Of course we all know SilverStone for their cases, but I love all of the little functional devices they make. If you missed it be sure to check out our review of their ES02-USB PC Remote Switch Kit. This year at CES they showed us many of their different M.2 storage solutions that could be very helpful if you wanted to add M.2 storage to your system.
First up we have the SDP11, which is designed to fit in an open 3.5-inch hard drive bay. Yes many cases still have those! Instead of a single 3.5-inch hard drive you get four M.2 drives, that is a nice trade-off for sure. So if you have limited space in your system this could be the perfect device for you. On the end you have four SATA data connectors (for the four drives) and a single SATA power connector for all four drives.
One of the coolest devices SilverStone released in 2017 was the MS09, which took a M.2 2280 drive and turned it into a USB 3.1 Gen 2 flash drive. Well this year they are going to have the MS09-Mini which is even smaller and fits M.2 drives up to 60 mm (2260 form factor). You can get M.2 drives up to 1TB in that size, so that is sure a lot of fast data in a small package!
These drives adapters will be available in different colors and have an aluminum design. The USB connector is also retractable.
Of course we know M.2 drives overheat, so SilverStone has solutions for that. They showed us both the ECM24 and ECM23 expansion cards. Each one of these cards support one M.2 2280 drive and have hefty heatsinks on them, which will keep your M.2 drive nice and cool and keep it from throttling. The ECM24 is a larger, normal-sized card, whereas the ECM23 is low-profile for smaller systems and servers.
One last storage device that is really handy that SilverStone was showing off was the EXB01. While it is made for 2.5-inch solid state drives I can see many people using it. It fits in one of your open expansion slot spaces and gives you a hot-swappable 2.5-inch drive bay. I don’t know about you but I have a lot of open expansion slots.
While this device fits in an empty expansion slot it does not connect via PCI-Express or anything like that. You have SATA power and data connections on the back.
If you have storage needs in 2018 SilverStone definitely has you covered.
