August 20th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong

WD Rolls Out WD_Black For Gaming

At Gamescom in Cologne, Germany Western Digital Corp. (WDC) announced a new portfolio of external storage solutions for PC and console gamers, its new WD_Black products. The new portfolio includes five new HDDs and SSDs purpose-built for expanding PC and console game capacity. Among the portfolio of new drives is the first-to-industry SuperSpeed USB (20Gb/s), USB 3.2 gen 2x2 port in a game drive. WD will showcase its new WD_Black portfolio at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany at Entertainment Area - Hall 10.1 | Stand E-051 and B2B Area/TRADEVISITOR PLACE - Hall 2.2 D-042.

August 19th, 2019 by Michael Rink

HyperX Releases FURY DDR4 RGB

Today, HyperX released FURY DDR4 RGM memory and gave us a new look at their lineup. HyperX's FURY DDR4 line dates back several years to 2014, so it should be interesting to see what, if any, improvements have been made since the line was first introduced. HyperX was started in 2002 as Kingston Technology Company's gaming division.

August 14th, 2019 by Alex Schuchter

Dell Ultrasharp 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (U3419W) Review

The Dell U3419W monitor is a new 34 inch monitor that Dell has added to their Ultrasharp product line replacing the U3417W. This monitor is a behemoth that matches it’s ultra wide curved display with ultra high quality. Designed with photo and video work in mind as well as entertainment; whatever your use this monitor offers an immersive experience. 

August 12th, 2019 by Alex Schuchter

Lacie Rugged Raid Shuttle Review

The Lacie Rugged Raid Shuttle is a portable RAID that is the first of its kind, utilizing Seagate Secure encryption for a consumer RAID product. Whether looking for data redundancy, performance improvement, or both the Lacie Rugged Raid Shuttle is a tough, easy to use, secure, and easily carried gadget for creative professionals. Wherever your next project takes you this drive is ready to be packed into your gear bag or a shipping envelope and go. 

August 6th, 2019 by Lyle Smith

Samsung Begins Mass Producing 250GB SATA SSDs with 6th-gen 256Gb 3bit V-NAND

Samsung has started the mass production of 250GB SATA SSDs that integrate the company’s 6th-gen (1xx-layer) 256Gb 3bit V-NAND for global PC OEMs. With its ‘channel hole etching’ technology, Samsung indicates that the new V-NAND adds approximately 40% more cells to the previous 9x-layer single-stack structure. This is done by building an electrically conductive mold stack with 136 layers, then vertically piercing cylindrical holes from top to bottom, which creates a uniform 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells.

July 29th, 2019 by Lyle Smith

What is M.2?

The M.2 solid-state drive (SSD) was designed specifically to offer high-performance in compact computing devices like ultrabooks and tablets; however, they are now commonly used in all types of computers including desktops PCs and even within servers and storage arrays as boot drives. M.2 SSDs are also used in NAS devices as a cache or tiering drive.

July 29th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong

NVIDIA Unveils New RTX Solutions at SIGGRAPH 2019

Last year at SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA announced its RTX technology, among other announcements. This year the company has announced that RTX is in many more applications expanding the reach of the technology through the industry. NVIDIA is also announcing NVIDIA RTX studio laptops and mobile workstations and vendors such as Dell, HP, Lenovo and BOXX.

July 28th, 2019 by Lyle Smith

What is an SSD (solid-state drive)?

SSD is short for solid-state drive and is similar to technology like USB memory sticks as they have no moving parts. This is what really sets it apart from the hard disk drives (HDDs), which use a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster.

SSDs come in several form factors:

July 26th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong

Toshiba BG4 NVMe SSD Review

Back at CES this year, Toshiba announced its new BG4 lineup. BG4 stands for the fourth generation of the company’s ball grid array (BGA) SSD product line. These new SSDs come in the tiny M.2 2230 form factor making them ideal for ultra-mobile PCs, 2-in-1 notebook PCs, IoT/embedded devices, and server and storage array boot drives. Though the drives are small in size they do come in capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB. 

July 24th, 2019 by Alex Schuchter

Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 Review

The Aegis Fortress L3 is a portable SSD that offers external storage for organizations and companies that require the highest level of protection for their data. The drive is a compact sleek black vault for your data that utilizes a built in PIN authentication pad to unlock allowing you to take large amounts of sensitive data wherever you go.