DRAM and NAND prices have soared over the past year due to shortages and it looks like VRAM prices are following a similar trajectory as well. According to a recent article by Digitimes, VRAM price quotes have soared by 30.8% in August, leaping from $6.50 per package in July to $8.50 per package.

The price increase is due to RAM leading RAM manufacturers shifting production focus to memory for servers and smartphones. Samsung, which accounts for 55% of the worldwide VRAM supply, has more than doubled its server DRAM production from 12% to 27%. SK Hynix and Micron which account for the rest of the world’s VRAM production has significantly increased production [...]

To meet the capacity and performance demands of the rapidly developing IoT industry, Toshiba is introducing the BG3 SDD, a tiny, single-package SSD for thinner, more reliable mobile and embedded devices.

As the successor to the BG2, the BG3 uses Toshiba’s 64-layer TLC NAND for higher storage density per drive. It also features a DRAM-less design for better power consumption, lower cost, and a smaller footprint.

Utilizing two PCIe 3.0 lanes and Toshiba’s in-house controller, the BG3 can achieve sequential read/write speeds of up to 1,520MB/840MB/s respectively. The BG3 also has an SLC caching feature which can boost performance when the drive [...]

Samsung Electronics is poised to surpass Intel (aka Chipzilla) as the world’s largest chip manufacturer.

Analyst firm IC Insights predicted recently that if the current price of DRAM and NAND hold for Q2, Samsung could generate enough revenue to take the number one spot. The firm predicts that Samsung will achieve $14.9 billion in revenue, while Intel is predicted to reach $14.4 billion.

The increase in the price of NAND and DRAM is fueled by significantly increased demand amid a major industry-wide supply shortage. The depleted inventory and industry-wide transition to 3D NAND is significantly increasing the price of storage and isn’t supposed [...]

According to a recent article from Digitimes, two of the world’s largest memory manufacturers may be having a hard time perfecting their sub-20nm DRAM processes. Micron is experiencing low yield rates transitioning into its 1xnm DRAM node, while Samsung had to recently recall a large batch of DRAM modules built on its 18nm process.

Last month, Micron announced that it was planning to spend $1 billion to upgrade its TaiChung fab to 1x nm, aiming to make its chips ready for the market by the end of the year. Due to the lower yields, its products may be delayed.

Samsung on the other hand had to recall more than 100,000 DRAM modules after PC OEMS reported [...]

Welcome to Custom PC Review’s Best Gaming PC Builds! If you’re looking to build a new computer to play all the latest games, but you’re unsure of what parts to buy to create the optimal build at a certain price-point, we’re here to help.

Below you’ll find four builds sorted by budget of what we think will help create the best and most powerful gaming PCs for the price. Each piece of hardware in each build is hand-picked by our staff through consideration of a multitude of criteria such as price, performance, reliability, and cost. Furthermore, hardware recommend for our builds all have either been reviewed by us or is well known and [...]

Dell XPS 15 | Image Source: Dell

Digitimes reports that the prices of retail laptops are expected to increase by 5% to 15% in 2Q2017 to offset the rising cost of components.

Components like DRAM, SSDs, and displays are experiencing a shortage due to a shift in manufacturing. Many component manufacturers are prioritizing production for the lucrative smartphone market which has unfortunately left a shortage of PC components.

The shortage has already began affecting both the DRAM and NAND markets last year. Mainstream SSDs are expected to increase by 10% due to the NAND shortage and PC vendors have already begun seeing SSD price quotes [...]

Several months ago, a leaked spec sheet detailed an upcoming Intel 3D XPoint SSD, the Optane SSD DC P4800X, which was officially launched today finally proving that despite numerous delays, 3D XPoint isn’t the vaporware many of us expected it to be.

Initially launching in a 375GB Add-in-Card (AIC), the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X is designed for high write enterprise workloads. As such, performance is heavily oriented towards random read/write workloads and quality of service. In the above specs, we can see that Intel doesn’t even bother listing the sequential performance numbers. As a drive designed to be used for high write applications, the [...]

Image Source: Weibo

As Samsung is gearing up to launch the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus at the end of the month, the rumormill is now spinning at full tilt.

The latest rumor regarding the Galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus involves the camera. According to a recent article by ChosunBiz, the new Galaxy S8 camera is supposedly capable of recording at 1000 FPS (Frames Per Second), generating slowmo videos that are unparalleled by other smartphones and even full size point-and-shoot cameras. In order to achieve this, Samsung is said to be adding high-speed DRAM between the image sensor and the circuitry to buffer the frames before they’re offloaded onto [...]

It’s good to be in the DRAM business these days. According to a recent report from DRAMeXchange, global DRAM revenues have increased 18.2% sequentially for 4Q2016.

Much of the demand is fueled by strong smartphone sales, particularly Chinese brands along with the iPhone 7. This has resulted in massive shortages of PC DRAM, resulting in a 30% price increase over the previous quarter. Server DRAM is expected to follow suit in 1Q2017.

Memory manufacturers are currently increasing efforts to expand DRAM production capacity, but their efforts aren’t expected to be realized until the 2H2017. As a result, the supply problem is expected to continue to [...]

With the NAND shortage in full effect at CES this year, SSDs didn’t really make much of an appearance at the show. However, we did get a chance to stop by controller vendor, Phison, who had a new entry level PCIe NVMe controller to show.

The new controller is the Phison E8 which is going to be the low cost brother to the Phison E7. The new controller will come in two variants: the PS5008-E8 or PS5008-E8T.

The Phison PS5008-E8 will be a PCIe Gen 3 x2 controller featuring performance up to 1.6GB/s sequential reads and 1.3GB/s sequential writes. Random read/write performance will top out at 240K/220K IOPS respectively. It’ll also feature [...]