Team Group Inc. has been committed to developing a wide range of memory products for years and has received international recognition for long-term efforts. Today, Team Group proudly announces that the gaming label and creator label, T-FORCE and T-CREATE, have taken home four awards from the Red Dot Design Award 2024 for the T-FORCE DARK AirFlow I SSD Cooler, T-FORCE SIREN GD120S AIO SSD Cooler, T-FORCE XTREEM DDR5 Desktop Memory, and T-CREATE CinemaPr P31 External SSD. The success is a testimony to Team Group's outstanding R&D capability and incredibly innovative designs, which have once again propelled new heights on the stage of a world-class design award.

One of the four most prestigious design awards in the world, the Red Dot Design Award of Germany is an important indicator of industrial design and development trends around the world. The Red Dot received thousands of submissions from over 60 countries in 2024, all vying for the highly influential award. Submissions are judged by a panel of experts, hailing from all over the world, on their innovation, solution, product, design, and concept. Team Group sub-labels, T-FORCE and T-CREAT, stood out with stellar R&D and quality designs, adding to Team Group's illustrious history.

MSI, a global leader in gaming PC hardware, is thrilled to announce the release of its highly anticipated SSD powerhouse, the SPATIUM M580 FROZR, ushering in a new era of storage performance. With cutting-edge technology and innovative thermal solutions, this SSD is set to redefine the standards of speed and reliability in storage solutions.

SPATIUM M580 FROZR, Reaching New Heights with Crowned Speeds
The SPATIUM M580 FROZR sets a new benchmark in storage performance with its revolutionary features. Powered by the state-of-the-art PHISON E26 PCIe Gen 5 controller and equipped with advanced 3D NAND flash modules boasting 232 layers, this SSD achieves mind-blowing read speeds of up to 14.6 GB/s and write speeds of up to 12.7 GB/s, up to 2 times faster transfer rates compared to current PCIe 4.0 SSDs. This represents a significant leap in speeds, boosted by a DRAM cache buffer and a SLC Cache, providing users with lightning-fast data access and gaining valuable milliseconds in latency for gaming, content creation, and professional applications. Additionally, the M580 FROZR is fortified with LPDC ECC and E2E Data Protection, ensuring data integrity and reliability. With a high TBW (Terabytes Written) value and backed by a comprehensive 5-year warranty, users can trust in the durability and longevity of the SPATIUM M580 FROZR in 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB variants after an easy installation.

Sabrent today announced its latest flagship M.2 NVMe SSD series, the Rocket 5. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the Sabrent Rocket 5 is sold as a bare drive, with an included fan-heatsink that you install if needed. This cooler comes with a tiny fins-stack, two copper heat pipes, and a 20 mm fan. At the heart of the drive is the new Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um controller, paired with Micron B58R 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and LPDDR4 based DRAM cache. The drive comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity variants.

The company didn't put out capacity-specific performance or endurance numbers, but mentioned sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s, as is characteristic of the Max14um controller variant; up to 12 GB/s sequential write speeds, up to 1.55 million IOPS 4K random reads, with up to 1.8 million IOPS 4K random writes. The Rocket 5 replaces the Rocket 4 Plus as Sabrent's flagship SSD. The 4 TB variant is listed at $730, the 2 TB variant at $340, and the 1 TB variant at $190.

The current crop of PCIe Gen 5 based M.2 NVMe SSDs run scorching hot to deliver sequential transfer speeds of 10 GB/s, requiring some massive cooling solutions with tiny fans. All this might change, as Phison, a leading SSD controller manufacturer, unveiled three new controllers at the 2024 International CES. One of these that stands out, is the PS5031-E31T, which is built on the 7 nm node, and could power the first Gen 5 SSDs delivering 10 GB/s without elaborate cooling solutions. This is a big upgrade from the 12 nm node used by their first Gen 5 controllers. The PS5031-E31T is a DRAMless controller meant for mainstream Gen 5 SSDs. This controller has a 4-channel flash interface (16 CE), a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, supports capacities of up to 8 TB, and is claimed by Phison to offer sequential transfer rates of up to 10.8 GB/s, and up to 1500K IOPS random access; exceeding the fastest Gen 4 SSDs.

Phison also updated its high-end controller lineup with the new PS5026-E26 Max14um. This is a variant of the E26 that's designed for the upcoming Micron B58R NAND flash chip that offers 2400 MT/s per channel transfers. Over the 8-channel interface of the E26, this finally unlocks sequential transfer speeds exceeding 14 GB/s reads, and 12.7 GB/s sequential writes. This is merely a revision of the existing E26 with updated power-optimized firmware, the underlying silicon is identical. The E26 Max14um is the first controller to surpass 1000 MB/s in all three PCMark 10 storage tests. We have a sample of an SSD powered by the E26 Max14um in our labs, and will post our review soon.

Plextor, one of the most iconic names in PC storage once known for high performance and quality, has announced it will cease operations. Parent company Kioxia has decided to retire the Plextor brand name for solid state drives (SSDs). Instead, it will market products under its Solid State Storage Technology Corporation (SSSTC) brand going forward. The move comes after Kioxia acquired Plextor and its parent company Lite-On's SSD business back in 2019. Since then, Plextor has struggled to keep pace with new storage technologies. With PCIe Gen 4 and PCIe Gen 5 SSD controllers coming to market, Plextor failed to adopt the new Phison and InnoGrit platforms, instead sticking with Marvell controllers, lagging behind at that time.

Now, SSSTC and Kioxia will strictly focus SSD sales on the enterprise, data center, and industrial segments rather than the consumer market. The Plextor website is already redirecting to SSSTC.com, which no longer lists any drives for client PCs. While current Plextor SSD owners will continue to receive warranty support and RMA services, no new Plextor drives are expected to be released. The company had a history stretching back over 30 years of making top-performing optical disk drives and SSDs. Similarly to OCZ after its acquisition by Toshiba, the Plextor name will now fade into history. But in the fast-moving storage business, companies live and die by their ability to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Hence, companies are always on the edge of their seats, trying to survive.

Phison Electronics, a global leader in NAND controllers and storage solutions, announced today that the company has expanded its portfolio of PCIe 5.0 high-speed transmission solutions with PCIe 5.0, CXL 2.0 compatible redriver and retimer data signal conditioning IC products. Leveraging the company's deep expertise in PCIe engineering, Phison is the only signal conditioners provider that offers the widest portfolio of multi-channel PCIe 5.0 redriver and retimer solutions and PCIe 5.0 storage solutions designed specifically to meet the data infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI+ML), edge computing, high-performance computing, and other data-intensive, next-gen applications. At the 2023 Open Compute Project Global Summit, the Phison team is showcasing its expansive PCIe 5.0 portfolio, demonstrating the redriver and retimer technologies alongside other enterprise NAND flash, illustrating a holistic vision for a PCIe 5.0 data ecosystem to address the most demanding applications of the AI-everywhere era.

"Phison has focused industry-leading R&D efforts on developing in-house, chip-to-chip communication technologies since the introduction of the PCIe 3.0 protocol, with PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 solutions now in mass production, and PCIe 6.0 solutions now in the design phase," said Michael Wu, President & General Manager, Phison US. "Phison's accumulated experience in high-speed signaling enables our team to deliver retimer and redriver design solutions that are optimized for top signal integration, low power usage, and high temperature endurance, to deliver interface speeds for the most challenging compute environments."

In order to celebrate its 20th anniversary, GALAX has teased a special edition GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card. Although there are no specific details, due to the size and thickness of the teased cooler, it is most likely that this will be a special edition GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card.

As detailed by Videocardz.com, the new graphics card will include a three- to four-slot thick cooler with two fans on the front side and an open area on the front, which could be an opening for a third fan located at the back of the card. GALAX already has an extensive lineup of RTX 4090 graphics cards, a total of fourteen, as well as over 80 different models of RTX 40 series graphics cards. The new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card should be announced tomorrow, and GALAX has already unveiled a new series of high-end PCIe Gen 5 SSDs as a part of the 20th anniversary celebration. Hopefully, these won't be limited to the Chinese market, and we'll see a worldwide release.

T-FORCE, the gaming division of Team Group, today announced the addition of new coolers to its lineup, including the T-FORCE DARK AirFlow I SSD Cooler and the T-FORCE RT-X120 ARGB Fan. In response to the rapid development of consumer storage products, especially the transition from PCIe Gen 4 SSDs to PCIe Gen 5 SSDs, Team Group provides a complete cooling solution for the hotter temperatures of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs during high transfer speeds. Team Group cooler allows SSDs to maintain optimal operating temperatures and achieve stable high-speed operation over sustained periods, providing consumers with a flawless read and write experience with the latest Gen 5 SSDs.

The T-FORCE DARK AirFlow I SSD Cooler was granted a Taiwan Utility Model Patent this year. It uses graphene patented dual-layer structure for cooling and two 5 mm diameter pure copper heat pipes with multi-layered aluminium alloy cooling fins to multiply the cooling area and accelerate heat transfer and dispersion. In addition, it features a high-pressure smart PWM fan that can precisely adjust fan speeds according to the temperature to efficiently remove heat accumulated in the aluminium fins. The cooling structure utilizes patented ultra-thin graphene, excellent thermal conductive material, increased cooling area, and a high air pressure smart PWM fan, and other cooling methods to make the M.2 2280 Gen 5 SSDs run stably and transfer at extremely fast speeds, creating the highest performing active M.2 2280 Gen 5 SSD cooler.

Teledyne LeCroy, the worldwide leader in protocol test and measurement solutions, is pleased to announce availability of the OakGate R350-G5-PowerPlus 3U Rackmount Appliance for PCI Express 5.0, with solid state drive (SSD) power and sideband test capabilities.

Data centers and Hyperscalers are measured on their power sustainability and power usage goals and require SSD vendors to test SSD performance during normal system shutdown, abnormal system shutdown, power surges, low and/or idle power states, and voltage fluctuations. SSD vendors would ideally like these test results to highlight competitive product differentiators, often citing lower active power consumption, better power efficiencies and/or reduced cooling efficiencies. SSD design and validation test engineers can now use the OakGate R350-G5-PowerPlus Rackmount Appliance to analyze voltage and current over time and under stress to determine SSD power utilization, efficiency, and consumption, and possibly find opportunities to improve SSD power consumption. Moreover, the R350-G5-PowerPlus operates without the use of 3rd-party power interposers, reducing cost and simplifying test setup.

As processors and chipsets move into a new generation, many motherboard manufacturers have launched latest-generation motherboards that have allowed the consumer market to embrace a new generation of PCIe 5.0 Solid-State Drives (SSD). ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., the world's leading memory brand, today launched its LEGEND 970 SSD. The LEGEND 970 can reach maximum sequential read/write speeds of 10,000/10,000 MB per second. Its most unique feature is a double-layer aluminium alloy heatsink with built-in micro-fan and surface crystallization that forms a patented active air-cooling system. The surface crystallization improves thermal conductivity, significantly reducing temperatures by 10% compared with fanless heatsinks to maintain stable performance during extended high-speed operation. The LEGEND 970's R&D, design, and superior cooling mechanism will be the benchmark of a new generation of storage products and it is expected to become the most influential PCIe Gen 5 storage solution in the consumer market.

ADATA ushers in a new era with its patented heat dissipation solution! From market consensus, it has become commonly accepted that active cooling is required for timely heat dissipation during high-speed PCIe 5.0 data transmission to ensure high temperatures do not affect reading and writing or slow down the system. The LEGEND 970 adopts a double-layer extruded aluminium heatsink design which features dense air ducts to divert hot and cold air. When heat is conducted upward, the rotation of the built-in micro fan circulates the confluence of hot and cold air and quickly expels exhaust heat from both ends of the extruded aluminium fins. At the same time, the LEGEND 970 increases heat dissipation through the addition of "surface crystallization " on the aluminium heatsink surface, increasing overall air contact area and maximizing the heat dissipation efficiency of its air cooling system. This unique "active heat dissipation" design significantly reduces temperatures by 10% compared to fanless heatsinks. More importantly, it can withstand high temperature stress tests and maintain stable performance even after long-term high-speed operation.