SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
EKWB Begins Selling Heatsink for Intel’s Optane 905P M.2 SSD
EK Water Blocks has started selling its passive heatsink for Intel’s recently-released Optane 905P M.2 SSD. The cooling solution is meant to ensure consistent performance of the drive under...
15 by Anton Shilov on 2/14/2019Plugable USBC-NVME Tool-Less NVMe SSD Enclosure Capsule Review
Storage bridges are an important part of computing systems. Currently popular external bridges allow storage drives (hard drives or SSDs) to talk to computing systems over USB or Thunderbolt...
23 by Ganesh T S on 2/14/2019Comparing Two 1TB NVMe Drives with Same NAND, Same Controller: XPG SX8200 Pro vs HP EX950
Retail drives based on the Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller have arrived. The ADATA SX8200 Pro and HP EX950 are nearly identical drives that are replacing last year's flagship models...
43 by Billy Tallis on 2/6/2019OWC Unveils Second-Gen ThunderBlade External SSDs: 2800 MB/s Starting at $799
OWC this week introduced its second-generation ThunderBlade external SSDs, which are aimed squarely at the high-end, max performance external storage market. Offering up to 2800 MB/s sequential read speeds...
1 by Anton Shilov on 2/4/2019CES 2019: New Kingston KC2000 NVMe SSDs for High Performance
At this year’s CES, Kingston demonstrated its first SSDs powered by Silicon Motion’s controllers. The new KC2000-series drives are aimed at high-end client systems.
45 by Anton Shilov on 1/23/2019The Samsung 970 EVO Plus (250GB, 1TB) NVMe SSD Review: 92-Layer 3D NAND
Samsung is updating its mainstream NVMe SSD with a new generation of 3D NAND that brings improved performance and power efficiency. The new 'Samsung 970 EVO Plus' keeps the...
35 by Billy Tallis on 1/22/2019CES 2019: Kingston A2000 NVMe SSD Aiming for Below SATA Pricing
Manufacturers of SSDs have traditionally sold drives with a PCIe interface at a premium when compared to devices featuring a SATA interface because of higher performance and despite of...
16 by Anton Shilov on 1/18/2019The Western Digital WD Black SN750 SSD Review: Why Fix What Isn't Broken?
Last year Western Digital overhauled their WD Black NVMe SSD with an upgrade to 3D NAND and a new in-house SSD controller, transforming the product line from one of...
55 by Billy Tallis on 1/18/2019Quick Look: Using WD's Black SN750 SSD as a Thunderbolt 3 External Drive
External SSDs with a Thunderbolt 3 interface are still the only option for users looking to get high-end performance in a bus-powered portable device. These SSDs have become possible...
10 by Ganesh T S on 1/18/2019CES 2019: GIGABYTE’s High-Performance Aorus PCIe and M.2 SSDs
Last year when GIGABYTE introduced its first SSDs, the company took a cautious approach only released entry-level drives. At this year’s CES the company finally unveiled its high-performance SSDs...
2 by Anton Shilov on 1/17/2019Micron Exercises Option to Buyout Intel's Share of IMFT
Micron is following through with the next step in the breakup of their long alliance with Intel for storage technology. As announced last October, Micron is exercising their call...
18 by Billy Tallis on 1/14/2019CES 2019: ADATA Spectrix Memory & SSDs Get More RGB
RGB lighting has become a major selling point for hardware aimed at gamers and performance enthusiasts. After all, since modern CPUs, GPUs, DRAMs, SSDs, and other components offer plenty...
4 by Anton Shilov on 1/14/2019Mushkin at CES 2019: Carbon X100 & Carbon Z100 External SSDs at Up to 2.2 GB/s
Mushkin introduced its new external SSDs featuring USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 interfaces and powered by desktop-class controllers. The Carbon X100 and the Carbon Z100 drives offer performance akin...
6 by Anton Shilov on 1/11/2019Mushkin at CES 2019: SSDs With 96L 3D NAND in Q2
At CES, Mushkin provided their usual roadmap update detailing the next several SSDs they plan to release. There aren't any big surprises: several of the products have been mentioned...
2 by Billy Tallis on 1/11/2019CES 2019: TeamGroup And ASRock Release Phantom Gaming Branded Memory and SSD
One of the leading players in memory Team Group has joined forces with ASRock to release the Phantom Gaming branded T-FORCE DELTA Phantom Gaming RGB SSD and T-FORCE XCALIBUR...
5 by Gavin Bonshor on 1/10/2019HP Announces EX950 M.2 NVMe SSD
HP has announced a new high-end consumer NVMe SSD, the HP EX950. The EX950 is the successor to the very successful HP EX920, which for most of 2018 was...
13 by Billy Tallis on 1/9/2019Western Digital at CES 2019: External Flash Storage Solutions Showcased
In addition to the SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD and the 4TB thumb drive prototype demonstration, Western Digital also had announcements related to a couple of additional external flash...
7 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019New Generation of Optane M.2 SSDs Coming Soon
Intel's Optane products so far fall into one of two categories. At the high end is the flagship P4800X enterprise SSD and its derivatives for the enthusiast market. At...
27 by Billy Tallis on 1/8/2019Toshiba Announces Fourth-Generation BGA SSD with 96L 3D NAND
Toshiba has announced the fourth iteration of their OEM client NVMe SSD that is delivered as a single BGA chip package containing both the SSD controller and the NAND...
0 by Billy Tallis on 1/8/2019Seagate at CES 2019: BarraCuda 510 and FireCuda 510 M.2 NVMe
Seagate recently returned to the consumer SSD market with the BarraCuda SSD. It didn't make much of a splash, but Seagate got their feet wet and kicked off a...
4 by Billy Tallis on 1/7/2019