Today LaCie announced that the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series, design by Neil Poulton, now features SATA III SSDs (6 Gb/s interface). With read speeds up to 635 MB/s, the LaCie Little Big Disk is the fastest portable Thunderbolt solution on the market. It can transfer a 50 GB project in less than two minutes or edit six uncompressed 422 streams at the same time. A game changer for content creators and professional users - the LaCie Little Big Disk delivers fibre channel rackmount speeds in a portable solution.

"We saw an opportunity to make the LaCie Little Big Disk even faster and jumped on it," said Erwan Girard, Professional Business Unit Manager, LaCie. "The new LaCie Little Big Disk can complete tasks in minutes that used to take hours. This saves our customers time and therefore money."

PROMISE Technology Inc., a leader in providing high-performance storage solutions for the rich media market and the leader in designing cutting-edge Thunderbolt enabled devices, today announced the immediate availability of the Pegasus J2, the world's smallest and fastest ultra-portable Thunderbolt storage device. Powered in AC mode the J2 will be able to achieve a blistering 750 MB/s in a device the size of a smartphone. Pegasus J2 brings an unparalleled level of performance in a small form factor to the market enabling both consumers and media professionals to manage the explosion of unstructured data and digital assets critical to their creative projects.

Compatible with all Thunderbolt enabled Macs, the PROMISE Pegasus J2 is a pocket-sized, blazing fast external storage device that offers up to half a Terabyte of storage and is available in 256GB and 512GB capacities. The Pegasus J2 is flash-based making it the ideal solution for anyone who craves extreme performance in the consumer and professional post-production markets. This addition to its internationally award winning Pegasus line boasts a cutting edge, compact product design with an emphasis on reducing the footprint coupled with reduced environmental noise. The J2 is the perfect complement for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced the Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital SE external multi-monitor adapter, which expands your system's single-video output into an immersive triple-monitor setup so that you see and do more. This new Graphics eXpansion Module (GXM) connects to a compatible system's DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort video output or Thunderbolt port and lets you add three external DVI monitors, each with maximum resolutions of either 1920 x 1080 @50Hz (PC) or 1360 x 768 @60Hz (Mac). New High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compliance meanwhile enables the playback of copy-protected content, such as Blu-ray discs, across all three monitors.

Compatible with a wide range of GPUs running under Mac or Windows, TripleHead2Go Digital SE yields a cost-effective multi-monitor platform for office, trading, digital signage, CAD, ProAV, houses of worship, content-creation, and simulation-training applications.

Matrox today introduced the Matrox DS1 series of Thunderbolt docking stations that brings all the productivity benefits of a desktop computer to MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users. From a single Thunderbolt connection, users can add multiple peripherals including either a large DVI or an HDMI display, a full-size keyboard, and a mouse.

A gigabit Ethernet port provides connectivity to a wired corporate network, enabling data transfers 18 times faster than Wi-Fi. One SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port, conveniently located on the front of the unit, plus two USB 2.0 ports, a microphone input, and a speaker/headphone output are also provided. With its solid aluminum construction and space-saving design, Matrox DS1 is ideal for office, dorm, or home use.

Today LaCie announced its award-winning Rugged hard drive is the first storage solution to feature both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 technology on a high-performance SSD. These cutting-edge technologies make the new LaCie Rugged the fastest bus-powered solution on the market.

"Since LaCie introduced the Rugged, it has been a favorite of creative professionals," said Philippe Spruch, CEO, LaCie. "It's trusted and always with them through the content creation process. Today, LaCie gives the ultimate solution to those professionals. The most impressive speeds I've seen to revolutionize their productivity."

MSI, the Thunderbolt mainboard pioneer, is pleased to announce the availability of the new MSI Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt. The Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt is a unique aproach to a Thunderbolt equipped mainboard by breaking the current limits of Thunderbolt, the price.

Breaking the mold, the MSI Z77A-G45 is a full-featured Z77 mainboard with Thunderbolt at a new pricepoint that makes Thunderbolt accessible for everyone looking to upgrade to the Z77 platform. Of course, the renowned Military Class III components are again available to deliver the highest quality and most stable components. OC Genie II boosts your overall CPU, Memory, Disk and Graphics performance and thank to its power saving hardware features such as Active Phase Switching (APS), the MSI Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt can combine its performance with best in class power saving.

Three months after launching the MiniStation Thunderbolt Buffalo Inc. is preparing to release another portable storage solution supporting both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity. Known as the MiniStation HD-PATU3S Series, this new drive will feature a sleek aluminum body (like the MiniStation Thunderbolt) and will pack a solid state drive allowing for read speeds (over Thunderbolt) of up to 382 MB/s (compared to the 109 MB/s claimed to be delivered by a Thunderbolt-enabled portable HDD).

Buffalo says the HD-PATU3S Series includes 128 GB and 256 GB models. No word on pricing yet.

Ultrabooks, despite their formidable computing power compared to netbooks, inevitably trade some of it for lower thermal/power specifications. LucidLogix feels that Ultrabook users could gain graphics processing power on demand using external graphics cards, that work in tandem with its VirtuMVP GPU virtualization technology. At IDF, the company demonstrated an external graphics card that uses 10 Gb/s Thunderbolt interface to communicate with an Ultrabook.

Lucid's external graphics card is a Thunderbolt to PCI-Express enclosure, which runs an AMD Radeon HD 6700 series GPU. With the VirtuMVP layer running, the Ultrabook uses the graphics computing power of the external graphics card to render complex graphics onto its display, which is wired to the processor's integrated graphics core. Lucid's idea of on-demand graphics compute power allows Thunderbolt-equipped Ultrabooks of all shapes and sizes to lack a discrete GPU, which adds to the device's cost, and taps its limited power and thermal-control resources. At the moment, Lucid's external graphics cards are still in development, with no concrete release date in sight. The concept is solid.

Run out of expansion slots in your system? Bulky graphics cards eating into smaller PCI-Express x1/x4 slots for devices such as PCIe SSDs, sound cards, and other expansion cards? ELSA has a solution for you, provided you have a Thunderbolt port to spare. The company announced the MAGMA ExpressBox 3T, an external add-on card enclosure, which talks to its host over Thunderbolt.

The MAGMA ExpressBox 3T encloses three standard expansion card bays, with two open-ended PCI-Express 2.0 x8 slots and a PCI-Express 2.0 x4. The three can be used for PCI-Express add-on cards of nearly every electrical configuration. The enclosure packs its own 250W power supply. It features two Thunderbolt ports, with which it can be a part of a larger Thunderbolt device daisy-chain, letting you conserve the limited number of Thunderbolt ports in your system. The enclosure is PC and Mac-compatible. Measuring 371 x 200 x 110 mm (WxDxH), the enclosure is made of aluminum panels with a steel frame. The company did not reveal pricing or availability information.

Akitio is proud to announce that our new one-bay, portable Thunderbolt storage device, the "Neutrino Thunderbolt Edition" is now available for shipping! The Neutrino will ship with a 120GB Intel 330 Series SSD. This complete Thunderbolt storage solution also comes with a Thunderbolt cable (a $49 value), so all you need to do is just plug it in and it is ready to use. The small 2.5" form factor makes it extremely portable and since it is bus-powered, there is no need for a power adapter. Just slip it into your pocket and you are ready to go! The Neutrino is the perfect solution for video editors, photographers and anyone else who wants or needs to transfer large amounts of data.

The Neutrino will retail for $299.99 (not inc. tax), making it the most affordable Thunderbolt SSD storage device on the market. Thunderbolt is the newest high speed I/O technology that was designed for optimum speed, performance, simplicity and flexibility. Thunderbolt is currently the fastest method of transferring data between a PC and other peripherals such as external storage devices and displays. It is able to provide simultaneous, bi-directional transfers of up to 10 Gbps over a single channel.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announced the GIGABYTE Classic Challenge II, the latest GIGABYTE overclocking competition hosted on HWBOT.org.

Open from September 1st through September 30th 2012, the GIGABYTE Classic Challenge II combines two exciting stages based on classic 3DMark01 and SuperPi 31M benchmarks. The overclocker with the highest points tally from both rounds will win a recently announced GIGBAYTE Z77X-UP7, with a 2nd place finish earning a GIGABYTE Z77X-UP5 TH. Another Z77X-UP7 will be awarded to the entrant with the most GIGABYTE Classic Challenge II submissions on HWBOT.

WD, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation, and a world leader in external storage and connected home solutions, is combining two high-speed technologies to produce one of the fastest and most robust dual-storage systems ever offered. Supported by the Mac OS X operating system, the new My Book VelociRaptor Duo dual-drive storage system becomes the ultimate storage drive for performance hungry Mac computer users and creative professionals.

My Book VelociRaptor Duo provides ultimate speed and performance with two 1 TB 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor drives along with two Thunderbolt ports. The 2 TB dual-drive storage system is ideal for editing high resolution video, 3D rendering, graphic design, and other demanding digital media applications. This boost in performance delivers solid state drive (SSD) -like data transfer rates of up to 400 MB/s for greater work-flow productivity. The dual-drive storage system offers RAID 0 for performance or RAID 1 for protection; and the twin Thunderbolt ports offer daisy-chaining multiple My Book VelociRaptor Duo drives and other high performance peripherals without impacting data transfer speeds or performance. The My Book VelociRaptor Duo also comes complete with a Thunderbolt cable in the box and is user-serviceable.

Here are some of the first pictures of EVGA's upcoming Z77 Mini ITX motherboard. EVGA's newest creation is one of the first mini-ITX motherboards with CPU socket north of the chipset, clearly a response to community feedback. EVGA's Z77 Mini ITX is geared for overclocking, with the LGA1155 socket bolstered by an 8-phase VRM that uses International Rectifier PowIRphase driver-MOSFETs. The board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. The LGA1155 socket is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory; and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot.

In terms of storage connectivity, the EVGA Z77 Mini ITX is equipped with two each of SATA 6 Gb/s and SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and an mSATA 3 Gb/s slot wired to the Z77 PCH; and two eSATA 6 Gb/s driven by a Marvell-made controller. Display connectivity includes HDMI and mini-DisplayPort. High-bandwidth connectivity includes six USB 3.0 ports (four on the rear panel, two via headers), and two eSATA 6 Gb/s. 8+2 channel HD audio (Realtek ALC898 CODEC), gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports make for the rest of the connectivity. The board is driven by UEFI BIOS. Find more pictures at the source.

Gigabyte released the first motherboard in the micro-ATX form-factor to feature two Thunderbolt interfaces. The Z77MX-D3H-TH from Gigabyte is built in the standard 240 x 240 mm micro-ATX form-factor, and based on the Intel Z77 Express chipset, supporting socket LGA1155 Core "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge" processors. The board uses an Intel DSL3510L dual channel Thunderbolt controller to drive its two ports.

The two ports, electrically-compatible with mini-DisplayPort, double up as display outputs that are routed to the Flexible Display Interface (FDI) taking display from the processor's integrated graphics core. With the included Lucid Virtu MVP software, graphics processed by discrete graphics cards can be output though the FDI, and hence these Thunderbolt ports.

HighPoint Technologies is proud to announce the industry's first USB3.0 Storage Docks with dual-dedicated 5Gb/s per SATA bay architecture. Optimized for high-speed SATA 6Gb/s SSD's and hard disks, RocketStor Storage Docks are the perfect, high-performance storage companions for Ivy-Bridge based PC and Mac notebooks.

RocketStor Storage Docks leverage dual-dedicated 5Gb/s USB 3.0 engines to deliver the industry's fastest USB 3.0 bandwidth for high-speed SATA 6Gb/s SSD/HDD.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announced the latest GIGABYTE 7 series motherboards, the very first to offer fully certified dual onboard Thunderbolt ports. Capable of connecting up to 12 devices plus 3 digital displays simultaneously, with breathtaking data transfer speeds that can transfer 1 TB of data in only five minutes, GIGABYTE Thunderbolt motherboards offer the fastest connection interface ever on the desktop PC.

GIGABYTE Thunderbolt motherboards allow users to daisy chain up to 12 devices simultaneously via an incredible bi-directional 10 Gbps data pipeline that includes both PCIe and DisplayPort traffic. GIGABYTE Thunderbolt motherboards redefine desktop PC connectivity to make it far easier to connect multiple high speed storage devices and HD displays to your PC than ever before.

Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking and network and direct attached storage solutions, today announced the availability of the MiniStation Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive. Demonstrated earlier this month at Computex in Taiwan, the MiniStation Thunderbolt is the world's first portable Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 dual-interface external drive solution. With the flexibility of either SuperSpeed USB 3.0 or a lighting fast Thunderbolt connection, the MiniStation Thunderbolt is ideal for PC and Mac users looking for the fastest interface speeds while preserving backward compatibility with existing devices that support USB 2.0.

"With the creation and transferring of digital content accelerating at ever increasing paces, protecting that data on the go continues to be a challenge for all types of users," said Brian Verenkoff, director of marketing at Buffalo Technology. "With the MiniStation Thunderbolt, consumers can now move or backup digital assets faster, simplify connections between devices, maintain compatibility with nearly any device and foster new and exciting ways to use portable storage."

Acer America today announced the availability of the Acer Aspire S5 in the U.S. The world's thinnest Ultrabook, it measures only .044 inches at its thinnest point and weighs just 2.65 lbs -- about as thin and light as a pad of paper. In addition, the company's first Ultrabook, the Aspire S3, has been refreshed with a 3rd Generation Intel Processor, solid state drives and an elegant champagne color.

Acer Aspire S5 -- the World's Thinnest Ultrabook
The S5's delicately curved chassis is Onyx Black, and the cover rim wraps around the system body like a protective shell. A magnesium-aluminum alloy cover and palm rest provide a slim and sturdy design, while the metallic brushed detail provides subtle elegance. Clean and ultra-fluid contours from all angles make the S5 a vision of beauty.

PROMISE Technology Inc., a leader in providing high-performance storage solutions for the rich media market and the leader in designing cutting-edge Thunderbolt enabled devices today introduced the Pegasus J2, the world's fastest ultraportable Thunderbolt storage device, capable of delivering up to 750 MB/s in a device the size of a smartphone. Pegasus J2 brings an unparalleled level of performance in a small form factor to the market enabling both consumers and media professionals to manage the explosion of unstructured data and digital assets critical to their creative projects. The J2 is the perfect complement for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Compatible with all Thunderbolt enabled Macs, the PROMISE Pegasus J2 is a pocket-sized, blazing fast external storage device that offers up to half a Terabyte of storage and is available in 256GB and 512GB capacities. The Pegasus J2 is flash-based making it the ideal solution for anyone who craves extreme performance in the consumer and professional post-production markets. This addition to its internationally award winning Pegasus line boasts a cutting edge, compact product design with an emphasis on reducing the footprint coupled with reduced environmental noise.

Apple today updated MacBook Air with the latest Intel Core processors, faster graphics and flash storage that is up to twice as fast as the previous generation.* MacBook Air is the ultimate everyday notebook, and with new lower prices it is more affordable than ever. The current generation 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro have also been updated with the latest Intel Core processors and powerful discrete graphics from NVIDIA. Apple's popular AirPort Express has been redesigned to include features previously available only in AirPort Extreme.

"Today we've updated the entire MacBook line with faster processors, graphics, memory, flash storage and USB 3 connectivity," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "We've made the world's best portable family even better and we think users are going to love the performance advances in both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro."

Apple today unveiled an all new 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a stunning Retina display, all flash storage and quad-core processors in a radically thin and light design. Measuring a mere 0.71 inches and weighing only 4.46 pounds, the completely redesigned MacBook Pro sets a new standard in performance and portability for pro users.

"The MacBook Pro with Retina display pushes the limits of performance and portability like no other notebook," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "With a gorgeous Retina display, all flash architecture and a radically thin and light design, the new MacBook Pro is the most advanced Mac we have ever built."

ASUS unveiled a new line of socket AM3+ motherboards at Computex, which will constitute its lineup at least for the rest of 2012. The new motherboards are based on existing 9-series chipset, and are mere revisions of existing AM3+ motherboard models. These include the Crosshair V Formula-Z (990FX + SB950), M5A99FX PRO R2.0 (990FX + SB950), Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 (990FX + SB950) and M5A99X EVO R2.0 (990X + SB950). What all these motherboards have in common, is a header labeled "TB_HEADER," which connects them to ASUS' Thunderbolt EX add-on card.

The ASUS Thunderbolt EX is a swanky PCI-Express 2.0 x4 add-on card, which is driven by an Intel "Cactus Ridge 2C" Thunderbolt host controller. The TB_HEADER is a low-level connection between the motherboard and the add-on card, which transacts power state, signaling, and device hot-plugging events to the system BIOS. Some of ASUS' recent 7-series LGA1155 motherboards can be retrofitted with Thunderbolt the same way, and feature the same header. The card has a nice EMI shield running the entire length of its PCB. Its rear panel has one full-size DisplayPort, which is actually an input from your graphics card, and one Thunderbolt + mini-DP output.

A star attraction at the motherboard section of ASUS booth was its ZEUS Dual-GPU X79 concept motherboard. We got a chance to talk at lengths with people at ASUS about the exhibit, and learned a few details beyond what we already know. To begin with, ASUS is likely using a pair of "Southern Islands" family discrete mobile GPUs, not desktop ones. Further, it's likely that the GPUs are 28 nm "Pitcairn" based. The two GPUs are installed in CrossFire configuration. The next big detail is that the design focus on [evidently] isn't the integrated dual-GPU, but to demonstrate the first Thunderbolt-equipped X79 motherboard. The ZEUS has not one, but two Thunderbolt ports. The third (and most depressing) detail is that it's "highly unlikely" that the ZEUS will ever make it to the market. Think of it as yet another tradeshow concept by a big company. Perhaps ASUS doesn't want the ZEUS to end up like the ROG GSurf-365, its first off-beat ROG motherboard, which went beyond the show-floor but didn't have market-success.

Buffalo Japan launched the DiskStation HD-PATU3, a new external hard drive that features two high-bandwidth interface options, USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, letting you use it without interface bottlenecks on both PCs and Macs. The HD-PATU3 comes in two capacity options, 500 GB and 1 TB. The drive is entirely bus-powered, and does not require an AC adapter. The drive comes pre-formatted to the Mac-friendly HFS+ file-system, but can be re-formatted to Windows-friendly file-systems such as NTFS or ex-FAT. Buffalo did not give out pricing information.

ASUS displayed a nerdtastic motherboard design concept, at Computex. Called the Republic of Gamers ZEUS, ASUS' creation is a socket LGA2011 motherboard with a dual-GPU graphics hardware soldered onto the board, in the place otherwise assigned for expansion slots. The top half of the ZEUS resembles that of a conventional LGA2011 motherboard, with the processor being powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, and eight DDR3 DIMM slots. ASUS somehow made the platform support up to 128 GB of unregistered DIMM DDR3 memory (double the 64 GB limit of the Sandy Bridge-E HEDT platform).

The second half of the motherboard has the X79 PCH, and two PCI-Express 3.0 GPUs in dual-GPU configuration. ASUS hasn't revealed which GPUs these are, but sources predict it's a pair of AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Tahiti XT) or HD 7870 (Pitcairn XT). Each GPU system has its own set of memory, and a set of 8-pin + 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The display outputs of this dual-GPU setup are given out on the rear panel, as two mini-DP + Thunderbolt ports, and one each of HDMI and standard DP. The ZEUS even has as many as 8 SATA 6 Gb/s ports, four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and 12 USB 3.0 ports, besides two Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s ports. For now, ASUS' monstrosity is a design concept, and the company is undecided about launching it to the market. If nothing, the ZEUS serves as a testament of ASUS' mammoth engineering potential.