Quiet and Beautiful

AVADirect wasn’t really a systems builder on our radar until late last year when we reviewed their Avant Mini Cube Gaming PC. After extensive testing, we found that the system was well configured, well built, and well priced, quickly propelling AVADirect to the top as one of our favorite custom PC builders.

Recently, AVADirect sent us another one of the systems in their lineup, the AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC, which as its name implies is AVADirect’s quiet gaming PC offering based on AMD’s X370 Ryzen platform.

AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC Specs Desktop AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC Case Phanteks Eclipse P400S CPU AMD [...]

The drawn out, drama filled sale of Toshiba’s prized memory business may finally be coming to a close as Reuters reports Toshiba has selected an $18 Billion (2 Trillion Yen) bid from a Bain Capital led group which includes a number of major corporations including Toshiba, Hoya, SK Hynix, Apple, Dell, Kingston, and Seagate.

The infusion of the cash is expected to provide Toshiba 740 Billion Yen after taxes, which will help prevent it from being de-listed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Toshiba had been in a massive amount of debt after major losses by their nuclear power business prompted a multi-billion USD write-off.

Despite Toshiba’s agreement to [...]

Following Toshiba’s announcement of their QLC BiCS 3D NAND last month, Toshiba’s FlashForward NAND development joint venture partner Western Digital recently also announced their own 4-bit per cell QLC 3D NAND product which they refer to as X4.

According to the press release, the WD’s X4 features up to 64-layers of BiCS 3D NAND with a maximum die capacity of up to 768Gb (96GB) per die, or a 50% increase in storage capacity compared to previous generation 512Gb 3-bit per cell X3 NAND.

Currently WD hasn’t revealed any information on plans for future products based on the new NAND. WD will show off the new X4 3D NAND at FMS 2017 in August.

Things are getting heated between Toshiba and Western Digital as Toshiba has recently filed a lawsuit against Western Digital over alleged violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and Civil Code, and is seeking $120 billion yen ($1.07 billion USD) in compensation along with a permanent injunction. In their recent press release, Toshiba accused Western Digital of intentionally delaying the sale of TMC (Toshiba Memory Company) and improperly obtaining trade secrets through their joint venture partnership.

Toshiba claims that Western Digital delayed the sale of TMC by publicly and privately exaggerating its “consent right”, a clause in Western [...]

Those looking for the absolute highest capacity HDDs for their NAS without breaking the bank will now have an option of purchasing the WD Red and the WD Red Pro in up to 10TB capacities.

In order to reach the new capacities, the new Red and Red Pro drives utilize WD’s HelioSeal technology where WD seals the drives and fills them with helium in order to cram more platters into the drive. This is a technology that has already been utilized on WD’s enterprise class drives, however, is now making its way into WD’s NAS drives for the first time. In addition to HelioSeal technology, the new drives will also include several NAS optimized features such as [...]

Western Digital has released their first ever external drive powered by SSD technology.

Dubbed the My Passport SSD, the new external SSD features up to 1TB of storage in an ultraportable 1.8 inch x 3.5 inch x 0.39 inch form factor. Thanks to its SSD internals, the drive is capable of performance of up to 515MB/s over USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gb/s) and will feature adapters for compatibility with USB Type-A as well as USB Type-C connectors. For peace of mind, the drive also features industry standard AES 256-bit hardware encryption, and is durable enough to withstand a 6.5 foot drop and up to 1500G of force.

The WD My Passport SSD will MSRP at $99.99 for the 256GB, $199 [...]

When a company is forced to sell a highly profitable business in a high growth industry with very few players involved, everyone takes notice. With Toshiba’s memory business, a number of big names such as Western Digital, SK Hynix, Broadcom, Foxconn, TSMC and more have already entered bids for a majority stake in the company, but it looks like competition is about to get a whole lot more intense.

According to a new report from KoreaHerald, as many as 10 companies have entered bids for the Toshiba memory business including heavyweights such as Amazon, Apple, and Google. While these companies are traditionally not in the business of selling SSDs, they heavily rely [...]

According to a recent announcement, Western Digital is bumping up the maximum capacity of its WD Purple HDD to 10TB.

The WD Purple 10TB, designed for home/business video surveillance applications, has a slew of technologies catered towards video recording. These technologies include tarnish-resistant components to improve reliability, storage platters encased in helium to reduce resistance when spinning, and AllFrame 4K technology to enhance ATA reduces video frame loss and pixelation. As a result, the WD Purple 10TB is capable of operating 24/7 and can support recording up to 64 simultaneous HD streams.

“Advanced imaging technology advancements are [...]

Good news for US companies planning to make a run for the memory business of struggling Japanese conglomerate, Toshiba, as sources from a recent article from Reuters reports that the Japanese government is ready to block the sale of Toshiba memory to suitors that it believes to be a “risk to national security” to Japan. Countries deemed a risk to the national security of Japan seemingly includes everyone except the US, but the biggest concern is a sale of the business to China as it may give China access to “key capabilities” it’s desperately trying to obtain.

Currently, there are quite a few companies expected to make a bid for the [...]

Amid massive shortages due to increased demand, the NAND Flash market is booming. According to latest report from market intelligence firm, TrendForce, revenues have increased a massive 17.8% quarter over quarter, now reaching a total of $12 Billion in 4Q2016.

Looking at the results, the biggest winners in the 4Q2016 is Micron, which saw revenue increase by 26.9%. This is followed by Intel which saw revenue increase by 25.7%, Western Digital by 22% and Samsung by 19.5%. Toshiba and SK Hynix saw the lowest revenue increases at 8.5% and 9% respectively.

In terms of marketshare, Samsung once again dominated the market by a massive margin. In 4Q2016, Samsung [...]