web-camera. It is slated for market availability on December 27.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that the Audit Committee's investigation, assisted by third party legal and financial advisors, has been substantially completed and a preliminary report has been provided to the Audit Committee. While there continue to be various matters requiring further investigation, the Company believes they will be concluded shortly. The Audit Committee has approved this report and, in consultation with management, concluded that the Company should restate the results for the first quarter of fiscal 2013, as well as the results for certain quarters of fiscal 2012 and for the fiscal year 2012.

The restatements primarily relate to the timing of revenue recognition, the classification of certain customer incentive costs and for the level of reserves for product returns. The number of prior periods affected and the impact of the adjustments will be disclosed in more detail in the Company's restated financial statements, which will be provided as soon as practical. The Board and management are in discussions with Crowe Horwath LLP, the Company's independent auditors regarding the matters identified in the investigation.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that it has initiated a beta test program for its Linux Acceleration (LXL) Software development and invites its enterprise SSD customers to participate. The new OCZ LXL Software is a fast caching storage solution for OCZ's portfolio of enterprise SSDs and designed specifically for Linux-based physical and virtual environments.

OCZ's unique LXL Software provides a new integrated approach for making application-optimized data cache selections while minimizing I/O access times to SSD flash. It achieves this type of dynamic cache selection optimization by splitting the caching policy engine between the core mechanism running in the Linux kernel and an advanced statistical out-of-band analysis module that optimally determines which data needs to be placed in the cache and stores the data locally in OCZ enterprise-SSDs. The LXL software supports a wide range of OCZ enterprise solid state solutions across multiple interfaces (i.e. Z-Drive R4 PCIe Series, the Talos 2 SAS Series and the Deneva 2 SATA Series).

Kingfast rolled out the K25 Ultra cache-SSD. Featuring 32 GB of MLC NAND flash, the drive comes bundled with a license to use NVELO DataPlex SSD caching software, with which you can accelerate your existing HDD-based machine, without re-installing anything. The K25 Ultra is built into the 2.5-inch 7 mm-thick SATA 3 Gb/s form-factor, which makes it ultra-thin friendly. While an accelerated HDD's performance will depend on various other factors, the drive itself can dole out 270 MB/s sequential reads, and 190 MB/s sequential writes. It is priced at $58.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, announced today that it acquired privately held NVELO, Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based pioneer of storage software. By intelligently managing and optimizing the use of SSDs in the storage subsystem, SSD caching has become an attractive solution for both consumer and enterprise computing platforms. The timely integration of NVELO's flagship storage technology into Samsung's best-in-class SSD technologies will give Samsung customers access to an ever-evolving and more diversified portfolio of NAND storage solutions suitable for a broad range of computing platforms.

"The acquisition of NVELO will enable us to extend our ability to provide SSD related storage solutions to customers. We are pleased with this transaction as the employees of NVELO share our vision to take SSD storage into the next-generation of performance and reliability," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president of Flash product & technology, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics.

Solid state drive (SSD) is gradually making its way to become the mainstream in 3C product market. Team Group Inc., one of the leading memory manufacturers in the world, is making improvement in SSD product development by launching the ultra-thin Team Ultra L1 SSD. As thin as 7mm, the Team Ultra L1 SSD is the most lightweight and compact model which can be installed directly onto new generation of Ultrabooks for faster booting and read/write speed. Combined with the inherent advantage of shock resistance and stability of SSD, it signifies significant improvement of computer performance and durability.

Team Ultra L1 SSD is provided with SATA III 6Gb/s high-speed interface. The compact profile and special titanium color finishing highlight the product's high quality and the sense of modern technology. The continuous read and write speeds go as high as 550MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively. The random write-in speed for small files of 4K reaches up to 80,000 IOPS, not only fast but stable. In addition, the integration of Dura Write and RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) provides support for S.M.A.R.T. and full compatibility with Win7 Trim commands. It gives the hard drive a boost of burst random writing and effective improvement of computer's ability to respond and multiplexing performance, making the hard drive a storage solution of extreme speed for consumers.

Austrian tweaking specialists o.v.e.r.clockers.at today set a new world record in the renowned performance test PCMark05. Throughout the entire project, Noctua fans, CPU coolers and thermal compound played a key role.

During last Friday's live event hosted by the Austrian SSD manufacturer Angelbird, o.v.e.r.clockers.at already managed to break the previous world record in Futuremark's popular benchmarking suite PCMark05, but since their best CPU and motherboard fell victim to the extreme tweaking, the Austrian overclocking specialists failed to pass the
60.000 point mark. Today, o.v.e.r.clockers.at set out to make another attempt, but US overclockers had topped their previous record overnight and pushed the bar to a breathtaking 62.759 points - more than the Austrian's had hoped to achieve. Taking up the challenge nonetheless, o.v.e.r.clockers.at squeezed the absolute maximum out of their system.

Plextor, leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, has announced they will be entering the Enterprise SSD Market. The official product announcement and details will be made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

This announcement comes on the heels of the introduction of the M5 Pro which gained accolades from the critical press as one of the fastest-if not the fastest-SATA 6Gbps SSD on the market. This entry into the SSD market also set a standard for data protection and data accuracy with 256-bit AES encryption and TrueProtect-a dual-stage data debugging feature exclusive to Plextor.

Just in time for Christmas and New Year's holiday shopping season, COUGAR, leading German PC case and power supply brand, has introduced two new white colored editions of their high-end mid-tower PC case, the COUGAR Volant and their affordable mid-tower case, the COUGAR Solution. The new white editions come with the honey-comb and mesh hybrid intake design creating a solid, rugged look with optimized ventilation characteristics. By offering enough room for eight installable fans, the cases are perfect for demanding gamers and enthusiasts and those on a budget.

To further improve ventilation and in-case airflow, the COUGAR cases also sport an advanced cable-management system keeping the inside organized. Two holes on the backside of the chassis provide access for water cooling solutions. The combination of rugged lines, metal mesh elements and glossy surface ornaments lend the new white editions a clean professional look. A total of 7 PCIe slots allow for multiple-graphics setups in SLI and CrossfireX modes with state-of-the-art graphics cards of up to 320 mm/12.5" length. Drive installation is child's play with the Volant due to COUGAR's screwless design technology. Easy and convenient on-the-fly data access of 3.5" and 2.5" HDDs/SSDs is provided for by an integrated docking-station on top of the case.

Mushkin, Inc., an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, today announces that the company will begin shipping the world's largest capacity mSATA Solid-State Drive in January 2013. As the latest addition to Mushkin's Atlas family of mSATA drives, the new solid-state drive delivers up a colossal 480 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity on a single mSATA module.

"We're excited to present our latest Atlas 480 GB mSATA solid state drive, demonstrating once again Mushkin's consistent ability to combine top performance, functionality, capacity, and low-power innovation," said Brian Flood, Director of Product Development at Mushkin Inc. "Keeping z-height as low as possible and managing to fit eight NAND flash chips and a controller on a mSATA PCB was no easy feat, but now capacity-hungry Ultrabook and notebook users can go beyond the 256 GB mSATA barrier."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that SED International (Amex: SED), an established multinational distributor of leading computer technology products, is now authorized to distribute OCZ's complete line of consumer-based SSDs in Latin America and the Caribbean. This includes OCZ's popular SATA-based Vertex and Agility SSD Series, the PCIe-based RevoDrive SSD Series, and the recently announced Vector SSD Series featuring OCZ's new Barefoot 3 controller that delivers advanced I/O performance and enhanced endurance for personal computing environments.

The distribution agreement with OCZ represents SED International's first SSD brand for the Latin American region providing an alternative storage technology to hard disk drives (HDDs) given today's performance disparity between servers and HDDs. As data traffic continues to exponentially increase, the mechanical and physical limitations of HDDs result in system bottlenecks that compromise the end user experience necessitating the need for faster, more reliable storage solutions.

Plextor, a leading developer of high-performance digital storage equipment, announces the release of the 100K Xtreme firmware update for its multi-award winning M5 Pro SSD. This update transforms the current M5 Pro into the M5 Pro Xtreme - the first truly professional SSD capable of delivering random-read speeds up to 100,000 IOPS along with improved maximum random-write speeds of 88,000 IOPS, a 470 MB/S sequential write speed, and an impressive 540 MB/S sequential read.

The Plextor M5 Pro has already been a success across the globe not only generating significant sales, but picking up large numbers of awards in reviews and the top position in group tests. Engineered to use the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller and Toshiba's new 19 nm Toggle NAND, Plextor expects further success with the drive's Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme version.

Japanese PC maker Mouse Computer announced the LuvMachines Mini (Lm) series VESA-mount compatible nettops. It includes three models, the Lm-mini40B (base), Lm-mini40S (SSD-equipped), and Lm-mini40X (hybrid HDD-equipped, top). The three are based on a common design, which measures 5.2 x 153.6 x 172.6 mm (HxWxD), which can either latch on to your monitor via VESA wall-mount, or sit around on your desk with its stand. The base configuration includes an Intel Celeron 847 processor clocked at 1.10 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, Intel NM70 chipset, USB 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n, gigabit Ethernet, and Windows 8. It is priced at 29,820¥. The Lm-mini40S tops that with a 120 GB SSD, and is priced at 34,650¥. The Lm-mini40X leads the pack with 750 GB hybrid HDD, and is priced at 39,900¥.

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.

With the dawn of 2013, and no catastrophes in sight, Intel is going ahead with its usual business of phasing out old processor models, and making way for new ones. By the end of 2012, Intel will stop taking orders for several processor models mostly based on the older 32 nm "Sandy Bridge" silicon. These include chips such as the Core i7-2700K, Core i5-2310, Core i3-2105, Pentium G440, and surprisingly, an early demise of the 22 nm Core i5-3450, which is cannibalized by the Core i5-3470 at the same price point. Pentium G870, G645 and G645T as well as Celeron G555, G550 and G550T are the other chips on the chopping block.

Come 2013, Intel will release Pentium and Celeron series processors based on its 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" micro-architecture. These include the Pentium G2130, G2020 and G2020T and Celeron G1620, G1610 and G1610T. In the mobile (notebook) CPU sphere, Intel will launch dual-core "Ivy Bridge" chips to layer out its Ultrabook product segment. These include the Core i7-3687, Core i5-3437U, Celeron 1037U, 1007U, 1020M and 1000M. In March, the company is expected to launch its 4th generation Core "Haswell" line of processors.

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.

All the spotlights are now focusing on the surge of Ultrabook, Team Group, the leading brand names in the world in memory storage, is rolling out the new Team Ultra L2 SSD. Only 7mm in thickness, it is the most compact model in the market. It can be installed on the new generation of Ultrabook with ease, improving significantly the booting speed and read-write performance. The model provides substantial battery life and shock resistance. It is like a size of featherweight boxer packed with heavyweight champion performance. It is the ultimate upgrade choice for your Ultrabook.