Tag Archives: M.2

When you think about NVMe solid state drives you typically think of high performance, high cost drives. Well Toshiba has a new class of NVMe drives in their OCZ RC100 series drives that will help bring NVMe drives into the mainstream. These new affordable NVMe drives have a DRAM-less design, but make use of Host Memory Buffer (HMB) which accesses the system DRAM for its own caching space. The drives also make use of a PCIe Gen 3 x2 interface (whereas most NVMe drives use an x4 interface). With that you have sequential read and write speeds of 1600 MB/s and 1050 MB/s respectively. While this speed is not on the level of high-end NVMe drives it is definitely faster than a normal SATA-based solid state drives and much, much faster than a traditional hard drive. Can this be the drive to bring NVMe speeds to the mainstream? Read on as we find out!

SilverStone just revealed a very interesting M.2 PCIe SSD riser in their ECM23. It honestly looks like a game cartridge from the 1908s as it allows you to "slot-in" your M.2 drive into one of your PCI-Express x16 slots.

MSI is showing off a new 4-way M.2 PCI-Express expansion card that looks like a graphics card. This new expansion card seems to be MSI's solution to M.2 solid state drives over heating and in-turn throttling. MSI has re-purposed their Aero Cooler, which they use on graphics cards and applied it to this expansion card. This gives users 50W of cooling power, which can go up to 75W if you plug in the addition 6-pin power connector to put the fan in overdrive.

We took a look at ADATA's first NVMe solid state drive the XPG SX8000 back in early 2017. Needless to say it was not the best NVMe drive we tested at the time. Well today we have one of their newest drives the XPG SX8200. It makes use of Silicon Motion's SM2262 controller paired with Micron's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. It seems like ADATA has got things right with this drive as both the controller and the NAND are some of the best currently available. ADATA puts specifications of this drive at 3200 MB/s read and 1700 MB/s write, so it is definitely an improvement over the previous generation. The drive is also backed by a 5-year warranty. Let's put this drive to the test and see what it can do!

Samsung Electronics, today introduced the Samsung 970 PRO and EVO, the third generation of its industry-leading consumer solid state drive (SSD) lineup. Having led the market with the first consumer-focused NVMe SSD in 2015, Samsung continues to push the performance barriers with this latest generation of SSDs that are built for tech enthusiasts and professionals so that they can enjoy higher bandwidth for intensive workloads on PCs and workstations.

Like most companies out there ADATA now has a dedicated gaming line of products, which is their XPG line. One of the newest products in this line is the XPG Gammix S10 M.2 solid state drive. This small little drive with its flashy looks is available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. ADATA has gone with the Silicon Motion SM2260 controller teamed with Micron’s first gen 32-layer 3D TLC NAND. ADATA says this drive will have read and write speeds of 1800 MB/s and 850 MB/s respectively, so not the fastest drive out there, but is definitely faster than your normal SATA III SSD. ADATA also backs the drive with a 5-year warranty so you know it is going to last a while. Let's jump in and see what this drive can do!

Patriot will be looking to join the others in the high-end M.2, NVMe SSD crowd with their upcoming Viper SSD family. They were showing off a Viper-branded M.2 solid state drive that features Phison's latest E12 controller.

Of course we all know SilverStone for their cases, but I love all of the little functional devices they make. 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.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the XPG STORM heatsink add-on for M.2 2280 drives. STORM features an aluminum heatsink and with a fan. It can be easily affixed to any compatible SSD to provide powerful cooling.

ASUS has just introduced their Hyper M.2 x16 riser card, which will allow users to add up to four extra M.2 SSDs to their build. The card has a true PCI-Express 3.0 x16 upstream interface, which then splits into four 32 Gb/s M.2-22110 slots (so up to 110 mm in length) with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 wiring each.