Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal second quarter 2021 financial results. "The team delivered solid results this quarter, especially as we continue adapting our business and technology portfolio to take advantage of the immense opportunities in the storage industry," said, David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "During the quarter, we captured strength in the retail business and also delivered on our target outcome to complete qualification of our energy-assisted hard drives and second-generation enterprise SSD products with some of the world's largest data center operators. While there is still more work to be done, we remain extremely focused on meeting the needs of our customers and ramping our next-generation products throughout calendar 2021."

In the fiscal second quarter of 2021, Western Digital's revenue decreased 7% year-over-year to $3.9 billion. The decrease is largely attributable to a decline in our Data Center Devices & Solutions end market, more than offsetting growth in Client Devices and Client Solutions.

CORSAIR, a world leader in high-performance gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced the launch of three new CORSAIR Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drives - the MP600 CORE, MP600 PRO, and MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition. All MP600 SSDs store massive amounts of data with lightning-fast transfer speeds, leveraging PCIe Gen4 technology for incredible, sustained performance.

The MP600 CORE offers up to 4,950MB/sec sequential read and 3,950MB/sec sequential write speeds, while the MP600 PRO and MP600 PRO Hydro X can achieve a blazing-fast 7,000MB/sec sequential read and 6,550MB/sec sequential write speeds[a]. The MP600 CORE is available now in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. The MP600 PRO is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities immediately with a 4TB model coming soon, while the MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition comes in a 2TB capacity, complete with an integrated CORSAIR Hydro X Series XM2 water block that connects your SSD seamlessly into your custom cooling loop. The XM2 water block is also available for purchase as a standalone product, compatible with many existing M.2 SSDs.

Newegg listings indicate Corsair is ready with the MP600 Core and MP600 PRO HydroX, which they state release later today. The MP600 Core is an M.2 NVMe SSD that's a cost-effective variant of the MP600 PRO. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drive takes advantage of PCI-Express 4.0 x4, but unlike the MP600 PRO, uses QLC NAND flash memory. The drive uses the Phison PS5016-E16 controller just like the original MP600, but swaps out its TLC NAND flash for QLC. On offer, are sequential transfer rates of up to 4950 MB/s reads, and up to 3700 MB/s writes, up to 380,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 580,000 IOPS 4K random writes.

The MP600 PRO HydroX, on the other hand, is a premium variant of the MP600 PRO that comes with a factory-fitted water block that you connect to your DIY liquid cooling loop. It uses the same combination of the latest Phison PS5018-E18 controller with 3D TLC NAND flash, and offers the same on-paper performance, with up to 7000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 6550 MB/s sequential writes, up to 660,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 800,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The MP600 Core and MP600 PRO HydroX are expected to launch alongside the original MP600 PRO, later this week. Both the MP600 Core and MP600 PRO HydroX are listed on the international stores of Newegg, with the 2 TB MP600 PRO HydroX going for $459, and the 2 TB MP600 Core going for £286 (incl. VAT).

The Corsair MP600 PRO Gen4 (CSSD-F1000GBMP600PRO) was recently spotted on Amazon Germany before being taken down. The MP600 PRO is the successors to Corsair's MP600 SSD featuring Phison's second-generation PCIe 4.0 PS5018-E18 SSD controller and boasting sequential read/write speeds of up to 7000 MB/s, and 6850 MB/s respectively. These are some very significant generational speed improvements over the already blazing fast advertised read/write speeds of the MP600 at 4950 MB/s and 4250 MB/s.

The drive is also listed as carrying a warranty of 3,600 TBW which is likely for the 2 TB model. These new second-generation PCIe 4.0 SSDs are nearing the limits of the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface which offers maximum speeds of ~8000 MB/s. It should also be noted that these performance improvements offer very limited practical benefits to the end-user in typical use-cases over a basic PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive. Pricing and availability for the drive were not published but we expect Corsair to officially announce the drive soon.

Here's the first picture of the MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Force, an interesting new product from MSI slotted in its upper-mid tier MPG line of motherboards. This Socket LGA1200 motherboard based on the Intel Z590 chipset is characterized by a Hip Hop design language that's a break away from the company's other MPG Z590 motherboards, with a dash of neon-noir colors. A pair solid ridged heatsinks cool the board's 16-phase CPU VRM. Another set of three heatsinks cover its three M.2 NVMe slots, one of which is PCIe Gen 4 and wired to the LGA1200 socket, and the other two to the Z590 PCH.

Expansion slots on the MPG Z590 Gaming Force include two PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated), an x16 (electrical PCI-Express 3.0 x4) slot that's wired to the PCH, and a pair of x1 slots. The rest of the board's feature set appears to roughly match the MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon, including a 6-pin PCIe power input to supplement the two 8-pin EPS and 24-pin ATX power inputs, POST debug readout, a fairly premium onboard audio solution, and other connectivity that possibly includes 2.5 GbE.

Gigabyte Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announces today the latest AORUS Gen4 7000s SSD with up to 7 GB/s read speed. Enhanced by the new generation PCIe 4.0 controller with advanced 3D-TLC NAND Flash, it boosts up to 55% more performance than previous generation PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. AORUS Gen4 7000s SSDs come in two capacity variants, 2 TB and 1 TB with M.2 2280 interface to make installation easy. They equip big aluminium thermal interface in different sizes and double side thermal pad with Nanocarbon coating for improved heat dissipation. Meanwhile, the SSD Tool Box application provides the instant overview and adjustment of SSD status.

"The storage devices are taking advantage of the PCIe 4.0 transfer speed that raised from 5 GB/s to almost 8 GB/s, which is great news for users who expect to optimize storage performance and reduce the bottle neck of system operation." said Jackson Hsu, Director of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions Product Development Division. "AORUS Gen4 7000s SSDs further advance the standards set by our previous SSD products to provide users with breakthrough performance. After the OS installed, uses can enjoy unprecedented 7 GB/s read speed with 1 TB or 2 TB storage capability. The thermal solution and the double-sided thermal pad are designed to slow down the throttling that might occur at high-speed operation of SSD, thus boost the system performance."

Some eight years after the last AMD-based Mini-PC from Shuttle, a second processor manufacturer is once again being incorporated into the company's own product line. As an initial model to revive this segment, Shuttle is supplying a robust 1.3-litre PC for AMD Ryzen processors with Socket AM4.

The first product with the model name XPC DA320 is a Barebone from the "XPC slim" family which measures just 4.3 cm. It features the standard design of the range, but also supports the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs in Socket AM4 and up to 32 GB of RAM. Like all Shuttle products in a 1.3-litre format, this solution is also regarded as particularly robust. The AMD Radeon graphics unit which is integrated into the processor works well with up to three UHD displays which can be connected via HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort and used simultaneously.

Novachips Co., Ltd., an innovator in flash storage solution, today announced that it had acquired Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 (Cert# 3785) certification on its mainstream Scalar (SATA-based) and Express (NVMe-based) Solid-State Drive (SSD). FIPS 140-2 is a standard developed by the National Institute of Standards (NIST) and is widely used to approve cryptography related algorithms and cryptographic modules. To sell into governmental and federal agencies, meeting these standards is mandatory, and an increasing number of healthcare and financial companies have turned to FIPS compliance as a standardized way to meet their security needs. By completing the FIPS 140-2 validation, Novachips is now perfectly positioned to provide its super-density flash storage products to governmental, military, and other mission-critical applications where the customers want to keep massive data secure.

For this certification, Novachips had developed all required cryptographic algorithms and security functions based on in-house ASIC controller NVS3800 hardware and firmware without adopting any 3rd party security components. This single controller design architecture allows achieving lower power consumption and immediate Zeroize service without any delay factor to destroy the key and key materials via specified host commands or external hardware signal input.

BIWIN announced its own retail channel brand of memory products in the North American region, named Biwintech. BIWIN is a Shenzhen-based OEM of DRAM and NAND flash client-segment memory products that supplies to giants in the PC industry, such as HP. It is now bringing a sizable portfolio of memory products under its own Biwintech brand to the market, which include DDR4 UDIMM and SO-DIMM PC memory modules, M.2 NVMe SSDs, 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, USB portable SSDs; and memory cards, including SDXC and microSDXC cards, CFast cards, and CFexpress cards. Interestingly, the announcement doesn't mention UFDs (USB flash drives). Biwintech will go to market with 5-year warranties on all its products, including 9 to 5 phone- and 24-hour e-mail tech support.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

Intel at a January 11, 2021 online media event (which we live-blogged here) revealed more information about its 11th Generation Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor family. These chips succeed the 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake-S," and are built on the same Socket LGA1200 package, retaining backwards compatibility with Intel 400-series chipset motherboards with firmware updates; and native support with the upcoming Intel 500-series chipset motherboards. Intel in its media event confirmed that the top Core i9-11900K is an 8-core/16-thread processor, which will deliver the highest PC gaming performance possible when it comes out.

In its media event, Intel revealed a side-by-side comparison of the i9-11900K with a machine powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core processor, where it's shown offering a mostly mid-single-digit-percentage performance lead over the AMD chip. In the "Metro Exodus" benchmark prominently highlighted in the Intel event, the i9-11900K is shown offering an average frame-rate of 156.54 FPS compared to 147.43 FPS of the 5900X (a 6.17% gain). VideoCardz tweeted a leaked Intel presentation slide with many more game test results where Intel compared the two chips. Intel's play with marketing "Rocket Lake-S" to gamers and PC enthusiasts will hence ride on the back of gaming performance leadership, and future-proofing against the new wave of productivity apps that leverage AI deep-learning, as "Rocket Lake-S" features DLBoost VNNI extensions that accelerate deep-learning neural-net building, training, and AI inference performance.

OWC, the premier zero-emissions Mac and PC technology company, and a respected provider of Memory, External Drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions, and performance upgrade kits announces the OWC U2 Shuttle as the world's first U.2 carrier shuttle for 3.5" drive bays that combines four NVMe M.2 SSDs. It offers video editors, audio producers, photographers, and graphic designers everything they've always wanted in a multiple blade SSD: blistering speed, massive capacity, RAID-ready flexibility, and swappable convenience. The OWC U2 Shuttle can be used with U.2 port-equipped PCs and servers, as well as OWC storage and PCIe expansion solutions.

With four NVMe SSDs the OWC U2 Shuttle gives you more RAID options than a dual drive enclosure or adapter card. Now you can harness the power of RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, or 10 via your choice of hardware cards or RAID utilities including SoftRAID, the easiest to use, most fully featured software RAID package available. This powerful and intuitive software RAID utility offers maximum volume capacity, optimum drive performance, data protection, or a combination of attributes.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced its upcoming NVMe SSD roadmap at the all-digital CES 2021. Although we adopt a new format this year, Kingston will bring its industry-leading SSDs to the forefront for attendees to experience virtually.

"Now that CES is moving online, we have a greater opportunity to connect with new and existing tech communities around the world," said Louis Kaneshiro, director of the SSD product engineering division, Kingston. "CES is the best time to share what's next from Kingston and we are very excited to launch our first Gen 4.0 NVMe SSDs as well as an external drive this year. When it comes to NVMe, we will have all customer segments covered from consumers to prosumers to data centers."

In a move that's possibly triggered by the MSI MEG B550 Unify X, GIGABYTE unveiled a limited edition variant of its X570 AORUS Master motherboard targeting overclockers—the X570 AORUS Master OC. This board does away with much of its aesthetic cladding, sheds the rear I/O shroud, and exposes its bare PCB for the most part. A much simpler fan-heatsink cools the X570 chipset. The CPU VRM area is cooled by a pair of aluminium fin-stack heatsinks that are joined by what looks like a flattened heat-pipe.

Perhaps the biggest design change with the GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Master OC has to be its memory set-up. The board has just two DDR4 DIMM slots, or one DIMM per memory channel. From a memory overclocking standpoint, this is the most optimal memory topology, and the reason why memory overclocking records are usually set on Mini-ITX motherboards (that have 1DPC memory configuration). Elsewhere we see a pair of PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots wired to the CPU (x8/x8 with both populated), a third PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical Gen 4 x4, wired to the X570 chipset), and three M.2 NVMe slots, each with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring.

ADATA Technology, a manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, mobile accessories, gaming products, electric power trains, and industrial solutions, plans to release next-generation SD Express cards by Q2 of 2021.

With the rise of social media influencers, user-generated content, and the deployment of 5G networks worldwide, content creators and others seek high-capacity, high-performance, and portable memory products to meet their needs. To this end, the SD Association (SDA) released SD7.0, which introduced two major new functions, which include the incorporation of the PCIe and NVMe interfaces into SD memory cards for a significant upgrade in read/write speeds. These new SD cards will be known as SD Express cards. ADATA will be launching a new SD Express memory card by Q2 of 2021.

The dankest of memes has come out of the digital underworld to spread fear through all chickens out there in the world. KFC has announced the KFConsole, a development made in partnership with Intel, ASUS, Cooler Master, and Seagate, do deliver a console that "runs better than any other console" - which means bugs relating to chicken movement have been ironed out before release. The chassis is a KFC chicken bucket-shaped one, and is based on Intel's NUC 9 Extreme compute element paired with an unspecified ASUS graphics card - that supports ray tracing.

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces the XPG SPECTRIX S20G PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The SPECTRIX S20G is an SSD built with form and performance in mind with its distinct x-shaped RBG lighting and excellent read/write speeds.

The XPG SPECTRIX S20G is a gaming SSD through and through and its styling reflects this. It sports a distinctive and prominent x-shaped RGB design that outshines the competition. The RGB light effects can be customized via software. What's more, a hairline-brushed finish gives the SSD a formidable yet elegant look that will intimidate and impress.

SilverStone today introduced the MS12, an external SSD enclosure designed for M.2-2280 SSDs with PCIe/NVMe interface. The enclosure features a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface, which it converts to USB 3.2x2 (20 Gbps), put out from a USB-C connector, with a single handling both power and host-connectivity. The enclosure features an aluminium body which doubles up as a heatsink for the enclosed SSD. An ASMedia ASM23364 bridge chip is in-charge of things under the hood, and is capable of transfer speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s. The enclosure measures 106.5 mm x 33.3 mm x 15.3 mm (WxDxH), weighing about 53 g. A 30 cm USB-C cable, and thermal pad comes included. The company didn't mention pricing.

Intel's upcoming 11th Generation Core i9-11900K processor boosts up to 5.30 GHz, according to rumored specs of various 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors, sourced by Harukaze5719. According to this specs-sheet, both the Core i9-11900K and the Core i7-11700K (i7-10700K successor) are 8-core/16-thread parts, and clock-speeds appear to be the only apparent product segmentation between the two. The i9-11900K has a maximum single-core boost frequency of 5.30 GHz, and 4.80 GHz all-core boost. The i7-11700K, on the other hand, has an all-core boost of 4.60 GHz, and 5.00 GHz single-core boost. This time around, even the Core i7 part gets Thermal Velocity Boost.

11th Gen Core i5 continues to be 6-core/12-thread, with Intel allegedly readying an unlocked Core i5-11600K, and a locked i5-11400. Both parts lack TVB. The i5-11600K ticks up to 4.90 GHz single-core, and 4.70 GHz all-core; while the i5-11400 does 4.20 GHz single-core, and 4.40 GHz all-core. The secret-sauce with "Rocket Lake-S" is the introduction of the new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores, which Intel claims offer a double-digit percent IPC gain over the current-gen "Comet Lake," an improved dual-channel DDR4 memory controller with native support for DDR4-3200, a PCI-Express Gen 4 root-complex, and a Gen12 Xe-LP iGPU. The "Cypress Cove" CPU cores also feature VNNI and DLBoost, which accelerate AI DNN; as well as limited AVX-512 instructions. The 11th Gen core processors will also introduce a CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, similar to AMD Ryzen. Intel is expected to launch its first "Rocket Lake-S" processors before Q2-2021.

Synology Inc. introduced its next-generation 8-bay NAS, the DS1821+. The new unit is a solution designed for high-capacity and high- performance data management and storage. Its solution ecosystem, versatile performance capabilities, and storage expandability enable content creators and businesses to have peace of mind as they store and secure their files.

"As data requirements grow, so do the expectations of our customers for a solution that can meet the ever-increasing performance and capacity requirements," said Julien Chen, Synology Product Manager. "The DS1821+ is specifically designed for customers wanting a versatile storage solution, even in demanding multi-user environments."

Mushkin Enhanced MFG - An industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and high-reliability computer products, today unveiled its new ALPHA series of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) featuring an industry-leading capacity of up to eight terabytes (8 TB) the new SSD delivers an uncompromising mix of speed, storage capacity and reliability for mainstream and professional PC users.

The ALPHA Series, powered by Phison's 12 series controller, balances performance, capacity, cost, and energy efficiency, making it the ideal solution for cloud computing, big data, external storage systems, digital imaging and media, technical applications and cold storage. At 4 TB and 8 TB capacities, the ALPHA Series SSD line are the highest capacity in Mushkin's solid state drives line up shipping today.

During CES 2020, way back in January of this year, Razer had shown off a quite interesting concept. Called a modular gaming desktop, the concept has a goal to allow users to just swap-out parts on the fly and have no trouble doing so. Today, the company has officially decided to launch the Tomahawk gaming desktop. Designed for small-form-factor computing, the case of the Tomahawk PC is coming in at just 10L volume, with measurements of 210 mm x 365 mm x 150 mm. The case is an all-black aluminium silhouette with the signature Razer logo and Chroma lighting around the base. That gives it a simple look that can blend in with any environment.

When it comes to the insides, the PC features a power supply of 750 Watts that powers one of Intel's NUC Element boards that is a house for a 45 W Core i9-9980HK Coffee Lake processor with eight cores and 16 threads. When it comes to memory, it has 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD storage, paired with a 2 TB hard drive. Razer offers users to upgrade memory and storage, while the CPU is soldered to the board. You can pre-order the Razer Tomahawk PC at a price starting at $2,399.99, while if you want to equip it with something like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, you will be paying $3,199.99. If you already have a GPU to install, then you should just order the base.

Samsung's latest 980 Pro SSD is not unlike the hypercar of solid state storage: ridiculously fast, ludicrously expensive. The company had announced that a 2 TB version would be available sometime near these holidays, and Scan.co.uk has just listed one such 2 TB part. If you want one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs money can buy, and one of the only ones based on TLC (Triple Layer Cell) technology, then you might be in luck.

The reseller is listing the 2 TB version of the 980 Pro for a cool £443 (including tax), which translates to about $590. That's more than double the pricing of some very interesting PCIe 4.0 solutions. Considering the 1 TB version ticks at read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and write speeds at up to 5,000 MB/s with an endurance of 600 TBW, expect the 2 TB version to be even faster and more consistent. Maybe improve your storage subsystem while we are faced with the current gaming hardware shortages? Consider, however, that delivery is estimated for early January 2021.

Greenliant has secured major design wins with its EnduroSLC solid state drives (SSDs) in a wide range of demanding, extreme environment applications for customers that need best-in-class reliability and product longevity. Greenliant's proprietary EnduroSLC Technology substantially enhances data retention and extends the write endurance of 1-bit-per-cell SSDs with advanced hardware ECC capabilities and NAND flash management algorithms. EnduroSLC SSDs not only offer superior data retention capabilities under complex temperature conditions, but also support 50K, 100K and industry-leading, ultra high 250K+ program-erase (P/E) cycles, which are at least a 5x improvement over pseudo-SLC (pSLC) SSDs and a 50x improvement over MLC NAND-based products.

For systems that are in remote locations and costly to maintain-from satellite to subsea communications-customers recognize the value of EnduroSLC SSDs; they can reliably operate and retain data for long periods of time in harsh conditions. Long-life, write-intensive products, such as transportation black box recorders and industrial data loggers, have also benefitted from the enhanced features of EnduroSLC SSDs. EnduroSLC storage products are designed with Greenliant's advanced SATA, NVMe PCIe and eMMC controllers, operate at industrial temperatures (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius) and are backed by the company's Long-Term Availability program (http://bit.ly/SSD-LTA-program), providing an extra level of support.

Minisforum, the leading innovator of mini PC products, has just released their another new product: the EliteMini UM700 which comes with the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU up to 4.0 GHz, 4 cores 8 threads, total cache 4 MB, equipped with Radeon RX Vega 10 10 cores Graphics with frequency up to 1400 MHz. A few months ago, MINISFORUM had launched DeskMini DMAF5 with an AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor on INDIEGOGO, now DMAF has completed the shipment. UM700 is an upgraded version of DMAF5, with higher performance and more powerful.

With a one-click design you can easily make upgrades, EliteMini UM700 supports different types of storage expansions—2.5 inch SATA HDD Slot (SATA 3.0 6.0 Gb/s) and M.2 2280 NVMe SSD Slot (support up to 2 TB), you can mix and match between HDD and SSD to better meet your needs. With windows 10 pro pre-installed, intel Wi-Fi6, BT5.1 and triple output. which allows you to freely enjoy quick response speed.