Phanteks took the Computex 2024 show by force, showing off several new and improved cases, including the new Evolv X², the Eclipse G400A and G400N, which are successors to the P400 line, upgraded NV5 MKII and NV9 MKII cases, and the new Enthoo Pro II Server Edition XL case for the server market.

The star of the show is definitely the new Evolv X², a case that Phanteks says is redefined to fit modern consumer needs. It certainly has the modern and refined aesthetic to appeal to the wider audience, with brushed aluminium interior panels and full front to side glass panel. Some of the key features include integrated cable management, key fan positions to cool down and show off most hardware components, as well as support for rear-connector mainboard, something that most modern motherboards will have.

AEWIN provides a series of performant Network Appliances and Edge Server powered by single AMD Zen 4c EPYC 8004 processor codenamed Siena. The latest AMD Siena CPU is produced with 5 nm manufacturing technology to have up to 64 cores (extreme density of 2CCX/CCD) and 225 W TDP with lower energy consumption compared to EPYC SP5. Siena SP6 CPU has the best performance per watt and is with the support of rich I/O and CXL 1.1.

SCB-1945 (1U) and SCB-1947A (2U) are two performant Network Appliances supporting 12x DDR5 sockets and 4x/8x PCIe Gen 5 slots for AEWIN self-design NICs with 1G to 100G copper/fiber interfaces (with/without bypass function) or other accelerators and NVMe SSDs. Both models provide the flexibility to change 2x front panel PCIe slots to 1x PCIe x16 slot for installing off-the-shelf add-on card for additional functions required. It can support 400G NIC card installed such as NVIDIA Mellanox PCIe 5.0 NIC.

MSI released an intriguing AMI BIOS update on January 31 for their Intel 700 and 600 chipset mainboards—hardware tipster chi11eddog noticed this quiet announcement and proceeded to get his Z790 Carbon MAX WIFI motherboard running on beta version 7D89v1B1. This preliminary release enables "capacity support up to 256 GB" for DDR5 Memory—chi11eddog noted that you previously had to jump through several hoops to get this configuration in working order: "As per a friend in the industry, before this, it needs to disable Above 4G/Resizable BAR/remapping to support 256 GB on Intel systems. MSI has fixed this. No need to disable Above 4G/Resizable Bar."

His MSI Z790 test platform featured an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU and 256 GB (4 x 64 GB) DDR5-4800 of memory—Wccftech's reportage proposes some extra tests: "it would be interesting to see what the maximum speeds are supported when using high-capacity memory kits but for those who prefer capacity over speed, well the solutions are now out there." The Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) standard has been adopted by the laptop memory segment, and manufacturers are believed to be transferring technological innovations to desktop form factors. Upcoming 64 GB DDR5 modules offer twice the capacity over the best previous-gen solutions. The proliferation of non-binary DIMM kits—from 24 to 48 GB—in 2023 brought (total) desktop memory capacities to a maximum of 192 GB.

Yesterday we pre-announced that we're developing an SD Expansion Card. Normally we don't announce a product until we've fully locked the feature-set, brought up the necessary suppliers and manufacturing environment, completed most of the engineering and a substantial level of testing and validation, and are on a high confidence path to a specific release date at a specific price. This is because development of brand new products requires charting a course into the unknown. We set a target for what the product will be from the start, but as we proceed and learn, we often need to adjust the schedule, scope, and cost, and sometimes even need to outright pause or cancel development. Announcing just before shipping is how most companies operate to reduce churn and public uncertainty, but it means the product development process ends up extremely opaque.

We decided we're going to treat this one product on our roadmap a little differently. A full-size SD Expansion Card is consistently the most requested Expansion Card by the community, which makes it a great one to open up. We're just at the start of the process now, and Hyelim on our Marketing team is creating a new YouTube series to share updates and insights as we go through the New Product Introduction (NPI) process. Take a look at the first video (below) and let us know what you think as we complete (or don't complete) the product.