In a blog post today, AMD announced support for native bootable NVMe RAID for its x399 HEDT platform.

Now you may ask, what does NVMe RAID bring to the table? Well, AMD highlighted some performance gains in RAID 0 with six NVMe SSDs connected, showcasing a whopping 21.221GB/s sequential read speed and 11.532GB sequential write speeds. Performance scaling is shown to be almost close to linear.

To add the capability, simply update your BIOS for your motherboard and install the latest RAID driver package here. The driver package includes an easy to use GUI software to help you guide though setting up a new RAID array once it detects that you have [...]

64-Layer 3D NAND, USB 3.1 Gen 2

Last year I was fortunate enough to be among the first to review the Samsung T3 Portable SSD. The drive was small, durable, fast, available in capacities up to 2TB, and relatively good looking making it not only my favorite portable SSD, but also my most highly recommended as well.

Of course, with Samsung’s annual release cycles, Samsung recently launched the new Samsung T5 Portable SSD which we’ll be reviewing today.

Samsung Portable SSD T5 Specifications Manufacturer Samsung Model T5 Capacity 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB Interface Type-C USB 3.1 (Gen 2), USB 3.0, USB 2.0 Transfer Speed Up to [...]

For FMS 2017, Seagate made a slew of new announcements including a new 64TB NVMe PCIe SSD, updates to the Nytro SSD lineup, a new RealStor storage appliance, and Nytro Q-Boost technology.

When Seagate announced their 60TB SAS SSD last year, it was an impressive feat however, Seagate and its partners quickly realized that there were limited use cases for the SSD. The capacity was simply too large for the relatively performance limited SAS interface.

For 2017, Seagate went back to the drawing board and announced a new 64TB NVMe SSD which is simply a full height, half-length form factor add-in card containing eight M.2 22110 PCIe Gen 3 x4 [...]

Synology has released updates to their five and eight bay NAS units, the DS1517+ and DS1817+. Launching in parallel with the new NAS units is the Synology M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD adapter and the DX517 expansion unit.

In order to accommodate the M2D17 adapter, the new DS1517+ and DS1817+ NAS units now feature a PCIe expansion slot. This allows additional expandability or a dedicated cache for those who want to utilize M.2 SSDs. Users can also install an external 10Gb Ethernet NIC or the new Synology M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD adapter. Each SSD adapter can host two M.2 SATA SSDs.

Both units come equipped with the Intel Atom C2538 CPU [...]

In a recent announcement, Razer is launching an updated version of their flagship desktop replacement notebook, the Razer Blade Pro.

Aimed at high end gamers, enthusiasts, and content creators, the 0.88-inch thin Razer Blade Pro is one of the most feature packed notebooks in existence featuring a 17.3-inch IGZO UHD G-Sync display, an Intel Core i7-7820HK Quad Core CPU, 32GB DDR4 2667Mhz RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Graphics and up to 2TB M.2 PCIe SSD in RAID 0. Connectivity options include Killer Wireless AC 1535 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac + Bluetooth 4.1, Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, three USB 3.0, HDMI 2.0, 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo port and [...]

Introduction

Being an Editor here at Custom PC Review, I’m constantly in need of lots of mass storage. At CES 2017, I took over 1,000 14-bit RAW images using a Nikon D800 camera which generated files somewhere between 40MB-45MB each. After exporting them, another set of images are then created which take less, but still require quite a significant amount of storage space. Tack that onto 50Mbps 1080p video along with the thought of possibly doing 4K video down the road and the need for lots of reliable storage quickly adds up.

Of course, the easy solution is to throw a couple hard drives into your PC because that’s cheap and easy, but I also wanted [...]

Powerful 4-bay NAS for Media and Business

While cloud storage has become a very popular form of data storage for individuals and businesses alike, there are a few drawbacks to using the cloud.

For those who live in areas with slower internet or datacapped internet for example, cloud storage may not be an ideal solution. Aside from internet issues, data breaches, government monitoring, or simply not being allowed enough storage capacity constitute additional issues with cloud storage.

As such, there are some clear benefits when using a self hosted NAS solution and when it comes to NAS makers, few are more well known than Synology.

Today we’ll be [...]

Several years ago, Razer launched their 17″ Razer Blade gaming laptop which was wildly successful as it was the first to to integrate high performance components into a relatively thin and light design. Since then, Razer has introduced several new models of the Blade including the popular 14″ Razer Blade along with the 12.5″ Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook.

With all the new product introductions, the 17″ Razer Blade hasn’t seen much love lately, until now. According to a recent announcement, Razer announced a complete redesign of the 17″ Razer Blade which will now be called the 17″ Razer Blade Pro. Although the exterior of [...]

According to a recent press release, ADATA launched their new Ultimate SU800 SSD designed for mainstream consumer applications.

Available in capacities of 128GB to 1TB, the ADATA Ultimate SU800 is a SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD featuring new 3D NAND Flash paired with a SMI (Silicon Motion) controller solution. Performance on the ADATA Ultimate SU800 tops out at 560MB/s sequential reads and 520MB/s sequential writes. Furthermore, the ADATA Ultimate SU800 supports SLC caching and a DRAM caching for additional performance.

For greater reliability, the ADATA Ultimate SU800 also has several key features including LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) ECC, data shaping, and an [...]

Seagate has already made several announcements leading up to FMS this year, but they’ve saved a couple more for FMS as well.

Today Seagate announced the Nytro XP7200 which is a PCIe x16 AIC solution capable of delivering up to 10GB/s and just under 1 million IOPS.

While the numbers are fairly impressive on paper, the Seagate Nytro XP7200 is not really an actual SSD but rather a backplane card that hosts 4x Seagate Nytro XM1440 M.2 SSDs. As it’s a backplane card, it has no actual logic chip onboard, so in order to reach the advertised 10GB/s sequential and 940K IOPS random reads, it’ll require the user to run the setup in a [...]