WD today announced that the company is shipping its new high performance WD SiliconDrive N1x 2.5-inch solid state drive (SSD) family. The new SSDs feature fast read/write speeds in high capacities and are designed for embedded system OEM applications that require superior performance, high reliability and long product life. The single-level cell (SLC) -based WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs are an ideal storage solution for a wide range of embedded system OEM applications in growing markets such as automotive and transportation, data center, communications infrastructure, video surveillance and industrial automation. The new WD SiliconDrive N1x family of products complements the recently announced multi-level cell (MLC) -based WD SiliconEdge Blue SSDs, which offer a cost-effective alternative for less-demanding OEM applications while still providing high read/write speeds and high random write IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) performance.

WD SiliconDrive N1x SSD products feature a native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface with target read speeds up to 240 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write transfer rates up to 140 MB/s in capacities up to 128 gigabytes (GB). WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs deliver maximum drive endurance and high sustained sequential write speeds to satisfy the 24/7 operational requirements in critical OEM applications. The WD SiliconDrive N1x products also feature WD's innovative Speed Assurance technology for consistent read/write performance.

AMD and its motherboard partners today unleashed ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics with the AMD 890GX Chipset, a versatile, affordable and exceptionally energy efficient solution for an incredible, high definition visual computing experience.

The AMD 890GX chipset redefines the way you play with versatile graphics configurations, including DirectX 10.1 graphics on the motherboard and support for up to two high-performance ATI Radeon Premium Graphics cards with ATI CrossFireX technology. The same AMD 890GX motherboard which can be used to build an efficient and slim home theater PC using the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics, can be augmented with ATI Radeon HD 5450 Graphics for a dual-graphics performance preview, or upgraded to a gaming powerhouse with ATI Radeon HD 5870 Graphics and the visual realism of DirectX 11.

HighPoint Technologies - an innovative host-based RAID controller manufacturer is introducing the RocketRAID 620 Series- the industry's first SATA 3.0 host adapters with RAID 5 capability. The 620 series will double the data rate from 3Gb/s to 6Gb/s for high bandwidth PC applications, gaming, digital video and audio, video streaming and graphics applications.

The two members of the RocketRAID 620 Series - RocketRAID 620 (MSRP $69.99) and RocketRAID 622 (MSRP $79.99) will ship mid January 2010. These premier RAID host adapters are based on PCI-Express Gen 2 host interface technology and are designed to optimize storage performance and redundancy with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. User friendly features include hot plug and hot unplug to add or remove storage devices; and OCE/ORLM to expand storage capacities or migrate to different RAID levels.

The new ZOTAC NM10 series delivers class-leading energy-efficiency from a new Intel Atom D510 dual-core processor and NM10 Express chipset with Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 integrated graphics for the perfect blend of performance and energy-efficiency. Paired with DDR2 memory, the ZOTAC NM10 series platforms have plenty of memory bandwidth and lightning-fast access latency for that extra performance punch for computing demands.

"More users are becoming eco-conscious about their computing demands. With the ZOTAC NM10 series platforms, users can have plenty of performance for email, word processing and web browsing on a desktop with superior energy-efficiency," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

"ZOTAC is the leader when it comes to performing mini-ITX platforms. With the addition the new ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions, we have the largest line up of high-performance mini-ITX motherboards with over a dozen different models," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International. "We see the demand for small form factors increasing and the future of computing will be mini-ITX platforms."

The new ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions bring a full high-performance experience and features that has won the ZOTAC ION ITX platforms many awards, including the NVIDIA ION graphics processor with NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology for full HD 1080p Blu-ray video playback and high-performance video processing and editing capabilities with NVIDIA CUDA technology.

ASRock chose a smart way to make SATA III part of its high-end motherboards' feature-set without modifying board design, or coming up with new SKUs, simply by bundling a SATA III addon-card. The company's upcoming P55 Deluxe advertises SATA III support, and packs a tiny, half-height card that uses PCI-Express (2.0?) x1 interface. At the heart of it is a Marvell 88SE9123 SATA III controller. The card has three ports in total, two angled internal ports, and one eSATA III. Headers are also provided for HDD status LEDs on the system chassis. While Marvell 88SE9123 has been at the center of controversy recently that reportedly caused some motherboard makers to pull out products that use it, Marvell maintains that the issue is only related to the controller's additional PATA-related functionality, and not SATA III. Now if only ASRock also bundles a USB 3.0 card.