Solidigm has announced what it calls the industry's first liquid-cooled enterprise SSD, the D7-PS1010, in the blade-like E.1 form factor with a PCIe 5.0 interface. The SSD board is ensconced in a wraparound cold plate, with hose connectors at the ends, making for a hot-swappable design that directly cools the controller and NAND chips.

The company is pointing this SSD at AI servers with Direct-Attached Storage (DAS, as opposed to using a separate storage). To that effect, Solidigm talks up a partnership with Supermicro, which mentions the E.1S variant of these SSDs is a perfect fit for its Nvidia HGX B300-based servers. The hot-swap design in a compact form factor also helps with maintenance, as conventional liquid-cooled designs can be a bit fiddly whenever they need servicing.

The cooling apparatus of D7-PS1010 can cool both sides of the PCB at once and should make for much-improved thermal efficiency compared to traditional fan-based designs. Solidigm claims this design ought to let designers come up with server layouts that entirely eschew fans in their storage bays, potentially making the rack units smaller than ever.

Kioxia showed off its latest optical SSD technology at Computex 2025. According to the storage giant, this new solution offers several key advantages over conventional electrically connected SDDs. The most important benefit we saw was the ability to offer the same performance as a conventional SSD even if connected via optical cabling 30m long (or more). Kyocera was Kioxia’s partner in this demo, as the system used featured one of its Optinity PCIe cards.

Normally, a demo like this might yield eye-popping performance numbers. However, Kioxia showed its prototype running at the same performance as a conventional rival in terms of IOPS and bandwidth.

The special sauce here is all about the impressively extended reach, with cabling of up to 30m and beyond not impacting the SSD performance. Moreover, Kioxia stated that its slim and flexible connectors and cables were an advantage of its optical SSDs. Last but not least, these connections also offer “better signal integrity” over conventional electrical wiring, which can shrug off “challenging environments,” according to Kioxia.

If you look at the demo hardware, you may naturally question the assertion about slim and flexible connectors and cables. Kioxia told us that the large PCB you see attached to the CM7 Enterprise SSD will actually be miniaturized and shrunk to fit within the SSD shell. That seems like quite a feat considering the board is perhaps 150% the size of the CM7 Enterprise SSD at this time.

Microsoft began rolling out the much-anticipated hot patch update for security updates in Windows 11 Enterprise 24H2 and Microsoft 365 Preview Builds. Once installed, users can download and install the security patches via Windows Updates without requiring a reboot for the patch to be activated.

"Hotpatch updates are scoped and provide a complete set of OS security patches. No additional features are included," Microsoft explains. "They are unique in that they take effect immediately upon installation without requiring you to restart your device, helping to ensure focused, rapid protection."

Hotpatch updates have been available in the Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition since February 2022 and now in Windows Server 2025. They are proving to be more than a quality-of-life update as they reduce the system downtime for every restart needed for the security patch.

Hotpatching updates the in-memory code with the update, thus not requiring a system restart. Hotpatching also has other benefits, as mentioned by Microsoft:

• Fewer binaries mean updates install faster and consume less disk and CPU resources.
• Lower workload impact with less need to restart your machine.
• Better protection, as the Hotpatch update packages are scoped to Windows security updates that install faster without requiring you to restart your machine.
• Reduces the time exposed to security risks and change windows, and easier patch orchestration with Azure Update Manager.

Hotpatching is also incredibly useful for commercial workloads, given that security patches are regularly required, some more seriously than usual. This way, users no longer need to schedule an update for a critical patch and schedule a restart for servers and complex clusters using these operating systems. Microsoft also uses hotpatching for its clusters, such as the Xbox network.

We reported about Microsoft testing hotpatching internally a few months ago, where Microsoft wishes to roll this for 22H2 versions and for Arm64-based devices, whose rollout will be delayed by a whole year.

There are limitations to hotpatching as it works only for security patches. This means Cumulative Updates, which roll out during the first month of every quarter, will need a restart. It should be noted that for Windows Server 2022 and 2025, hotpatching does not include non-security updates for Windows, .NET updates, and non-windows patches such as firmware, drivers, and software updates.- and likely to be the case with Windows 11 Enterprise and Windows 365.

Windows 11 Enterprise editions are part of the Windows Enterprise subscription, which comes in Enterprise E3, Enterprise E5, and Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans. Those who have subscribed to this plan will need a Windows 11 Pro license. Windows 11 Enterprise includes more features, such as Azure Virtual Desktop, Credential Guard, Direct Access, Universal Print, and others. Pro and Enterprise versions are made for business users but with specific purposes.

One might expect hotpatching to inevitably arrive for Windows Home and Pro editions, though hotpatching is more beneficial for systems with a more complex deployment. Restarting every system after an update is impractical for many situations, as it involves downtime.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), one of the world's largest makers of servers, has initiated a legal battle against Inspur Group, China's largest server maker, and its affiliates, alleging server patent infringements. HPE accuses Inspur of engaging in deceptive practices and renaming its subsidiaries in the U.S. to continue its business with American companies despite being included into the Entity List. 

HPE: Inspur infringes our patents

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and discovered by The Register, accuses Inspur of using, selling, and distributing products that unlawfully incorporate HPE's patented technologies, seeking damages and an injunction to halt further infringements. Specifically, HPE accuses Inspur of infringing five U.S. patents No. 8,218,566, 7,634,671, 9,229,737, 8,335,891, and 8,108,508. These patents cover various aspects of server and network operations, including remote management, power consumption, and data storage array configuration, among other things. 

These patents are part of a portfolio that supports HPE's products ranging from general-purpose servers to sophisticated AI and storage solutions, according to the company. Since the patents cover various aspects of server operation, essentially all of Inspur's products can infringe them. 

The complaint also demonstrates HPE's attempts to resolve the issue out of court, but Inspur allegedly has ignored HPE's requests for meetings and communications. According to HPE, this lack of response from Inspur left no option but to seek judicial intervention. In its legal filing, HPE seeks an injunction to stop Inspur's alleged infringements and compensatory damages for the profits lost and royalties due. 

Despite being on the Entity List, Inspur continues operations in the U.S.

Legal battles between companies are nothing new. But HPE indicates that in addition to illegally using its intellectual property, Inspur continues its operations in the U.S. despite being added to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security Entity List — a list that identifies parties whose activities are believed to be contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. 

The complaint claims that Inspur that inspur continues its operations in the United States under Aivres Systems and Betapex. Inspur allegedly removed its branding from products sold in the U.S. and continues to sell them. For example, Inspur's IR5280M6 server is Aivres's 5280M6 machine, it has the same specification and design, according to HPE's complaint. Meanwhile, Inspur has also worked as a contract maker of servers, according to The Register. Yet, if a U.S. entity plans to work with Inspur (or any other party from the Entity List), it has to get a special license from the U.S. government.

In the unending quest for more desktop monitor real estate, users have turned to several methods to increase their multi-tasking ability. Large screens are one way to solve the problem. A 32-inch 16:9 display is a starting point, and many desks have a small television sitting on them. A good number of 42-inch and larger panels are available in both LCD and OLED forms.

Another method is to line up two or three screens together. Two 27s is common, or three 24s. But then you have that pesky line between screens. No matter how much companies tout their bezel-free designs, there is actually no such thing. There is always a line when it comes to selecting the best gaming monitors.

Now that 21:9 and 32:9 screens exist, there’s a way to get that width without vertical lines. Starting at 32 inches and going all the way to 49, many ultra and mega-wide displays are conveniently curved to keep as much of your work within peripheral vision.

An ideal balance between screen area and physical footprint is the 38-inch 21:9 category. Surprisingly, there aren’t as many choices as you might think, but Dell has had one in its UltraSharp line for a few years. The latest version is the U3824DW, and I’ll be testing it here.

 Dell UltraSharp U3824DW Specs

The U3824DW is a premium enterprise screen with 3840x1600 pixel resolution and a new form of screen technology Dell calls IPS Black. Black refers to lower black levels, and my tests revealed that the U3824DW does indeed have lower black levels and greater contrast than other IPS monitors. Dell claims 2,000:1, which I couldn’t quite reach. But I did record 1,923:1 in the Custom Color mode. That’s a record for IPS native contrast in my experience.

Pixel density is in the sweet spot at 111ppi. That’s a tiny bit more than a 27-inch 16:9 QHD screen. The U3824DW is bigger than two of those though. It’s nearly the equivalent of one-and-a-half 32-inch 16:9 monitors. That’s a lot of uninterrupted screen for sure. The curve radius is a gentle 2300R, meaning a circle of U3824DWs will be 4.6 meters (15 feet) across. There’s no visible image distortion, but the curve is enough that you won’t be constantly swiveling your head to see everything.

Dell sets a high image quality and accuracy standard with all its UltraSharp monitors. The U3824DW is color accurate right out of the box with close conformity to industry standards for white point, gamma and color. Gamut coverage is over 96% of DCI-P3 which puts it in a small group of high-end gaming and professional displays. The only thing missing here is support for HDR10 content.

With so much screen comes a lot of connectivity. There are four total video inputs, two HDMI, one DisplayPort and a USB-C. A KVM feature lets you connect multiple systems to be controlled by a single set of input devices. For that, you get three more USB-C and five USB-A downstream ports. Two internal speakers pump out nine watts of sound each and there’s a headphone jack. Extra enterprise integration comes in the form of an ethernet port that streams up to 2.5GbE for wake-on-LAN and other system convenience features.

The U3824DW is packed with everything needed to get work done and easily multi-task. It’s a premium display selling for $1530 at this writing. It could be considered a good value because it can function as multiple monitors and connectivity hubs. How does it perform? Let’s take a look.

Assembly and Accessories

Kudos to Dell for its continuing use of recyclable packaging. With molded cardboard and almost no plastic inside, the U3824DW is well protected. A large and heavy base keeps the package stable. Bolt on the upright and snap on the panel and you have a nearly 30-pound display built for years of daily use. An IEC cord feeds the internal power supply. You also get one each of HDMI and DisplayPort. The two USB cables are C/C and C/A. The wires are of premium quality, with rugged connectors and thick insulation. A pictorial guide shows you how to set everything up. 

Product 360

The photos don’t really tell the story of how big the U3824DW is. It will demand a full three feet of width with a base that is 15 by 10 inches. The styling is modern and minimalist, with a thin black frame around the image and a silver finish everywhere else. The back of the panel, upright and base are featureless, with only smooth surfaces that blend into their environment. A Dell logo is highlighted in polished chrome in back, but otherwise, there isn’t much else going on.

The stand looks slender but is super solid with firm ergonomics. A 120mm (4.7 inches) height adjustment puts the screen right at the ideal eyepoint at its highest setting, where you can keep the panel vertical. I prefer curved monitors because it puts all parts of the image in the same horizontal plane. You can swivel the U3824DW 30 degrees to either side and there is 5/21 degrees of tilt. If you’d rather use a monitor arm (you’ll need a beefy one), a 100 VESA mount with fasteners hides under the stand’s attachment point.

The input panel takes a large portion of the underside behind the stand. There are two HDMI 2.1 and a single DisplayPort 1.4. One of the USB-Cs also supports video and 90 watts of power for laptops. There are three more USB-Cs plus five USB-A ports (15 watts each). You can also see the aforementioned RJ-45, which IT managers will likely find handy. Three of the USBs are closer to the front of the panel for easy access. You can plug in a phone along with your input devices without reaching up and behind.

OSD Features

The U3824DW has a power button and a joystick for OSD control. Clicking it in any direction summons a quick menu which the user can program. An up-click opens the fully stocked OSD.

The input selector doesn’t just change inputs; it also has USB-C options and can rename the inputs to more useful terms like “PC” or “Laptop.”

The Color menu has six picture modes available. Standard is good enough by default not to require calibration. In Color Temp, you can specify the white point by Kelvin value. Color Space lets you choose from sRGB, Rec.709, DCI-P3 and Display P3. DCI-P3 has a gamma and white point meant to match commercial digital projectors. This is a handy feature for video post-production. Display P3 will give you the U3824DW’s full native gamut. The sRGB mode is also very accurate and can be used for photography or grading in SDR color spaces.

Custom Color includes gain and offset sliders for setting the white point plus hue and saturation controls for all six colors. It uses the native P3 gamut as a starting point. I discovered in testing that it couldn’t improve upon the U3824DW’s already dialed-in color, which is unusual for Dell monitors, but in a good way.

The Display menu has a uniformity compensation feature that my U3824DW sample didn’t require. While it does improve screen uniformity, it also reduces contrast, so I don’t recommend it. Dell power button sync is a slick feature that can turn on USB-connected devices when you turn on the monitor. This is something I haven’t seen before.

The PIP/PBP feature has many options for displaying two video sources simultaneously. There are three different side-by-side modes plus windowed options for all four corners in two sizes.

The USB menu has all the KVM options with a setup guide that works like a wizard to bind USB and video ports for multi-system control. The Ethernet Switch can bind to the KVM feature for automatic, prompted or manual switching between connected systems.

The joystick’s four directions can be programmed to a variety of monitor functions like picture modes, brightness/contrast, input selector and more. You can turn off the power LED if you wish. You can also set the USB ports to stay on when the monitor is in standby to charge devices when you’re away from the desk. The final sub-menu, Others, has LCD conditioning functions and signal information.

Dell U3824DW Calibration Settings

Most Dell monitors I test benefit from calibration in the Custom Color mode, but the U3824DW was an exception. There were no visible color, grayscale or gamma errors in the default Standard mode. Working the RGB gain sliders did not affect any improvement, so I returned to Standard and simply adjusted the brightness to 200 nits. Custom Color increases maximum output by about 30%, so it is useful if you need extra brightness. I also determined that sRGB in the Color Space mode is very accurate. Below are the settings I used for testing. Stick with Standard and find your preferred brightness level for the best image.

Hands-on and Daily Use

I’ll get one thing out of the way up front: the U3824DW is neither a gaming monitor nor meant to be. I played a few rounds of Doom Eternal’s horde mode, just to be sure. On the upside, the audio is superb. I could hear the nine-watt internal speakers' superior dynamic range and frequency response. They will play quite loud without audible distortion. And the sound stage is very wide, which is appropriate for the U3824DW’s prodigious physical width.

But for fast action, it isn’t a great choice. Motion resolution suffers from breakup and jitteriness as one moves the mouse quickly during battle. I adapted to aiming with more input lag than I’m used to, but the blurring of fine detail, especially at a distance, made gameplay difficult. However, if you were to play more static titles, you could appreciate the U3824DW’s excellent contrast and color saturation. It is a good choice for casual games.

It's also a great screen for movies and videos. Sitting three to four feet back fills your peripheral vision and creates a truly immersive feel. I could easily enjoy the U3824DW as a personal home theater display in a small media room or office. My only wish is for HDR support. There is a lot of streamed content out there in HDR10. The U3824DW would be greatly enhanced with that capability.

Image quality in all areas was exemplary. Dell’s IPS Black technology is a real enhancement for the IPS category. I could almost be fooled into thinking that the U3824DW is a VA panel. Black levels are superb, and that extra depth really adds to color saturation. The gamut volume is prodigious and is made more perceptible by that extra dynamic range.

Productivity is what the U3824DW is all about, and there it excels. The PIP/PBP function is super easy to use and automatically sizes different resolutions correctly. It had no problem showing a 1920x1080 pixel secondary window with the correct shape, free of distortion. And this worked in both side-by-side and windowed configurations.

For multitasking, the U3824DW will quickly help you forget about multi-screen setups. There is a ton of flexibility for document organization and management here. The curve is just enough to bring the user into the workspace but not enough to distort things like spreadsheets. I had no trouble working in Word, Excel and Photoshop with three open document windows. With so much screen area, I could leave everything sized large, positioned where I only needed to turn my head slightly to change focus. This was aided by the excellent stand, which puts the screen at just the right height for vertical placement.

Takeaway: The U3824DW isn’t a gaming monitor, but it’s great at everything else one would do with a large computer monitor. It easily takes the place of two, or dare I say, three smaller screens.

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I didn’t have any other 38-inch ultra-wides to compare the U3824DW to, so I created a group that mixes gaming and enterprise products. There’s no reason one can’t use a gaming monitor for everyday tasks. And you get a speedy screen. Those three are Corsair’s Xeneon Flex OLED, Philips’ 34M2C7600 and ViewSonic’s XG341C-2K. The 60 Hz monitors are BenQ’s PD2706UA and Dell’s U3224KB 6K display.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The quickest monitor here is also the largest, Corsair’s 45-inch Xeneon Flex. It’s also an OLED, so it has a significant advantage for gaming. But if productivity is your only metric, the U3824DW is a better enterprise screen with its KVM and networking features. However, at 60 Hz, it is limited in how smooth it can be. 26ms is the average response time for any 60 Hz monitor, meaning motion resolution is much lower than the faster displays. Dell includes an overdrive which helps a little. It works without visible artifacts, but there’s only so much it can do to mitigate blur. When total control lag is added to the mix, the U3824DW remains average when compared to other 60 Hz monitors.

Test Takeaway: If fast-paced action games are part of your workday, you should buy a gaming monitor. But if you’re all business, the U3824DW has extra features that make it a more useful tool for productivity.

Viewing Angles

The U3824DW’s IPS Black panel retains all the advantages of traditional IPS panels while delivering greater contrast. Off-axis viewing is something a 38-inch ultra-wide needs to do well and the U3824DW certainly does. You can see a slight green shift to the sides, but light output only drops by 10% and gamma stays the same, meaning there is no loss of fine highlight or shadow detail. The top view is about 40% dimmer, and the darkest steps are all but invisible. The U3824DW is very shareable by two or three users, making it well-suited for presentation.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

When I set up the U3824DW, its uniformity compensation was turned on by default. That resulted in a slightly lower 5.34% score but also raised black levels, which reduced contrast. Turning the option off made no visible difference in uniformity but upped contrast by almost 40%. Given the excellent quality control I’ve seen in all Dell UltraSharp monitors, you won’t need the compensation feature. My sample was free from visible flaws.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

Finding the U3824DW’s maximum output level requires changing the picture mode from Standard to Custom Color. By default, I measured 253.2859 nits peak, .1479 nit black and 1712.2:1 contrast. Custom Color with no adjustments gave me the numbers shown above. If you need more than 250 nits, Custom Color can deliver, but you’ll need to calibrate as its white point is visibly green.

In every case, the U3824DW has more contrast than traditional IPS panels. Though not quite in VA territory, Dell’s IPS Black technology makes a visible improvement in image quality thanks to a greater depth of field and color saturation.

After Calibration to 200 nits

I calibrated the Custom Color mode and lost a little contrast. As I’ll show later, the Standard mode has no visible color errors, so there’s little point in calibrating the U3824DW.

You’ve likely already noticed that both Dell monitors in the group have superb contrast numbers. The U3224KB also has an IPS Black panel with a clear advantage over traditional IPS technology. We’re seeing an evolution here, for sure. The U3824DW has one of the best ANSI scores I’ve yet recorded for an IPS monitor.

Test Takeaway: You can almost hit Dell’s claim of 2,000:1 contrast by choosing the Custom Color mode. But without calibration, the image has a slight green tint. Calibration reduces contrast to 1609.6:1, so the best choice is to leave the U3824DW in its Standard mode, which has 1712.2:1 contrast, with no calibration required. It’s a compromise that ensures the best possible color accuracy. 

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The U3824DW includes Dell’s usual picture mode suite that lets you choose between color gamuts or calibration. But unlike most Dells, this monitor performs best when left in its default Standard preset. 

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

The U3824DW tells a pretty simple tale about its grayscale and gamma accuracy. There is no benefit to calibrating the Custom Color mode unless you really need another 100 nits of light output. Standard delivers 253 nits peak, which is plenty. It also delivers a visually perfect grayscale and reasonably tight gamma. The tiny green error at the 50% step will be nearly impossible to detect in content.

In the Color Space mode, you can opt for the smaller sRGB gamut. It comes with super accurate grayscale tracking with all errors below 1dE. Gamma tracks similarly to the Standard mode except for a light reading at the 10% step. This is a minor error. Professionals can use the U3824DW’s for color-critical applications without issue.

Comparisons

The U3824DW takes the top spot in the out-of-box grayscale test, even edging out the premium-priced U3224KB. It also beats the gaming monitors here. Of those, only the Philips can get away with no calibration.

After adjustment, the U3824DW falls to fifth place, but visually, it will be hard to discern any issues between any monitors that average lower than 3dE in this test.

The U3824DW’s gamma tracking is nice and tight, just like all the other screens. All six conform closely to the 2.2 standard as well. This renders the comparison a wash, as these monitors exhibit very similar performance in the gamma tests.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

Dell promises color accuracy from the U3824DW and clearly, it delivers. Not only is every saturation and hue point on target, but the gamut volume is also very large. There’s a bit of bonus red, not enough to cause a problem, and green is almost fully covered. That is unusual among wide gamut displays, in a good way. If you’re wondering about calibration, that process raised the gamut average error to 2.17dE. That’s the result that sold me on the Standard picture mode.

The sRGB gamut from the U3824DW’s Color Space mode measured very well too. Though there is some over-saturation in the red and blue primaries, the overall error still averages below the visible level. The U3824DW is completely qualified for pro-level color work.

Comparisons

It doesn’t get much better than the U3824DW’s 1.44dE color gamut error, which is an impressive out-of-box result. Any professional monitor would be proud to post numbers this good. Note that the other Dell, the U3224KB, posted a similar out-of-box result but could be calibrated to the higher level of 1.14dE. These are fine differences seen only by the color meter, not by the naked eye. Visually, all the monitors have perfect color.

An enterprise monitor benefits from a large color volume, even if it isn’t strictly accurate in the SDR realm. The U3824DW has a very large gamut with over 96% coverage of DCI-P3. The other Dell takes the prize here, but in fairness, all six screens are close. Anything between 95 and 100% coverage is hard to spot in a visual comparison. It’s also a good thing that sRGB coverage is so close to 100%. The best professional displays go for 100%, no more and no less. The U3824DW clearly achieves that.

Test Takeaway: The U3824DW delivers professional-grade color accuracy and volume right out of the box in its Standard picture mode. Though its design intent is geared toward presentation and productivity, it is fully qualified as a professional display for video and graphics production. 

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Since I mostly review gaming monitors, my recommendations are slanted in that direction. Many good examples can serve admirably for enterprise-grade productivity, or even as a professional screen. But if you also want the convenience and flexibility of KVM, network integration and lots of USB ports, the Dell U3824DW provides those things along with a stunning image. 

Aside from its lack of support for HDR, the U3824DW’s picture is superb. Contrast is approaching VA quality with over 1,700:1 available right out of the box. It isn’t the brightest monitor out there, but with just over 250 nits of peak output, it provides enough light for any indoor environment.

Color is exemplary, with correct rendering of the DCI-P3 gamut and nearly 100% coverage. Accuracy is well within the professional realm. The U3824DW is closer to the reference mark than many of the professional, and more expensive displays I’ve tested. You can just unpack and install it, and do nothing else besides set brightness to taste. Dell’s IPS Black technology is a real enhancement to the IPS genre, adding both depth and color saturation.

The army of USB ports and RJ-45 jack is a real value add for enterprise use. You can hook up as many as four video sources and with eight additional USB ports available, the U3824DW becomes a hub for just about anything you can think of to connect. With a well-designed KVM system and flexible PBP/PIP functions, presentations can be managed with ease.

Aside from action gaming and HDR content, there is nothing beyond the U3824DW’s capabilities. Since it can easily take the place of two or three smaller screens, while adding a wealth of convenience and flexibility, it’s even a decent value. If you need power in your enterprise monitor, the Dell U3824DW delivers it along with a stunning image. Definitely check it out.

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If the best SSDs can't satiate your hunger for ultra-fast storage, you should try HighPoint's latest RocketAIC card, an enterprise-class PCIe 4.0 Add-In Card (AIC) designed for reliability and endurance. The RocketAIC is available with storage densities of up to 122 TB at whopping read and write performance up to 54 GB/s and 36 GB/s, respectively.

The RocketAIC communicates with your system through a regular PCIe 4.0 x16 expansion slot. Unlike other PCIe 4.0 AIC solutions, such as the Sabrent Apex X21 Destroyer or the ASRock Blazing Quad M.2 Card, the RocketAIC doesn't leverage M.2 SSDs. On the contrary, HighPoint's AIC taps the Solidigm D7-P5520 E1.S, a 114-layer TLC drive.

The RocketAIC features eight E1.S NVMe ports to house up to eight E.1S drives. You can't feed eight SSDs with only the expansion slot, so the RocketAIC has a standard 6-pin PCIe power connector for external power. An undisclosed Broadcom PCIe 4.0 switch ensures that each E.1S SSD has its own PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

The AIC features a tools-free design where you can access the E.1S ports by pressing a switch. HighPoint developed a robust cooling solution to keep the E.1S SSDs cool. Heat is always the biggest enemy in AIC setups. The aluminum casing has integrated heatsinks with corresponding vents for heat dissipation. A pair of small, low-decibel cooling fans at the rear of the RocketAIC push air into the card to cool the SSDs.

The RocketAIC comes in two capacities: 30.72 TB and 61.44 TB. However, you can pair two in a dual-drive (cross-sync) setup to hit 122.88 TB of storage. The performance is similar between both capacities. However, the 61.44 TB model delivers read and write speeds up to 27 GB/s and 18 GB/s, respectively. In a dual-drive configuration, however, the performance jumps up to 54 GB/s reads and 36 GB/s writes.

HighPoint RocketAIC Specifications

The 30.72 TB drive consumes around 137.28W of power, while the 61.44 TB model's power draw is rated for 161.298W. For the dual-drive configuration, just multiply the power consumption by two. The RocketAIC supports three RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 arrays so you can pick between the best performance, added security, or a combination of the two. The only caveat is that it only supports data RAID and not boot RAID, an aspect that may be a deal breaker for some.

The RocketAIC comes in a standard full-height, full-length, dual-width form factor, measuring 7.68 x 4.37 x 0.85 inches (195.07 x 111 x 21.59mm).

The RocketAIC is compatible with macOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems. However, you must pay attention to the part number. The RA7749EM with the "EM" suffix is for macOS, while the RA7749EW with the "EW" suffix denotes the variant for Windows and Linux systems. Regardless of the operating system support, the drives have identical pricing, so you don't have to worry about one being more expensive than the other because you're on a Mac.

The RocketAIC has a three-year warranty regardless of the capacity or configuration. It's mind-boggling why HighPiont's warranty is so short, considering that the RocketAIC is a workstation product that costs an arm and a leg. Even Solidigm stands behind its D7-P5520 SSD with a five-year warranty. While the three-year warranty is equal across the board, the endurance limits vary between each RocketAIC SKU. In a single drive configuration, HighPoint backs the 30.72 TB and 61.44 TB drives with 7 PBW and 14 PBW, respectively. In contrast, the dual-drive 61.44 TB and 122.88 TB setups correspond to 56 PBW and 112 PBW, respectively.

The RocketAIC targets the professional and workstation markets and has a price tag that reflects that. The 30.72 TB drive retails for $4,999.99, and the 61.44 TB drive will set you back $9,999.99. HighPoint hasn't listed the dual-drive configurations on the company's eStore yet. However, the pricing should be twice the single models since the dual-drive package combines two single AICs.

The Toshiba X300 is a budget desktop hard drive that’s most compelling at capacities over 8TB, offering extra storage without needing an enterprise or NAS label. Unfortunately, its performance is lackluster despite its 7200-RPM speed, plenty of cache, and versatile Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology. The price per terabyte at higher capacities is also relatively high, so the drives are close to the cost of the pricey 14TB Seagate IronWolf and 14TB WD Red Plus. Aside from peak write speed, those two NAS drives are generally superior to the X300.

There are definitely superior options on our list of best hard drives if you only need 8TB or less in an HDD. The WD Blue is good for those on a budget, while the Seagate FireCuda offers strong performance and a good warranty. If you need a drive for NAS, particularly if you want a five-year warranty, there are better options with the Seagate IronWolf Pro and WD Red Pro. The Red Plus is also a quieter, more efficient alternative. However, if you're focused on a drive designed specifically for desktop PCs, the Seagate BarraCuda Pro excels in everything over the X300 but is significantly more expensive. That leaves the X300 as being best if you need a specific amount of capacity in a single drive and can compromise on general performance.

Specifications

The current X300 lineup has capacities of up to 18TB, and cache up to 512MB. Our older 14TB X300 only has 256MB of cache, but it still uses CMR tech and spins at 7200 RPM. Like the WD Blue and Seagate BarraCuda, the X300 is only warrantied for two years, but the X300 has higher capacity options.

Excluding enterprise and NAS drives in the >8TB space, one possible competitor is the Seagate BarraCuda Pro, but that drive comes with a full five-year warranty. However, the 14TB X300 at $245.99 is significantly cheaper than the $330 14TB BarraCuda Pro. If we include NAS, we’re looking at the three-year WD Red Plus at about the same price, but that drive is optimized for running in a different environment.

Software and Accessories

Toshiba’s software support is bare bones, but it does exist. Looking up your specific model on Toshiba’s website will yield a link to the downloadable Toshiba Storage Diagnostic Tool to inspect the health of your drive. 

A Closer Look

The X300 is exceptionally plain, aside from the blue PCB. There are not many HDD manufacturers still in business - just compare the number of brands to SSDs! However, Toshiba’s drives fill some gaps that may cater to you. The X300 has characteristics similar to the entry-level WD Blue but has a higher spindle speed with higher capacity options. It’s not a NAS or enterprise drive, so it is best described as being for high-end desktops or workstations. 

Here we can see that the drive adheres to the standard 3.5" form factor and comes with the ubiquitous 6 Gb/s SATA connector. 

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Comparison Products

The 14TB Toshiba X300 faces our suite of 8TB hard drives, including the WD Blue, the older HGST UltraStar He8, the Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB, the Seagate FireCuda, and the Seagate BarraCuda. Larger 20TB drives include the WD Red Pro, the Seagate Exos X20, the Seagate IronWolf Pro, and the Seagate SkyHawk AI. We also threw in the 14TB Seagate IronWolf Pro and the 12TB WD Red Plus. 

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Yes, gaming isn't the preferred use case for this class of hard drives, but we include these tests for perspective. Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities, including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The X300’s 3DMark performance is simply abysmal, as it trails the rest of the test pool in every metric. It's clear that this drive isn't geared for low-latency access of any sort — not even by HDD standards. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Given the dismal performance in the previous benchmark, it comes as no surprise that the drives' PCMark 10 performance is likewise terrible.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Things are more cheery with DiskBench, especially during the read-centric portion of the workload. However, file copies are slow, with the X300 delivering performance akin to the smaller 5400-RPM Blue. This drive would be okay for infrequent writes, more so than the SMR-equipped BarraCuda, but it’s no match for other 7200-RPM drives. 

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that storage vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The X300's performance in sequential workloads is satisfactory in ATTO and Crystal Disk Mark. That said, performance in random workloads is disappointing, but this drive is more likely to be used for larger, sequential transfers.

Sustained Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most HDDs implement a write cache which is a fast area of volatile memory such as DRAM.  Sustained write speeds directly hit the platters and tend to be consistent. There are exceptions to both of these statements as there are SSHDs (flash-containing hybrid HDDs), OptiNAND drives, and SMR drives that deviate from the traditional configuration. We use Iometer to detect the maximum sustained write speed of the HDD.

The X300's sustained sequential write performance is generally good, but the drive suffers from inconsistency. The X300 is clearly faster than the smaller drives but suffers from more noticeable dips as the drive writes data to the platters. As such, this would not be the best choice for a NAS.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some drives can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

The X300 is not particularly efficient, especially given its capacity. However, it is satisfactory for desktop PCs.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

Conclusion

The Toshiba X300 is a difficult drive to recommend, given its relatively weak performance and its premium pricing at higher capacities. It has plenty of challengers at lower capacities, but it mostly faces enterprise and NAS drives at capacities exceeding 8TB (except the BarraCuda Pro — which notably costs a lot more per terabyte). However, if you happen to be a desktop user who needs a lot of storage in a single drive and can tolerate lackluster performance, the X300 could be a good option.

Although the X300’s overall performance is quite poor, it has high transfer rates thanks to its 7200-RPM spindle speed and CMR technology. This translates to relatively good read performance and higher peak write performance, although write consistency leaves much to be desired.

Selecting a drive like the IronWolf or Red Plus would make sense as they have an extra year on their warranties, are priced in the same ballpark, and generally perform as well or better than the X300 in most areas. The X300 has higher steady-state write performance, especially over the Red Plus, which may be why it’s marketed towards professional use, such as content creation and production workflows.

The Toshiba X300 is another case of a niche HDD that's good for one job in specific capacities. Still, we wouldn't recommend it beyond that, especially given the wide assortment of competent alternatives that offer far more balanced performance profiles. 

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Like any other computer peripheral, monitors are a tool designed for specific purposes. Gamers need speed and smoothness. Enterprises need reliability and an image that doesn’t tire the user. Photographers and graphics pros need color accuracy above all. That last category comes with a price consideration. Most monitors billed as professional are expensive. It’s not difficult to find 27-inch pro screens selling for four figures. But some examples deliver a far better price-to-performance ratio.

BenQ has always been a staunch advocate of color accuracy across all its display lines. The DesignVue series, which starts with a PD designation, is loaded with precise monitors that bring professional-level image fidelity at enterprise prices. I’ll be focusing here on the PD2706UA. It’s a 27-inch 4K IPS panel with wide gamut color, DisplayHDR 400 and premium build quality for only $650 at this writing. Let’s take a look. 

BenQ DesignVue PD2706UA Specs

The PD2706UA starts with an IPS panel running at 60Hz in 4K (3840x2160) resolution. There is no Adaptive-Sync, and the refresh rate is fixed. There is overdrive available, but even with it engaged, I saw enough motion blur that I would not recommend this display for fast-paced gameplay. It’s okay for more leisurely adventures because its image is very accurate.

Color comes in a native gamut of DCI-P3, which my sample covered over 95% of with no visible errors right out of the box. You can choose between DCI and sRGB/Rec.709, and there are Dicom and low blue light modes as well. Everything is factory calibrated, so you won’t need to adjust anything except brightness. Of course, being BenQ, precise controls are included that take the PD2706UA to a very high standard. 

Contrast is high for IPS at around 1,200:1 native. HDR signals get a nice boost thanks to a field-dimming backlight which ups the ratio to over 5,300:1. It’s not an OLED or Mini LED by any means, but it costs significantly less than those technologies.

Physically, the PD2706UA is built for work. Rather than a stand, it comes with a beefy and overbuilt monitor arm that feels like it could support much more weight. This display is rugged and ready. BenQ has included yet another new control puck design for the OSD, which is my favorite so far. It has a dial that can adjust brightness as easily as one would change the volume on their stereo. You also get KVM functionality that lets you control multiple systems with a single keyboard, mouse and screen. There are side USB ports and USB-C as well.

The PD2706UA is an impressive package that delivers professional-grade accuracy and performance for an enterprise price. Though it won’t be seen at an esports competition, it will make a lot of working professionals happy.

Assembly and Accessories

A clamshell box opens to reveal the PD2706UA’s panel and arm securely packed in crumbly foam. Just clamp the arm to your desk’s edge and snap the panel in place. Wiring goes through a channel in the back, so you won’t see cables cluttering the desktop. The power supply is internal and connected with an IEC cord. You also get HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C and USB-A/B cables. A plastic cover snaps on the back to hide the jack panel.

Product 360

The PD2706UA’s styling is simple and functional. The arm clamps onto desks up to three inches thick. You can temporarily detach the bottom half if you need to put it through a hole or slot. I quickly had it firmly attached to my test bench. A scissor assembly extends from the vertical upright and lets the panel swing through more than 180 degrees to either side. You can move it fore and aft between 10.5 and 18.5 inches from the wall. The height adjustment is a generous 5.9 inches. Movements are firm and smooth, with no play at all. The panel stays exactly where you put it but is easy to adjust.

On the right side are USB-B and C ports along with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Underneath are DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI inputs, one each, and another USB-C, which is a video connection. You also get one upstream and two downstream USB 3.2 ports. I’d have liked to see another HDMI port, but with three total video inputs, the PD2706UA’s KVM feature has plenty of flexibility.

The screen delivers a super sharp image, no wonder, given the 163ppi pixel density. You can’t see the pixel structure, and the effective anti-glare layer does not impart any grain. Clarity is as good as it gets. The bezel is flush with just eight millimeters at the top and sides and a 20mm silver trim strip across the bottom. You can see a small white power LED on the right side, which can be turned off in the OSD. Behind that is an OSD joystick and three control keys.

The PD2706UA’s coolest physical feature by far is the Hotkey Puck. It plugs into a dedicated port underneath and can control all monitor functions with five buttons and a click dial. By default, the dial controls brightness like a volume knob. This is super handy when grading photos and graphics. The numbered keys can be programmed for various functions and the top two buttons are return and color modes. BenQ has always been a leader in this area, and this latest Hotkey Puck is their best controller yet.

OSD Features

There is a lot going on in the PD2706UA’s OSD, but it’s well organized and intuitive. It’s divided into six sub-menus and called forth with a press of the puck dial or the joystick on the panel’s backside.

The Display menu has input selection and PIP/PBP functions. You can display two sources simultaneously, side-by-side or windowed. Aspect ratio options include full-screen or 1:1 pixel mapping.

There are 12 color modes corresponding to different color standards or task-specific options like CAD or animation. A low blue light mode works well for long reading sessions. The User mode is fully adjustable for gamma, color temp and gamut. My only wish is for independent color temp memories for each gamut mode. If you want to compare color standards, a DualView option displays two picture modes side-by-side.

The 6500K color temp is visually error-free, but User Define allows calibration to a very high standard. My test results were near perfect after a few tweaks. You can choose color gamuts within the user mode in the Advanced sub-menu. The Uniformity option is of particular note. By default, it’s turned on and reduces contrast by half with an elevated black level. You’ll want to turn that off to see the PD2706UA’s full dynamic range. Backlight Control is a field dimming option that works only for HDR content. It raises the contrast ratio of that material to just over 5,300:1.

The user can program two of the panel’s control keys and three more on the Hotkey Puck. Dial rotation can be brightness, contrast or audio volume. You’ll find the overdrive, AMA, in the System menu, which isn’t all that effective. Its highest setting causes ghosting and lower settings do little to reduce fast motion blur.

BenQ DesignVue PD2706UA Calibration Settings 

The PD2706UA comes with a factory calibration data sheet I could verify in testing. The labeled color modes, Rec.709, sRGB and DCI-P3, all conform to their indicated standards. Higher accuracy is possible in the User mode with adjustable gamma, color temp and gamut. The color temp changes slightly when switching gamuts and you can’t create multiple RGB memories. But this is a minor point. The errors are still invisible to the naked eye. I set up my sample for DCI-P3 color with a 2.2 gamma and 6500K color temp and got near-perfect results in testing. My instrument-derived settings are below.

There are no picture options in HDR mode, but like SDR, the color temp, luminance tracking and gamut is very accurate. The only thing you’ll need to turn on is Backlight Control which engages a field dimming option to raise HDR contrast to around 5,300:1.

Gaming and Hands-on

Reviewing any enterprise or professional monitor comes with the caveat that it isn’t designed for gaming. But that doesn’t mean one cannot play games on the PD2706UA and have a good time. Though there is no Adaptive-Sync, and the refresh rate tops out at 60 Hz, I spent some quality time in Doom Eternal’s Horde mode and explored the caves and jungles of Tomb Raider. I’m spoiled by speedy screens that have now hit an incredible 500 Hz, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the PD2706UA acquitted itself.

If you can maintain 60fps, there are almost no visible frame tears and motion blur is only a small distraction. The PD2706UA’s overdrive made a weak showing in Blur Buster’s UFO test patterns but in gameplay, the loss of motion resolution was acceptable. My aim in first-person shooters overshot the mark a bit as the reticle didn’t quite stop where I intended. Distant objects were hard to resolve when moving but were easy to see in sniping situations. The control response was slightly behind my thought process, but I adapted quickly.

The image was stunning, even though the PD2706UA doesn’t have zone or edge dimming for HDR content. The extra contrast afforded by its field-dimming feature worked well by providing a warm glow with bright highlights and solid black levels. Near-perfect luminance tracking and color accuracy helped there. Over 95% coverage of DCI-P3 delivered high color saturation that added to the 3D effect.

When playtime was over, the PD2706UA proved to be a superb graphics and document editing tool. There is more than enough contrast to resolve small text in Word and Excel. High pixel density (163ppi) meant there were no jaggies or anti-aliasing. Using the Hotkey Puck’s dial to tweak brightness was something I had not experienced before. Usually, I don’t change the setting once I’ve calibrated, but since I had the ability, I made small adjustments for different video content, Photoshop, or web browsing. This is a feature I’d like to see on every monitor; the ability to change brightness as easily as one would change the volume.

The PD2706UA’s bundled monitor arm deserves special mention. Many users benefit from an arm like this as it affords more flexibility than any stand is capable of. I’ve experienced many stands, but a good arm is always better. You can move the screen into any position, and it stays put. BenQ’s build quality is among the industry's best and extends to this arm. It’s as good or better than any aftermarket solution.

The PD2706UA is extremely well-suited for professional users thanks to its accurate picture modes. You get some task-specific options, but when editing graphics, you want easy access to color gamuts, white points and gamma presets. You can choose a gamut mode, or calibrate the User mode and easily switch parameters within it. I tested the possible combinations and found all the labels to be accurate. 6500K is 6500K, 2.2 is 2.2, DCI-P3 is DCI-P3, and so on. For BenQ to deliver a truly professional-grade display for $650 is impressive.

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I rounded up a group of 60 Hz monitors to compare the PD2706UA’s performance. Most of these are premium pro displays with four-figure price tags. While Mini LED screens deliver higher contrast, they aren’t any more color-accurate or colorful than the BenQ. The group is Asus’ PA32UCG and PA32UCX, Acer’s CM3271K, MSI’s MAG321CURV and LG’s 28MQ780.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The PD2706UA responds like a typical 60 Hz panel but has relatively low input lag. Control response is fine for casual gaming, but you’ll see some motion blur in fast-moving action sequences. There is no Adaptive-Sync, so there are occasional frame tears. They aren’t as noticeable when paired with a video card capable of maintaining 60fps. The overdrive reduces blur a little on its first setting, but gaming is best kept to slower-paced play where you want to enjoy the virtual environment rather than ripping through hordes of enemies.

Viewing Angles

The PD2706UA offers viewing angles typical of premium IPS panels. The side photo shows almost no light falloff and a green tint. Shadow and highlight details remain clear thanks to consistent gamma. The top view goes cool with a 40% reduction in brightness. Though most users won’t be sharing a 27-inch monitor, this one can be enjoyed by two people who don’t mind sitting cozily together.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

The PD2706UA comes with its uniformity compensation turned on. This reduces contrast by half and raises the black level. I turned it off and recorded an excellent 6.68% test result. This is well below the visible threshold. I could not see any bleed or glow in a completely dark room. The PD2706UA is built to a very high standard.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

I measure monitors in their out-of-box state in the default picture mode with the brightness maxed. The PD2706UA comes with uniformity compensation engaged which reduces contrast by half so I turned that off. I also found more light output in the User Define mode, a maximum value of 380 nits. Black levels are respectable among IPS panels so I measured a native contrast ratio of 1,107.4:1. You can’t use the backlight dimming in SDR to increase contrast which is a bummer. It works fine for HDR, though, which is very good performance.

After Calibration to 200 nits

After calibration of the color temp and setting the peak white level to 200 nits, contrast is unchanged. In the IPS category, it doesn’t get much better.

The PD2706UA’s high ANSI score shows excellent quality control and component selection, particularly the screen’s grid polarizer. Intra-image contrast is deep and well delineated, especially in brighter material where extra color saturation enhances the picture.

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The PD2706UA ships with a calibration data sheet specific to each example. It covers the Display P3 picture mode with a 2.2 gamma and 6500K color temp. My tests showed it to be accurate. You do not need to calibrate this monitor.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Right out of the gate, the PD2706UA impresses. There are no visible grayscale errors at all. In the gamma trace, only 10% brightness showed a slight dip (too bright). This error was hard to spot in actual content. By calibrating the User mode, grayscale tracking is even better, and gamma matches the reference perfectly. It truly doesn’t get better than this.

If you want to use the sRGB gamut, the easiest option is to choose that color mode. You can also change gamuts in User mode and get about the same level of grayscale and gamma accuracy.

Comparisons

The PD2706UA offers better than average out-of-box grayscale accuracy than most monitors. With a 2.15dE value, it has no visible errors and does not need calibration. However, with adjustment, it achieves a very high standard, one worthy of any professional’s workspace. And it does so for a lot less money.

The best reason for calibration is to fix the slight gamma error I noted earlier. With a tiny 0.04 range of values and a perfect 2.2 average, it can’t get any better.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The PD2706UA aced my color gamut tests. I noted slight under-saturation in some red and blue points in the default chart. But these errors are invisible. A 1.53dE average is about as good as it gets. Calibration takes that down to 0.95, which is an excellent result. Only a handful of monitors can score lower than 1.00dE here. sRGB color tracking is similarly free of visible error with a 0.99dE result. 

In sRGB mode, there is no visible color error, but red is slightly under-saturated on the chart. This mode is accurate enough for critical work if you need a smaller gamut.

Comparisons

One monitor in the group managed to outdo the PD2706UA, Asus’ PA32UCX. You can pick up that fractional improvement for $2,395 at this writing or a difference of $1,745. BenQ is offering stupendous value with a monitor as accurate as the best screens I’ve tested.

Color volume is an equally important metric in the pro monitor genre and the PD2706UA delivers there too. With over 95% coverage of DCI-P3, it is hard to see a difference between it and a screen that covers 100%. The BenQ comes up the tiniest bit short in the blue primary only. All other colors are fully rendered. Again, this is super impressive for a $650 display. The PD2706UA is qualified for color-critical work.

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Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The PD2706UA supports HDR10 signals with an automatic switchover. You’ll only have to turn on the dimming feature (Backlight Control) the first time to realize the full dynamic range. No picture controls are available, but my tests show they are unnecessary.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The PD2706UA is rated for DisplayHDR 400, and it sails past that level with 520 nits of peak output. The backlight control was turned on to achieve this result. Black levels are relatively low, eclipsed only by the Mini LED screens, so contrast is a respectable 5,308:1. HDR definitely has more pop than SDR but if you want the ultimate image, only a Mini LED or OLED will do. But HDR is perfectly enjoyable on the PD2706UA.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The PD2706UA continues its color-accurate ways in HDR mode with a visually flawless grayscale and EOTF chart. There are no visible color errors and the Electro-Optical Transfer Function (EOTF), HDR’s version of gamma, is almost perfectly in line with the reference. The field dimming backlight makes shadow areas a tad dark with a slight bump as the tone-map transition point is reached at 65% brightness. This is excellent performance.

The HDR gamut charts show general over-saturation at the inner points with nearly full coverage of DCI-P3. HDR color looks very saturated but avoids becoming over-blown. Detail is sharp and delineated. The Rec.2020 chart shows similar behavior. Hue tracking is solid with only slight aberrations as the saturation level increases. 

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The professional monitor category is really two genres. There are panels with every bell and whistle that have supremely accurate color and tons of options that sell for high prices. And some displays deliver the same accuracy with fewer peripheral features that cost less. If you have the budget, spending over $2,000 on a 27-inch 4K monitor with Mini LED or OLED technology and high precision is easy. Or you can budget $650 and get BenQ’s DesignVue PD2706UA.

The PD2706UA has color accuracy equal to the best pro screens I’ve tested. It doesn’t need calibration for its gamut modes, DCI-P3, sRGB or Rec.709. If you want to take it to a higher standard, though, precise RGB controls with gamma and gamut presets deliver exactly what their labels indicate. Ultimately, pros need a monitor that can be easily adjusted to different color standards without much fuss. And if you’ve never experienced the convenient ability to change panel brightness with a dial, BenQ’s Hotkey Puck makes that a cool reality.

Gaming isn’t the PD2706UA’s forte, but though it showed me some motion blur in test patterns, the play experience was OK. By locking the frame rate at 60 Hz, frame tears were rare and motion resolution was good enough for my casual skills. Esports competitors will want to shop for a speedier panel, but if you want to blow off a little steam during lunch by liquidating monsters in Doom Eternal, the PD2706UA serves that purpose.

Most of all, it delivers a superb image. With SDR contrast around 1,200:1 and HDR topping 5,300:1, plenty of dynamic range ensures true blacks, bright highlights, and a deeply saturated image. Even without fancy tech, the PD2706UA has a wider color gamut than many high-end monitors.

Taken as a value display, the BenQ DesignVue PD2706UA has few, if any, equals. With premium build quality, a rock-solid monitor arm in the box, and near-perfect color, it should make quite a few users’ shortlists. Unless you need Adaptive-Sync and fast refresh, it’s definitely worth checking out.

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Micron this week announced drastic cost-cutting measures, which includes a 10% workforce reduction as well as further lowering of capital expenditures. As a result, the company will slowdown the ramp of new DRAM nodes, which will delay its introduction of 1γ (1-gamma) production nodes, that use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to 2025. Meanwhile, the company has begun sampling of 24Gb DDR5 memory devices for enterprise applications.

EUV Roll Out Delayed

Micron is the only large DRAM maker that does not use EUV lithography with its latest fabrication processes. The memory producer plans to use EUV for several layers in its 1γ manufacturing technology, which was set to be introduced sometime in 2024. Because Micron has to reduce spending on new equipment in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 as well as reduce DRAM bit shipments in the coming quarters, it will have to slowdown ramp up of DRAMs on its 1β and 1γ fabrication technologies. 

The company's latest 1β (1-beta) manufacturing node — which increases bit density by 35% and improves power efficiency by 15% — solely relies on deep ultraviolet (DUV lithography). By contrast, Samsung and SK Hynix are already using EUV scanners for several layers in their 4th Generation 10nm-class technologies (1α, 1-alpha) and plan to increase their usage with 5th Generation 10nm-class DRAM nodes. But the company is delaying its 1β to reduce bit production shipments as well as cut down its CapEx, which is why it will delay its 1γ introduction too. 

"Given our decision to slow the 1ß DRAM production ramp, we expect that our 1γ (1-gamma) introduction will now be in 2025," a statement by Micron reads. "Similarly, our next NAND node beyond 232-layer 3D NAND memory will be delayed to align to the new demand outlook and required supply growth." 

The delay of a EUV-based production process is a big deal since one EUV layer replaces several DUV masks, thus reducing cycle times, improving yields, and reducing costs. Keeping in mind that both Samsung and SK Hynix will use EUV extensively in the coming years, they might have an edge over Micron in terms of costs.

24Gb DDR5 IC Sampling

Advanced process technologies are particularly useful for complex high-capacity DRAM devices, such as Micron's 24Gb DDR5 IC. The chip, which is being qualified by Micron's partners, is set to be made using Micron's proven 1α node.  

Usage of 24Gb memory chips instead of 16Gb devices could increase memory module capacity by 50% without increasing the number of ICs per module. For mainstream and ultra-dense servers servers, that means 48GB, 96GB, 192GB or 384GB modules. Also, Micron could produce 24GB and 48GB DDR5 modules for client applications. 

DDR5 ramp in servers will only begin when AMD and Intel start to roll out their next-generation EPYC and Xeon Scalable processors with DDR5 support. Meanwhile, Micron expects server DDR5 bit shipments to crossover with DDR4 in mid-calendar 2024.

CapEx Reduced

As noted, one of the reasons behind the 1β and 1γ delays are CapEx cuts in fiscal 2023 (ends in September, 2023) and 2024 (ends in September, 2024). Micron cut its FY 2023 CapEx  to a range between $7.0 to $7.5 billion, that's down from the $8 billion target the company set several months ago and from $12 billion in FY 2022 (i.e., the CapEx is cut by approximately 40%). The company intends to reduce spending on wafer fab equipment (WFE) by 50% year on year, but construction spending will increase as the company is building up its new fab in Idaho. WFE spending will also be down in FY 2024 compared to what Micron originally planned.

Lay Offs Coming

Since the company expects meagre demand growth for both types of memory it produces — 10% in DRAM and around 20% in NAND — it needs to reduce its operating expenses too. As a result, it plans to reduce headcount by 10% throughout 2023 'through a combination of voluntary attrition and personnel reductions.' 

"For both years, demand in DRAM and NAND is well below historical trends and future expectations of growth, largely due to reductions in end demand in most markets, high inventories at customers, the impact of the macroeconomic environment, and the regional factors in Europe and China," Micron said in its statement.

Balancing Supply and Demand

While the output and cost cutting measures Micron has introduced look drastic, the company believes it needs to balance supply with demand as its profitability and long-term prosperity depends on it.  

"The industry remains in an oversupply situation, but customers are depleting inventories, and we expect them to be in a better position by the second quarter of the calendar year," said Mark Murphy, chief financial officer of Micron (via SeekingAlpha). "But profit is going to be challenged through the year, and that will challenge gross margins." 

"The rate and pace of the recovery in terms of profitability depends on how fast supply is brought into line," Sanjay Mehrotra, chief exec of Micron, told Bloomberg.

Silicon Motion has demonstrated working solid-state drives based on its first platform for SSDs featuring a PCIe 5.0 interface. The SM8366-based drives used different types of memory from other manufacturers, which indicates that SMI is working with all makers of 3D NAND to provide maximum flexibility to its partners. Regarding performance, the SSDs were faster when compared to one competing platform but slower than another.

The demo drive that SMI showcased at the Open Compute Project (OCP) forum offered a sequential read performance of 13.6 GBps and a random read performance of 3.4 million IOPS, according to Storage Review. Regarding sequential speed, SMI's SM8366-based drive was a little slower than Samsung's PM1743 SSD (which offers up to 13.8 GBps) but was a bit ahead of Phison's PS5026-E26-based drive (that offers up to 12.4 GBps when equipped with a good memory).

Silicon Motion's MonTitan SM8366 SSD platform is designed primarily for enterprise-grade SSDs. It features 16 NAND flash channels with a 2400 MTps ONFI/Toggle interface to connect up to 128TB of 3D TLC, 3D QLC, or XL-Flash memory. The controller supports DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800 DRAM buffers with a dual-channel interface and a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface or dual independent x2/x2 or x1/x1 interfaces to connect to host (s). By contrast, Phison's E26 is aimed primarily at high-performance consumer-grade SSDs and features eight NAND channels. While the PS5026-E26 can still serve enterprise-grade drives, consumer drives are its main application.

Silicon Motion has now validated its SM8366 platform with Kioxia's BICS6 3D TLC NAND, Micron's N48R 3D QLC NAND, and Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND memory. In addition, the company offers multiple reference designs for its latest enterprise-oriented SSD controller, including in form factors such as E1.S, E1.L E3.x, and U.2/3. Traditionally SMI's clients can buy a turnkey solution from the company with standard configuration and firmware or can develop their custom solution with their firmware.

Silicon Motion's MonTitan SM8366 SSD platform should be available to early engagement customers this quarter reference hardware design kits with licensable turnkey and layered firmware stacks to enable the development of customer-differentiated solutions. Keeping in mind that many members of the Open Compute Project run their data centers, it is likely that some of them will deploy the first SMI-powered SSDs with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface already in the coming months. Others will wait for drive makers to build SSDs for them.

Silicon Motion will introduce its consumer-oriented controller for PCIe Gen5 drives in 2023.

Ohio-based Folio Photonics has announced its new Active (stylized "ACTIVE") read/write optical disk format. The new discs are claimed to hold 1TB each, and are expected to be packaged in 10-disc caddies. A particular highlight of these optical discs is that they can be produced at a "radical low-cost." Thanks to the use of next-gen materials and efficient production tech, ACTIVE discs cost less than $5 per TB, with a roadmap to $1 per TB.

Despite many people consigning ODD technology into the dustbin of tech history, alongside floppy disks and suchlike, Folio Photonics sounds extremely confident in its new format. Folio Photonics CEO, Steven Santamaria, boasted in a press release that the new ACTIVE discs offer "a fresh approach to optical storage that overcomes historical constraints and puts unheard of cost, cybersecurity and sustainability benefits within reach."

Santamaria’s claims were supported by seasoned IT industry analyst John Monroe, who praised the new optical format and provided some insight regarding the tech behind Active optical discs. While archival discs today employ three layers at the most, Active discs are created with next-gen materials, patented polymer extrusion, and film-based disc construction processes, explained Monroe. The discs work in concert with customized optical pickup units which together facilitate discs with up to 16 film layers per side. Furthermore, Folio Photonics has roadmaps with additional layers added over time, and media costs getting as low as $1 per TB.

Rollout of Active disc technology is expected to begin in 2024, with the 10-disc caddies supporting 10TB. The projected cost of $5 per TB is roughly 5x cheaper than HDD. Continuing with this comparison, HDDs consume up to 80% more power. Thus on two important counts (price per TB and running costs) Active is a clear leader compared to HDD storage. This TCO win should be attractive to enterprises interested in easy access archives.

Folio Photonics claims that the Active discs are created from sustainable materials. Nevertheless, there appears to be little compromise when it comes to the discs' durability as the media is claimed to have a 100 year lifespan, isn't affected by radiation or water, and is resilient to heat, cold and humidity.

The company additionally claims that the Active discs aren't vulnerable to EMP attacks, though HDDs are. Both Active and HDDs are superior to tape archive storage for fast read/write operations. The lack of any claims about the read/write performance of ACTIVE optical discs are conspicuous by their absence. Hopefully some performance details will be showcased ahead of product rollout.

Just like other makers of commodity 3D NAND, Yangtze Memory has been evolving from a manufacturer of flash memory into a vertically integrated producer of solid-state storage solutions. The company started with simplistic SATA SSDs roughly two years ago, then evolved to more advanced PCIe drives, and now it is time for YMTC to enter the most lucrative 3D NAND market — enterprise storage.

YMTC's first enterprise-grade product is the PE310 SSD that comes in a 2.5-inch U.2 form factor featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, using 3D TLC NAND memory, and offering storage capacities of up to 6.4TB for drives aimed at mixed workloads and designed for up to three drive writes per day (DWPD) as well as up to 7.68TB for drives targeted at read-intensive workloads and designed for up to 1 DWPD.

Regarding performance, the drives offer up to 6.2 GBps sequential read speed, up to 4.5 GBps sequential write speed, up to 1 million read IOPS, and up to 380K/190K (mixed workloads/read-intensive workloads) write IOPS. Since Phison's PE310 are enterprise-grade products, stated performance numbers represent sustained, not peak, performance. While the drives are very fast, since they are enterprise-oriented, we will not include them in our list of the best SSDs available today.

Yangtze Memory's 3D TLC NAND memory used for PE310 drives features Xtacking 2.0 architecture. It, therefore, supports a maximum interface data transfer speed of up to 1,600 MT/s, which is in line with what the latest 3D NAND ICs from makers like Samsung and SK Hynix offer.

YMTC does not disclose which controller it uses for its PE310-series products, just like it did not a few months ago. The only thing Yangtze Memory says is that controllers of its PE310-series drive feature LDPC ECC, are compliant with an NVMe protocol, and support AES-256 encryption. In addition, the drives support such functions as power loss protection, advanced eight-level power management, end-to-end data protection (E2EDP), thermal throttle, and so on.

Considering that YMTC intentionally does not disclose almost anything about PE310's controller, including the supported NVMe version or branding of LDPC-based signal processing and ECC technology, the company either ultimately does not want to reveal the off-controller it uses (in 2020, the company teamed up with Phison for client SSDs, but it does not automatically matter that it uses chips from the said vendor on the PE310), uses a highly-customized version of an off-the-shelf controller that has little to do with the initial chip, or uses an in-house developed controller.

Developing an enterprise-grade solid-state drive is complicated as YMTC has to guarantee ultimate reliability, very high endurance, consistent performance, and predictable power consumption under high loads. However, as it turns out, the company has managed to do this. As a result, it will now compete against solutions from other vertically integrated SSD solutions providers, such as Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and Western Digital.

Ampere's Altra processors were developed primarily for cloud service providers, which is why the company pushed systems on their base to customers like Alibaba and Oracle. But as the company is gaining traction, it wants its platforms to be available to a broader audience. To do so, it needs to partner with large server makers, and starting from the third quarter, HPE will offer ProLiant machines powered by Ampere's Altra CPUs with up to 128 cores.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's ProLiant RL Gen11 powered by Ampere's Altra (up to 80 cores) and Altra Max (up to 128 cores) processors is a single-socket 1U machine. They can house up to 4TB of memory using 16 DDR4 memory modules, up to 10 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs, and two M.2 SSDs. In addition, the machine can accommodate three PCIe Gen4 expansion cards and two OCP 3.0 add-in-boards.

Unlike companies like Foxconn or Wiwynn, which aim their Ampere Altra-based machines primarily at cloud services providers, HPE positions its ProLiant RL Gen11 servers for enterprises with cloud native developments. Meanwhile, since the ProLiant RL Gen11 is a server machine designed for enterprises, it comes with HPE's iLO with the company's silicon root of trust capabilities for traditional HPE server management and OpenBMC enabled for open-source deployments. So, the ProLiant RL300 Gen11 is naturally fully supported by HPE.

Still, given the nature of Ampere's Altra CPUs, HPE's ProLiant RL Gen11 is not exactly a competitor for x86 servers from the company (at least not for classic enterprise applications), and the manufacturer expects owners of these machines to run cloud applications tailored for these Arm processors. Ampere claims that its Altra CPUs can offer 2.5 – 3 times the performance of competing systems at half the power; however, this claim is quite general. It depends on actual workloads and has to be verified by independent testing.

HPE will start selling its ProLiant RL300 Gen11 servers based on Ampere's Altra and Altra Max processors beginning Q3 2022. The machines will be available worldwide for purchase or as-a-service through HPE GreenLake. The pricing of the machine is unclear, but it will undoubtedly depend on the exact configuration.

HPE will only offer a single-socket Ampere Altra machine in its ProLiant lineup for scale-out environments. Still, the company implied that eventually, it would also offer machines with a more significant number of CPUs.

One of the first customers to adopt the new machine will be CloudSigma, a cloud IaaS and PaaS provider with advanced hybrid hosting solutions in Europe, The US, APAC, and the Middle East in over 20 locations.

Rumors have swirled for the past week that Broadcom was in talks to purchase VMware. Today, the chip maker confirmed its intentions by announcing that it will acquire VMware for $61 billion in cash and stock. 

This Broadcom-VMware tie-up would be among the largest ever in the tech industry. Dell bought EMC for $67 billion back in 2015. Earlier this year, Microsoft made a $68.7 billion deal to purchase gaming giant Activision Blizzard. The deal values VMware at $142.50 per share, representing a 44 percent premium compared to the closing price on May 20th (the last trading day before news of the impending deal was first reported). 

Broadcom's chips touch nearly every facet of everyday computing. The company produces chips at the heart of storage and wired networking devices. Broadcom is also a critical player in the wireless industry, making Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips used in PCs and mobile devices. It is also deeply embedded in industries that you might not think of, like the automotive sector, which has grown increasingly reliant on advanced chips to power infotainment, autonomous driving and battery management systems (in electric vehicles). Broadcom also has a broad enterprise hardware and software portfolio, the latter of which is why the VMware deal is crucial to the company's future growth. 

VMware specializes in virtualization and cloud computing, which is an incredibly hot market segment in the enterprise world. VMware offers virtualized software solutions supported across all major desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS) and enterprise software solutions for server hardware platforms. Dell spun off VMware, which it acquired in 2015 as part of its EMC transaction, just over a year ago.  

"Building upon our proven track record of successful M&A, this transaction combines our leading semiconductor and infrastructure software businesses with an iconic pioneer and innovator in enterprise software as we reimagine what we can deliver to customers as a leading infrastructure technology company," said Hock Tan, President and CEO for Broadcom. "We look forward to VMware's talented team joining Broadcom, further cultivating a shared culture of innovation and driving even greater value for our combined stakeholders, including both sets of shareholders." 

For his part, VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram added, "Combining our assets and talented team with Broadcom's existing enterprise software portfolio, all housed under the VMware brand, creates a remarkable enterprise software player." 

Broadcom expects that the VMware deal with pass regulatory muster (along with approval from shareholders) and should be completed during its fiscal year 2023.

Huawei's CEO, Yu Chengdong, has taken to QQ ('China's Twitter') to announce that the firm has formed an operational division which translates as the 'Huawei Terminal Business'. Previously, Huawei marketed its PCs solely to fickle consumers, and its PC laptops were developed and launched under the auspices of the 'Huawei Consumer Business.' We first saw some custom Huawei devices emerge back in 2019, powered by the company's Kungpeng 920 Arm v8 processors. Now the 'Huawei Consumer Business' has been folded into the 'Huawei Terminal Business'. However, there is still some clear distinction within the organization, with the 'Huawei Terminal Business' being divided into consumer and commercial wings.

Huawei has already established what appears to be a considerable lineup of business products. The MateBook B models, an enterprise laptop series, are joined by MateStation desktops, MatePad tablets, monitors, smart screens, plus printers and wearables. The reorganization and new products will help Huawei expand into what is already a lucrative segment for it, embracing commercial and governmental organizations, and catering more directly to their needs.

We wondered if the MateBook B series were simple rebrands of existing consumer MateBook laptops. This isn't quite the case, as Huawei seems to have launched a new series of consumer laptops called the MateBook D series, which have a lot in common with the B series, but offered fewer configuration options for the screen sizes we checked. However, it is notable that the new MateBooks, both for business and consumer, feature at best 11th-Gen Intel Core processors, with some still packing 10th-Gen CPUs. It remains to be seen if Huawei will add in devices based on its own Arm chips.

Moving along to ponder over the desktops, these are compact unassuming, and workmanlike designs. There are two models of Huawei MateStation desktop buyers can configure. They differ primarily by processor; one comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 4600G APU, and another with a choice between three 10th Generation Intel Core processors, with the pinnacle being the Core i7-10700. Like the laptops, all have Windows 10 or 11 pre-installed.

Huawei claims the MatePad C5e, a 10.1-inch Android 10 (EMUI 10.1 skin) tablet powered by an octa-core Kirin 710A, is "built for business." However, other than that statement, you might not know it was a business tablet, as there are no particular features or specs that make it stand out from the multitudes of other consumer tablets.

Due to sanctions, Huawei products aren't that easy to buy in the US. However, that didn't stop us from acquiring and reviewing the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2021 a year ago to see what we might be missing out on. Overall, the MateBook X was a laptop with a handsome profile but wasn't really worth hunting down where slim and stylish laptops from the likes of Dell and HP (or Apple) are readily available. The same will likely be true of the new products unless Huawei can work some magic with distribution and pricing.

Solidigm, formerly Intel's SSD business that now belongs to SK Hynix, has introduced its new enterprise-grade PCIe Gen4 SSDs designed for read-intensive and mixed workloads. The new D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 drives are set to be available in capacities of up to 15.36TB and in various server form factors.

As the successor of Intel's SSD division, Solidigm already has a rather competitive lineup of server SSDs, and the new D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 products complement already existing Intel-branded drives. The new SSDs are based on a proprietary controller developed by Solidigm (well, Intel) as well as 3D NAND memory produced in house. The drives fully support contemporary enterprise-grade capabilities and management features (e.g., NVMe-MI 1.1, PCIe over VDM, PCIe over MCTP), including end-to-end data path protection, power loss-safe firmware design, advanced telemetry, and so on.

From performance point of view, Solidigm's D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 drives are rated for up to 7100MB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 4200MB/s sequential write speed. As for random performance, Solidigm's D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 SSDs are rated for up to 1100K/220K read/write IOPS.

Depending on the workload, Solidigm's D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 are 20%–100% faster compared to their predecessors, according to the manufacturer.

Solidigm's D7-P5520 SSD is rated for up to 1 DWPD (drive writes per day) over five years and will be available in U.2, E1.S, and E1.L form factors with capacities up to 15.36TB. The D7-P5620 meanwhile is designed for more write intensive workloads and is rated for 3 DWPD over five years and is set to ship in a 2.5-inch/15mm U.2 form factor.

Since the D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 are designed for servers, they are rigorously tested to ensure reliability, predictable performance, and longevity. Solidigm has not announced pricing of its D7-P5520 and D7-P5620 drives, which is not particularly surprising as they will be sold to server makers and their actual prices will depend on the volumes ordered.

AMD is preparing for a new swath of business notebooks. The company today announced its new Ryzen Pro 6000 series processors, which use Zen 3+ cores and integrated RDNA 2 graphics. The company is also keeping some older Ryzen Pro 5000 chips around.

There are six Ryzen Pro 6000 H-series chips, ranging from the six-core/12-thread Ryzen 6 Pro 6650H and 6650HS up to the Ryzen 9 Pro 6950H and 6950HS. There are two U-series processors, the Ryzen 5 Pro 6650U and the Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U.

To demonstrate performance, AMD provided information about its U-series processors. It claims that at 15W, the 6850U offers 1.1x the CPU performance of the last-gen 5850U, while at 28W, it delivers a 1.3x increase. On the GPU side, it's a 1.5x and 2.1x increase, respectively.

AMD also compared its chips with Intel, putting a Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 with a Ryzen 7 Pro 6860Z (an exclusive chip for that system, not listed in the chart above), 32GB of LPPDR5-6400 RAM and a 1TB SSD against a ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a Core i7-1260P, 16GB of LPDDR5-5500 RAM and a 1TB SSD. There, AMD claims approximately 25% faster multi-thread performance in Cinebench R23, roughly 50% better scores in Passmark 10, as well as faster graphics in 3DMark Time Spy. Single-core Cinebench scores were worse than the Intel chip. In a test that ran a Teams video call while also using the UL Procyon Office productivity benchmarks, AMD claimed it was up to 17% faster. 

AMD is making bombastic battery life claims, and suggests the Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U can run video playback for 29 hours in an unnamed laptop with a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U processor with the display set to 150 nits. AMD claims an HP EliteBook 865 G9 with a 6850U and a 76 WHr battery ran for over 26 hours on the MobileMark 2018 battery life test.

These chips will be in laptops like the upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 and Z16, which will have an exclusive Ryzen 7 Pro 6860Z, as well as the upcoming HP EliteBook G9 which will come in 13, 14 and 16-inch sizes. The company announced that another ThinkBook and ThinkPads from Lenovo and ProBooks and EliteBooks from HP will also carry the new Ryzen 6000 and 5000 series chips. Other laptop manufacturers will also have options this year, I'm told, but no specific models were announced.

Those systems are expected to start launching sometime in Q2 of 2022.

News has emerged of 23 new vulnerabilities that are particularly nefarious because the UEFI/BIOS-based attacks bypass security mechanisms and persist after drive formats and system re-installations, and attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities remotely. Security experts at Binarly have discovered 23 high-impact vulnerabilities hiding in BIOS/UEFI software from a multitude of system vendors, including Intel, Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, HPE, Siemens, and Bull Atos (via Bleeping Computer). These vulnerabilities include SMM Callout or Privilege Escalation, SMM Memory Corruption, and DXE Memory corruption. 

Last week found news emerged of the MoonBounce malware that hides in your BIOS chip, but Binarly's disclosure indicates a wide range of UEFI vulnerabilities that can be used as a springboard to install malware, or even new infected firmware images. 

The impact of these vulnerabilities is severe because they can be used by attackers to bypass security features such as Secure Boot, Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), and even Trusted Platform Modules (TPM). The vulnerabilities exist in the UEFI but also allow malware to be installed on the system and will survive operating system reinstallations, making the malware nearly undetectable and indestructible.

Binarly found the issue causing all these vulnerabilities were associated with InsydeH20, a firmware framework code used to build motherboard BIOS's/UEFI's. All the appropriate vendors were using Insyde's firmware SDK for motherboard development.

The investigation began when Binarly discovered several repeatable anomalies on twenty different enterprise machines, from Fujitsu and its Lifebook laptops. However, once Binarly delved deeper into the problem, it discovered that a lot more OEMs were also having the same problems.

After discovering the issues, Binarly immediately reported the problems to the CERT/CC, a Vulnerability Notes Database that provides detail about software vulnerabilities. Together, both the CERT/CC and Binarly were able to contact all 25 impacted vendors.

If you're worried about infection, there will be a way you can check and see if your computer is infected with these exploits. Binarly developed a piece of software called FwHunt that can detect vulnerable code patterns. But for now, the rules remain hidden and will be revealed through GitHub once the vulnerability advisory becomes public.

As for a real fix, we don't have a set date on official firmware patches. However, Binarly notes that using the VINCE platform for communicating with multiple vendors/parties allows them to reduce the security fix timeline down to 5 months. That means we can expect official firmware updates to happen around the second half of 2022.

Samsung new PM1743 drives are its first enterprise-grade SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface. The PM1743 drives promise to offer extreme sequential and random performance, robust security capabilities, reduced power consumption, and capacities of up to 15.36TB. Samsung intends to start mass production of PM1743 drives in Q1 2022, which indicates that the company aims to be among the first to offer SSDs for Intel's upcoming Xeon Scalable 'Sapphire Rapids' platform. Samsung have also said that PCIe 6.0 SSDs are in development. 

"Intel has been working with Samsung to test Samsung's newest PCIe NVMe SSD, the PM1743," said Jim Pappas, Director, Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "Together, we have jointly resolved complicated technical issues encountered with PCIe 5.0 during this initial evaluation period. The performance potential of Gen5 is truly impressive. In the near future, we strongly believe that PCIe Gen5 systems with high-speed NVMe SSDs will have the ability to transform applications such as AI/ML and high-performance databases."

Samsung's PM1743 SSDs will be based on the company's next-generation proprietary controller supporting PCIe Gen5 interface as well as the company's 'next-generation' V-NAND memory. Though the manufacturer does not specify whether 'next-generation' means 7th Gen V-NAND with 176 layers or 6th Gen V-NAND with 128 layers, earlier this year it indicated that the drives will stick to the latter (see table below).

Samsung rates the new PM1743 drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface for up to 13 GB/s sustained sequential read speed as well as up to 6.6 GB/s sustained sequential write speed, which is 1.9 times faster compared to Samsung's existing PM1733 drives. As for random performance, Samsung claims that the new SSDs are capable of 2.5M random reads as well as 250K random writes, up 1.7x – 1.9x compared to the predecessor. The manufacturer also says that the PM1743 drives have a 'power efficiency of up to 608 MB/s per watt', which roughly translates to a 21.4W peak power consumption.  

Being aimed at enterprises, Samsung's PM1743 SSDs will be available in a traditional 2.5-inch / 15mm with dual-port support as well as in a new-generation E3.S (76 × 112.75 × 7.5mm) form-factor. Capacities of the new drives will range from 1.92TB to 15.36TB.

To improve security of the drive, Samsung's PM1743 come with an embedded security processor and Root of Trust (RoT) capability, though it is unclear whether both are integrated into the controller, or are enabled by a separate chip and firmware enhancements. 

Samsung's PM1743 SSDs are currently sampling with select customers and will enter mass production in Q1 2022 in a bid to be available widely in the second quarter, in time for the first Intel Xeon Scalable 'Sapphire Rapids'-based servers.  

Just as mainstream computers begin adopting PCIe Gen 5 support, FADU Technology has announced its first-ever PCIe Gen 5 SSD and SSD controller designs. According to GlobeNewswire, these SSDs will target 14.6 GB/s of performance, consume less power, and will be designed specifically for the cloud and data center market. 

FADU's preliminary specification for its Gen 5 SSD includes sequential write speeds of up to 10.4 GB/s, and sequential read speeds of up to 14.6GB/s, all while consuming less than 5.2W of power. It also delivers up to 3.5 million random read IOPS and 734,000 random write IOPS.

The new SSDs will operate on a PCIe Gen 5 interface with four lanes of connectivity and feature the NVMe 1.4+ protocol along with OCP Cloud Spec 2.0. SSD form factors.

While we don't have signs of a consumer variant just yet, it's good to know that Gen 5 SSDs are being built right now. So we can expect that technology to trickle down to the consumer market. This is especially important, considering we already have our first consumer-based platform that supports Gen 5 SSDs, in the form of Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs and Z690 motherboards. For now, there are no Gen 5 products on the market making PCIe Gen 5 support largely useless for everybody until Gen 5 products start coming online.

These SSDs are poised to launch in late 2022.

Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 Insider preview build to the Dev and Beta channels. Build 22000.168 adds a couple of new features to the operating system, including a new widget for Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Store updates and several bug fixes.

The new Microsoft 365 widget is the highlight of this update and features relevant updates from your Office 365 apps, like recently used documents, news and meeting recordings, all from the widgets page on Windows 11. The goal is to get you relevant information quickly, without the need to browse through loads of documents or other data. The app is currently limited to documents, news and meetings, but Microsoft promises it'll be much more functional down the road as more updates come.  

The only major downside is its exclusivity to enterprise users. You are required to log into a Azure Active Directory (ADD) account to use the widget. Microsoft has not detailed whether or not this widget will be available to Microsoft account owners in the future.

Microsoft has also added support for multiple languages in Microsoft Team's Chat app. The list is very extensive with over 50 languages now supported.

For Dev channel users the Microsoft Store has received a new update that overhauls the entire Library UI with simpler navigation and snappier performance. Plus, there's an update to the Spotlight design for promoted products on the homepage that allows you to get a sneak peak of what's inside.

Microsoft promises to roll out the Store update to the Beta channel once it confirms there are no major bugs preventing a Beta channel release.

Several bug fixes have also been addressed in this update including the following:

• Search: Pens can now launch apps from the search results page.
• Settings: Typing certain phrases into the search box will no longer crash the Settings app.
• Widgets: The family widget should no longer unexpectedly give you a message saying ‘connect a device to see screen time activity’ despite there being available activity to display.
• Chat From Microsoft Teams: An issue has been fixed where video playback would freeze or black screen during a video call. And switching between calls should no longer put the previous call on hold automatically.

Western Digital managed to increase sales of its hard drives by over $539 million last quarter as its total HDD capacity increased by roughly 34% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). Western Digital's results were driven by the success of its 18TB HDDs among operators of cloud datacenters and enterprises. Furthermore, Chia crypto farmers also played a noticeable role in sales of high-capacity hard drives, though the company says those $200 million in HDD sales destined to Chia miners during the quarter didn't play a pivotal role. 

"We saw incremental demand due to the emergence of Chia, our standout performance this quarter was primarily attributable to increasing demand from our cloud customers and the beginning of a recovery in enterprise demand," said David Goeckeler, CEO of Western Digital, during the company's earnings call with investors and financial analysts (as per SeekingAlpha). […] There was also increased demand for hard drives due to proof-of-space crypto currencies such as Chia […]. We believe proof-of-space crypto currency presents a great opportunity for us in the industry, but we are closely monitoring the sustainability of demand. 

HDD makers and market observers say that the majority of consumer Chia miners use secondhand hard drives for Chia farming. Meanwhile, those who want to farm cryptocurrency professionally actually buy high-capacity enterprise-grade HDDs, which is why prices of such drives remain high. According to Western Digital, it sold about $200 million worth of HDDs for Chia during the quarter, which is pretty significant as sales of the company's hard drive division totaled $2.501 billion in Q4 FY2021. 

"Chia was, maybe one way to think about that, it was hitting us kind of right where we were on the call was, I think the first week of it last quarter, probably a couple $100 million of upside there in the quarter due to Chia," said Goeckeler. 

Western Digital sold 25.7 million hard drives in its Q4 FY2021 (which is generally Q2 CY2021), up from 23.2 million in Q3 FY2021 (Q1 2021) and up from 23.1 million in Q4 FY2020 (Q2 2020). 

Shipments of HDDs for client PCs decreased to 9 million, supplies of hard drives for non-compute applications, increased to 8.7 million, but what stands out is that unit sales of Western Digital's datacenter drives increased 7.7 million, by 2 million sequentially and by 0.9 million annually. 7.7 million is the highest number of server-grade HDDs that the company has sold in about a year.

The total capacity of Western Digital's enterprise HDDs shipped in Q2 2021 was 104EB (a 49% increase sequentially), which means that their average capacity was about 13.5TB per unit. Western Digital says that 18TB SKUs enabled about half of the enterprise HDD capacity it sold during the quarter.  

According to the latest report from Taiwanese analyst firm, TrendForce, the prices of enterprise-grade solid-state drives (SSDs) are likely to experience a price hike in Q321. As the report suggests, we could experience as much as a 15% increase in pricing for those SSDs.

Server shipments are expected to start a massive growth with the arrival of next-generation server platforms coming from the two largest processor suppliers: Intel and AMD. Given that these new platforms are often equipped with fast storage, enterprise SSDs represent the choice of storage solutions that go into these systems.

As the pandemic is slowing down, TrendForce predicts that the return to offices will drive IT spending further than ever, and storage will become one of the primary spending areas for IT departments. Intel is set to launch its Ice Lake Xeon processors, while AMD will launch its EPYC Milan line-up of server models, both are all going to drive a massive increase in server shipments. 

Global SSD production capacity will undergo a 7% QoQ increase, followed by huge demand. As supply fails to deliver the demand, price adjustment of 15% upwards will follow. Reportedly, Chinese hyperscalers Alibaba and ByteDance will increase their spending on IT equipment, which will drive enterprise SSD demand even further.

All of this adds up to enterprise SSD prices soaring upwards in the third quarter, however, a balance is expected to be seen in the fourth and final quarter of 2021. As the demand for server shipments slows down in Q4, so will the demand for enterprise SSD, and the increased pricing will adjust back to its normal fluctuations that we are witnessing as of writing this article. What that means for the future, we don't know. So far we can only look at a limited period ahead.

As far as new technology adoption in the enterprise area is concerned, TrendForce predicts that the adoption of PCIe 5.0 and CXL (Compute Express Link) from Intel Eagle Stream and AMD Genoa CPUs will drive the enterprise SSD demand further once these processors launch. Big memory makers like Micron are already in the development phase of CXL-enabled storage products, meaning that everyone expects the demand for these new technologies to be quite high. 

The next few quarters will represent a rollercoaster of prices for enterprise SSDs, with suppliers having to " jostle for market share by leveraging their respective unique competitive advantages", as the report notes.

Samsung has published some preliminary details about its enterprise-grade SSDs featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. The drives will be available in an E3.S 1T form-factor within a year, just in time for the first PCIe 5.0-supporting enterprise platforms, like AMD's EPYC Genoa and Intel's Sapphire Rapids, to hit the market. 

Samsung's PM1743 solid-state drive will be based on the company's proprietary controller as well as 6th Generation TLC V-NAND memory, reports ServeTheHome. The SSD is rated for up to one drive writes per day (1 DWPD) and is designed for mixed workloads.

The Samsung PM1743 drive will feature a PCIe Gen 5 x4 (single-port) or dual x2 (dual-port) interface and will come in an E3.S 1T form-factor (111.5 mm × 31.5 mm (L×W) designed to increase storage density in a server. There is no word about performance of the PM1743, but theoretical peak throughput for a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface is about 15.7 GB/s.

In any case, the PM1743 should be faster than the PM9A3, which is designed for data center applications and which is one of Samsung's fastest PCIe 4.04 x4 SSDs. It offers up to 6800 MBps sequential read speed. As for power consumption, an E3.S 1T drive can consume up to 25W of power. 

Nowadays, most SSDs designed for enterprise and mission-critical applications (including those from Samsung) come in a 2.5-inch form-factor with a SAS or U.2 interface. Meanwhile, some drives also come in an add-in-card form-factor and use a PCIe 3.0/4.0 x8 interface. With an EDSFF E3 form-factor, Samsung and other makers of SSDs will be able to increase the capacity of their drives and enable higher storage density of next-generation servers running AMD's Genoa and Intel's Sapphire Rapids processors.

It is noteworthy that Samsung plans to use its 7th Generation 176-layer V-NAND memory for its PCIe Gen 5 SSDs designed for client PCs, but no announcements have been made about availability.

Gigabyte has introduced its fastest and highest-performing SSD to date. The Aorus Xtreme Gen 4 AIC drive is aimed at enthusiast-grade workstations, but with up to 32TB of capacity and 28GB/s of sequential read speed, it is actually faster than many server-grade SSDs. Naturally, you'll need an ultra-high-end processor to take advantage of this drive. 

The Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme Gen 4 AIC is a full-length full-height (FLFH) card with a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface that can carry up to eight Aorus Gen4 7000s M.2-2280 drives that can be configured to run in various RAID modes. In addition, the board has 10 temperature sensors to monitor the temperatures of the drives, which are cooled down using a relatively large aluminum heatsink equipped with two fans to guarantee they don't throttle. 

Gigabyte's Aorus Gen4 7000s SSDs are already very fast. These drives are based on Phison's latest PS5018-E18 controller (three Arm Cortex-R5 cores, NVMe 1.4, eight NAND channels) paired with 96-layer 3D TLC NAND memory featuring a 1200 MT/s data transfer rate as well as DDR4 SDRAM cache.

Stacking multiple drives in RAID 0 mode (enabled with a single click in Gigabyte's SSD Tool Box), they provide up to 28GB/s of sequential write speed and up to 26.6GB/s of sequential read speed. RAID 0 naturally does not really improve IOPS, but since this is a client SSD, it is unlikely that its real-world performance will ever be constrained by random read/write speeds.

This is not the first high-end SSD by Gigabyte that uses multiple M.2 drives to offer unbeatable capacity and performance. Still, previously the company's SSDs couldn't hit the limits of the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. 

Meanwhile, it goes without saying that Gigabyte's Aorus Xtreme Gen 4 AIC is aimed at high-end desktops that have plenty of spare PCIe 4.0 lanes and PCIe 4.0 x16 slots. In fact, to take full advantage of this drive, you'll need to install it into a machine equipped with AMD's Epyc or Ryzen Threadripper, or Intel's Xeon Scalable 'Ice Lake-SP.' This is because regular high-performance desktops usually have only one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot for graphics cards, and there aren't many systems that need a high-performance SSD but not a high-performance graphics card.

It is noteworthy that Gigabyte's Aorus Gen4 7000s family only includes drives featuring 1TB and 2TB capacities (and two different versions of heatsinks). Still, the company will offer 4TB drives with its Aorus Xtreme Gen 4 AIC to hit capacities of up to 32TB.  

Gigabyte has not announced the pricing of its Aorus Xtreme Gen 4 AIC, but a fully populated card with 32TB of flash will obviously cost thousands of dollars. 

Unit shipments of hard drives in the first quarter of 2021 were down both sequentially and year-over-year as consumer devices continued their migration to SSDs. Still, HDD capacity sold during the quarter set a new record of 288 exabytes as hyperscalers and enterprises upgraded their storage capabilities. Seagate remained the world's largest maker of hard drives in terms of units and exabytes (EB) shipped. 

Nearly 60% of New PCs Use SSDs

The industry shipped as many as 83.981 million PCs in Q1 2021, according to IDC. Meanwhile, only about 34.97 million hard drives for consumer PCs were sold last quarter (based on data from Trendfocus), so nearly 60% of personal computers shipped in Q1 used SSDs. This is not particularly surprising as many modern notebooks cannot house a hard drive. In contrast, enthusiast and workstation-grade desktops use SSDs because HDDs are rather slow for modern workloads by today's standards. 

The industry shipped 14.79 million hard drives for desktops (down 23% quarter-over-quarter) and 20.18 million drives for laptops (down 31.4% QoQ) in Q1, according to Trendfocus. The average capacity of an HDD for a client PC in the first quarter was 1.82TB (2.13TB for desktops, 1.58TB for notebooks), so most computers used rather inexpensive hard drives.

64 Million HDDs Sold in Q1

Hard disk drive shipments in the first quarter of 2021 totaled 64.17 million units, according to Trendfocus (via StorageNewsletter). Coughlin Associates (via Forbes) estimates that the hard drive TAM (total addressable market) in Q1 2021 was 64.1 million units, down from 67.8 million in Q1 2020. Meanwhile, Nidec believes that the industry sold 63 million units in the first quarter, up from 59 million units in the same quarter a year ago. 

Seagate retained its position as the world's leading maker of HDDs, with about 27.54 million HDDs sold in the first quarter and 42.9% of the market. Western Digital shipped 23.09 million drives and commanded 36% of the market. Toshiba was the distant No. 3 with 13.54 million HDDs supplied and 21.1% of the market. 

Seagate also led in average HDD capacity (5.07TB per drive) and exabytes shipments (139.5EB) in Q1 2021. In contrast, the average capacity of a Western Digital hard drive in Q1 was 4.72TB, and the company shipped 109.04EB of hard drive storage devices. 

Since the remaining three HDD makers don't disclose their detailed unit shipments, the numbers published by analysts are basically educated guesses. Meanwhile, the first quarter of 2021 did not bring many surprises as far as sales of hard disk drives are concerned, so the sales numbers and market shares should be quite accurate.

288 EB ~ 303 EB Shipped in Q1

The general trend for the hard drive market was set several years ago: HDD unit sales are declining while exabyte shipments are growing. Nothing changed in Q1 2021. Trendfocus believes that the total capacity of HDDs shipped by the industry was 288.28EB. By contrast, Coughlin Associates estimates that HDDs sold in Q1 2021 can store 303.34EB of data, up from 278.03 in Q1 2020. 

The lion's share of exabyte shipments belongs to 3.5-inch hard disk drives for servers, enterprise, nearline, and surveillance applications. About 16.05 million of such drives were sold in the first quarter, but with an average capacity of 12TB, they can store 192.78EB, thus commanding 66% of exabytes shipments in Q1 2021.

Console HDDs Are Dropping, DAS Remains Strong

Consumer electronics HDDs are a rather large category of storage devices for applications like game consoles, direct-attached storage (DAS), digital video recorders (DVRs), and similar things. Shipments of CE HDDs in Q1 2021 totaled 9.95 million units, according to both Trendfocus and Coughlin Associates. Meanwhile, the industry shipped 14.4 million CE hard drives in Q1 2020, based on data from CA. 

Since the latest game consoles from Microsoft and Sony no longer use HDDs, it is not surprising that shipments of hard drives for consumer electronics dropped significantly — by 31% — year-over-year.  

In fact, manufacturers shipped only 2.53 million 2.5-inch CE HDDs with an average capacity of 0.72 TB per unit in Q1 2021. The vast majority of 2.5-inch CE HDDs have been used for game consoles and branded external drives for years. So, as production of previous-generation gaming systems from Microsoft and Sony is winding down, shipments of 2.5-inchers will decline further. 

By contrast, sales of 3.5-inch CE HDDs remain strong. Trendfocus says about 7.42 million of these drives shipped during the quarter. An average capacity of a 3.5-inch CE hard drive was about 3.47TB, which indicates that most of them were used for various demanding applications, such as DAS. Branded DAS with high-capacity HDDs inside seems to be a pretty successful business for HDD makers as many people buy direct-attached storage for their PCs that come with SSDs (which do not always feature enough capacity for things like media).

Enterprise HDDs Booming

Enterprise HDDs have been the one bright spot in recent years. The enterprise-grade HDD category includes various drives for a wide variety of applications, including servers (both cloud and on-premise), enterprise NAS, nearline, and surveillance. In total, 19.25 million such HDDs were shipped in Q1 2021, according to Trendfocus. 

Surprisingly, despite general trends, shipments of 2.5-inch enterprise-grade HDDs (which includes legacy 10,000/15,000 RPM drives) totaled 3.2 million units, up both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. The average capacity of these HDDs was 1.37TB, so some legacy datacenters probably upgraded their capacities or just replaced old drives during the quarter. 

Sales of 3.5-inch enterprise-grade HDDs exceeded 16 million units and increased sequentially and annually in the first quarter. Enterprise-class 3.5-inchers shipped by the industry in Q1 could store 192.78EB of data, and their average capacity now slightly exceeds 12TB.  

Meanwhile, sales of nearline HDDs for exascalers like AWS and Microsoft Azure are booming. Seagate says that hard drives with 16TB and higher capacities (i.e., 16TB, 18TB, and 20TB) contributed nearly 50% of its capacity shipments during the quarter (139.5EB), which equals nearly 70EB.

Summary

 The HDD market in Q1 2021 brought no surprises and was consistent with trends set in the last five years or so.  

Mainstream client PCs are on track to replace HDDs with SSDs, but at the same time, people are buying more DAS, NAS, and cloud storage. To that end, shipments of client HDDs are declining, whereas sales of hard drives for other applications are growing. 

Enterprise-grade 3.5-inch HDDs are thriving. Now that data is generated not only by users but by computers themselves (in various forms), demand for storage will only grow and 288EB ~ 303EB of HDD storage shipped in Q1 2021 will increase rather rapidly in the coming quarters. 

Another emerging driver for HDD demand is of course Chia Coin cryptocurrency. At press time (on May 8), storage space allocated to the Chia network was nearing 3 exabytes, increasing three times from about 1 exabyte at the end of April. From the general market point of view, that is slightly over 1% of exabytes shipped in Q1, but it is already hard to acquire a high-capacity HDD at retail. What is going to happen next and whether Chia is set to become a factor that will cause a global shortage of hard drives is something that remains to be seen, but signs are not good for general users.

Intel and Microsoft are collaborating on a new project to help enterprise and small business customers avoid security issues that may involve others using PCs on your network to mine cryptocurrencies, known as cryptojacking.

The protection will be built into Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on systems using 6th Gen or later Intel vPro and Intel Core processors. Specifically, it uses Intel Threat Detection Technology, or TDT to take advantage of the CPU for machine learning to detect cryptomining.

In a press release, Intel stated that the rise of cryptocurrencies in the mainstream and their increase in value means that "cybercriminals [will] shift their focus from ransomware to cryptojacking." Intel claims that there was a 53% increase in mining malware attacks in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the quarter before it.

Cryptojacking, just like normal cryptomining, weighs heavily on a computer's resources and sends the crypto back to a wallet. This could drastically slow a computer. Intel suggests some cryptojackers can also spread over a network, where large businesses could have hundreds or thousands of devices.

Intel's TDT technology will use its machine learning and telemetry to "fingerprint" the suspicious activities, some of which it can offload to the integrated GPU. The cryptojacking threats will appear in Windows Defender to people using their devices, just like any other threat.

In a separate release, Microsoft's Karthik Selvaraj, principal research manager on the Microsoft 365 Defender research team wrote that "[e]ven though we have enabled this technology specifically for cryptocurrency mining, it expands the horizons for detecting more aggressive threats like side-channel attacks and ransomware."

At the moment, this appears to only be available on 6th Gen or later Intel vPro (and some Core) platforms running Microsoft's enterprise security suite. It's unclear if there are plans to further expand the program to general users or other silicon.

Just when you thought PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD's were fast with up to 8 GB/s of sequential read speed, PCIe 5.0 drives have emerged on the horizon that could come with up to 16 GB/s speeds.

Silicon Motion said this week that it would start sampling its enterprise-grade SSD controllers with a PCIe Gen 5.0 interface in the second half of next year, which means that they will debut commercially in 2022. This is one of the first times that an SSD controller maker has mentioned a chip with a PCIe 5.0 interface, and even though the controller will debut in the server space, models for consumers will inevitably follow.   

No Rush for PCIe 5.0 SSDs?

The PCIe 5.0 interface will increase data transfer speeds to 32 GT/s per lane, which will increase the total bandwidth provided by a PCIe x16 slot to ~64 GB/s, whereas a PCIe x4 slot can transfer up to ~16 GB/s. 

Increased transfer rates will be particularly beneficial for various bandwidth-hungry applications, like servers, high-end storage subsystems, and accelerators. Using the PCIe Gen 5 physical layer, various next-gen platforms will also support CXL and Gen-Z protocols designed specifically to connect CPUs with various accelerators and maintain memory and cache coherency at low latencies. 

The first platforms to support a PCIe 5.0 interface are Intel's 12th-Gen Alder Lake CPUs for client PCs, which are expected to debut in the second half of 2021, as well as the company's 4th Generation Xeon Scalable 'Sapphire Rapids' for data centers and supercomputers that is projected to launch in early 2022. In addition to PCIe 5.0, Sapphire Rapids will also support the CXL 1.1 protocol. 

So far, several companies have already announced the availability of PCIe 5.0 controllers and PHY IP, and some have demonstrated interoperability of their CXL-enabled PCIe 5.0 solutions with Intel's Sapphire Rapids or verification equipment, whereas Microchip even announced its PCIe 5.0 retimers and switches. 

However, as numerous developers of SSD controllers and platforms introduced their PCIe 4.0 platforms for servers in the second half of last year, including Kioxia, Microchip, Silicon Motion, SK Hynix, it doesn't seem like they will roll out any new enterprise-grade solutions in the foreseeable future. Of course, some companies tend to introduce next-gen SSDs ahead of competitors, but it does not look like there will be too many PCIe 5.0-supporting enterprise drives available next year, so SMI will be on time with its PCIe Gen 5 controller.

The PCIe Gen 5 specification was finalized in mid-2019, around the same time when the first PCIe 4.0-supporting platforms, SSDs, and GPUs were launched. Back then, some thought that the PCIe 4.0 interface will have a short lifespan (because PCIe 5.0 was 'already there') and will not become truly popular particularly in the data center space, as back then, the only server platform to feature PCIe 4.0 lanes was AMD's EPYC 7002-series 'Rome' that was not truly popular at the time. As it turns out, while PCIe 5.0 will debut later this year, it does not look that it will immediately replace PCIe 4.0.

SMI Mentions First PCIe 5.0 SSD Controller

"With our new PCIe Gen5 enterprise SSD controllers sampling in the second half of next year, we are not expecting our enterprise SSD controller to be a material contributor to our $1 billion sales objective," said Wallace Kuo, chief executive of Silicon Motion, during a conference call with analysts and investors (via The Motley Fool). "We are planning on material enterprise SSD controller sales contribution only after 2023." 

Silicon Motion is a newbie on the market of enterprise SSD controllers. The company first entered China's enterprise SSD market in 2015 after acquiring Shannon Systems, a supplier of enterprise-grade PCIe SSD and storage arrays to Chinese hyperscalers. So far, SMI's enterprise SSD business has not really taken off and represents a fraction of its revenue. Still, the company clearly wants to be a part of the datacenter megatrend, so it will continue to invest in enterprise storage solutions.  

"We are excited about enterprise-grade PCIe Gen5 controller, which we will have taped out early next year and sample in the second half of 2022," said Kou. "We believe this will bring us a big momentum in coming to enterprise." 

The chief executive of Silicon Motion naturally did not touch upon technical specifications of the company's upcoming PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD controller, but its latest SM8266 SoC supports NVMe 1.4, three dual-core Arm Cortex-R5 complexes, 16 NAND channels, and configurable LDPC ECC.

While we were just getting used to 96-Layer flash becoming commonplace and over 100-Layer flash from Samsung and SK hynix is just starting to enter the market, Micron announced its next-generation 176-layer replacement gate flash is now in volume production and shipping, setting a new high for layer counts.

Micron’s fifth-generation 3D TLC flash not only scales higher than its closest competitor’s offerings, but the company claims its flash is also faster and offers the highest bit density yet.

Micron has shipped multiple generations of floating gate flash, but now that is has split with Intel on the manufacturing front, the company is doubling down on its second iteration of charge trap technology. Micron pairs that technique with its replacement gate (RG) tech, which uses highly-conductive metal wordlines instead of a silicon layer, for its next generations of flash.

Before this, Western Digital’s/Kioxia’s 112L, Samsung’s 1xxL, and SK hynix’s 128L TLC broke the 100-layer barrier, but none have scaled quite as high as Micron's new flash. The relatively new replacement gate architecture offers up improved speed, endurance, and efficiency with 176 layers.

Micron stacks two 88-layer decks to attain such heights, similar to how it has done so with past nodes; however, that doesn’t mean its physical height has increased. Surprisingly, while the replacement gate flash scales to new heights at almost triple the layer count of the company’s older 64-Layer (64L) floating gate flash, it has the same height – just one fifth the thickness of a piece of paper, which is roughly 45 μm (microns) thick after wafer thinning.

Micron’s previous-gen 96L and 128L flash could only operate at up to 1,200 MTps, but its new 176L flash is faster, reaching up to 1,600 MTps over the ONFI interface. This leads to a 35% improvement to read and write latency over the company’s floating gate 96L TLC, and it is 25% faster than its 128L replacement gate TLC. The company also noted a 15% increase in mixed performance over its 96L UFS 3.1 modules.  

Yes, we have noticed the lack of 128L RG products in the market, but the company says it was simply a transitory node and that the new second-gen replacement gate NAND will have a much faster pace to market. As such, the company is banking on its new 176L NAND for a better return on investment.

“Micron’s 176-layer NAND sets a new bar for the industry, with a layer count that is almost 40% higher than our nearest competitor’s,” said Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of technology and products at Micron. “Combined with Micron’s CMOS-under-array architecture, this technology sustains Micron’s industry cost leadership.”

As a matter of fact, the new flash is shipping in Crucial products now. The company didn’t specify which models, but Crucial’s P5 looks like a prime candidate for the update based on our review samples’ results. Retail consumer products aren’t the only target market for the company’s new flash. The company markets the flash for the 5G and data center markets, with the latter to accelerate AI and big data analytics.

The new flash is shipping in volume with 512Gb die capacities and NAND packages stacked with as many as 16 dies per package. Perhaps most astonishing, not only does Micron’s flash have the highest layer count in the business, but thanks to the company’s CuA techniques, it also boasts the greatest bit density. Micron notes that its new 176L replacement gate flash offers a 30% smaller die size compared to the industry’s best in class, which we believe refers to SK hynix’s 128L TLC.  

Businesses looking for an extremely durable desktop have a new and intriguing option in Asus's ExpertCenter D700SA. Arriving at an undisclosed date with a starting price of $699, this small form factor desktop features enterprise-grade TPM 2.0 security and meets MIL-STD 810G durability standards. Asus doesn't say specifically which tests it passed, but the  MIL-STD standards usually require some protection against shocks, vibrations and extreme temperatures.

The D700SA runs on the new six-core 12 threaded Intel Core i5-10400 CPU with a 65W TDP. The CPU is a solid upgrade over previous-gen Core i5-9400s which are widely used in small form factor workstations. The unit also comes with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD.

One of the best selling points of this SFF unit is its upgradability. The chassis features a tool-free design allowing you to open up the system without needing a screwdriver. Once inside you can access 4 DIMM slots (maxing out at 128GB capacity), 3.5" and 2.5 HDD mounts, and all the motherboards PCI-E expansion slots. 

The Asus D700SA features three M.2 storage slots, two for storage and one for Wi-Fi, two PCI-E 3.0 x1 slots, 1 standard PCI slot, and finally one PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot. This is great if you need to install a low profile graphics card for extra monitors/rendering or some gaming.

The Asus ExpertCenter D700SA's I/O is extensive, featuring 11 USB ports in all. Six of them are USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, plus one type-C, and the rest are USB 2.0 ports. For video, you have one HDMI 1.4 port, one VGA port, and one Display Port. For audio, you have three audio jacks, 3.5mm one combo audio jack, and one headphone jack. 

Plus you get two old school PS2 connectors if you need to hook up outdated peripherals (all the best mechanical keyboards now use USB). If you need wireless support the D700SA supports WiFi 6 and dual-band Bluetooth 5.0. Plus an RJ-45 ethernet jack. On top of that all, it includes an 8x S-M DL optical drive which can be desirable in the workspace for running older software that needs to be installed via CD/DVD.

This is one of the best solutions out there for a workstation PC, it's very rare to find an SFF unit which has the upgradability and connectivity of a DIY computer, all at the price of $699.99. Asus says the D700SA is coming soon with no arrival date revealed at this time.

DDR5 has been in the works for quite some time now. JEDEC published the preliminary spec sheet back in April, and in March Samsung announced its 2021 mass production plans. Now, SK hynix has come around to tell us that it is launching the first DDR5 modules -- a world first.

Of course, as there is no consumer platform to use these on, for the time being these modules are built for use in enterprise applications: supercomputers built for AI, machine learning, and big data. The modules run at a speeds between 4800 MHz and 5600 MHz, making them seriously speedy -- but nowhere near as fast as the fastest consumer-grade parts will end up, those are rumored to hit as high as 8400 MHz.

Despite the speed gains, power consumption should be lower, too. The standard operating voltage drops from 1.2 V for DDR4 to 1.1 V for DDR5 -- but don't be surprised if the faster modules end up requiring slightly higher operating voltages for stability.

SK hynix also baked ECC into the DRAM modules that is able to correct single-bit level errors.

SK hynix didn't quote capacities for these initial modules, but noted that in the future, it will employ TSV (through silicon via) connections to stack DRAM, enabling DIMM capacities of up to 256 GB. 

“Intel partnered closely with memory leaders including SK hynix on the DDR5 spec development starting with early architecture concepts through JEDEC standardization,” noted Carolyn Duran, VP of Intel’s Data Platforms Group and GM of Memory and IO Technologies. “In addition, we worked collaboratively with SK hynix on silicon development by designing and testing prototypes to ensure DDR5 meets its performance goals and are fully ready for our mutual customers.”

What About Consumer DDR5, though?

Of course, this kind of memory module isn't quite what we'll be seeing at the consumer end of the market, but it's clear why there is a need: with increasing CPU core counts, system's processors need to be able to access the memory faster as the processing capabilities grow. Thankfully, memory developments are often a couple steps ahead of processing power, so in practice, we rarely ever run into memory bottlenecks due to a lack of throughput.

If you're curious about what to expect on the consumer side of DDR5, chances are that we'll be seeing less of a focus on high capacities, and more emphasis on either lower power consumption for mobile applications, or for enthusiasts and prosumers: even higher speeds. ECC is also likely to be part of the equation. Although most consumer applications currently don't need ECC, as capacities grow the chances for errors grows along with it, making ECC critical to maintaining system stability.

SK hynix hasn't stated any specific availability for the DDR5 DIMMs, but notes that the modules are ready for when the DDR5 market becomes active.

Features and Specifications

Editor's Note: We first published this review in February 2019. Since then, the price has stayed pretty stable, but stock hasn't. However, you can put in an order at B&H, where availability is expected for August 6.  You could also sign up for a stock alert at Newegg.

Original review, February 15, 2019:  

When you need a monitor with unfailing color accuracy, the best 4K gaming monitors are tempting, but you generally turn to professional monitors. That means factory-certified calibrated screens, heavy-duty build quality and lofty price tags. But our testing has uncovered some diamonds in the rough. Some can deliver professional-grade features for three figures instead of your typical four figures. 

BenQ’s DesignVue Series of products have model model numbers beginning with “PD” and include screens from 24 to 32 inches in both 1440p (2560 x 1440) and 4K (3840 x 2160) resolutions. We’ve reviewed numerous DesignVue monitors and even use one, the BenQ PD3200U, as a reference tool. I am, in fact, writing this review on one. Today, we’ll be looking at its 27-inch cousin, the BenQ PD2700U ($536.99 / £439 at the time of writing). It’s not just a smaller version of the same panel though. Though not specced to be the best HDR monitor on the market, it adds HDR10 support and a brighter backlight to an already impressive feature list.

Specifications

The PD2700U has 10-bits of color depth achieved with an 8-bit native part that uses Frame Rate Control to convert incoming signals. It accepts 10-bit material through both its HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 inputs.

It has a useful KVM feature, which allows you to connect two PCs to the monitor and use just one mouse and keyboard. The PD2700U has two upstream USB 3.0 ports, along with easy switching in the on-screen display (OSD) menu. You can also daisy-chain two PD2700Us through the DisplayPort MST feature. That saves some cabling, as you’ll need only a single wire from your PC.

The PD2700U uses a a high-quality IPS panel with a backlight hitting 400 nits max brightness, plus sRGB color and HDR support. Not only will it accept HDR10 signals, but there’s also an image mode that converts SDR material to HDR. Quality depends largely on the original content, but in some cases, we saw an improvement. BenQ certifies color accuracy in the sRGB/Rec.709 space with a factory-supplied data sheet. Our tests confirmed the PD2700U does not require calibration, but it did benefit from one (more on page four).

Ergonomic features include a flicker-free backlight, room light sensor to adjust brightness automatically and task-specific picture modes for things like animation, photography and CAD. You can even split the screen and view an image in two modes at once. There’s PIP/PBP to view two sources simultaneously. Four low-blue-light modes ease eye fatigue during long work sessions.

This impressive package checks all the professional monitor at a more accessible price than most pro monitors.

Unpacking & Accessories

Assembly requires no tools, just the mating of base and upright with a captive bolt and a panel that snaps in place. There is a 100mm VESA lug pattern for using an arm or wall bracket, but you’ll need your own hardware

Cables include USB 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPort, plus an IEC power cord to feed electrons to the internal power supply.

Product 360

Though the PD2700U’s chassis is solid and industrial-looking, it sports three thin and fashionable 8mm bezels and a wider strip across the bottom. Six buttons at the bottom-right control the OSD and power by clicking firmly, feeling like they’ll work reliably for years.

The upright and stand are equally solid with thick plastic over metal cores with a smooth satin finish that won’t reflect light. There’s an anti-glare layer with that same property that also offers  sharp picture with no visible grain or artifacts.

You can turn the monitor 90 degrees to portrait mode, swivel it 45 degrees to each side and tilt it backwards 20 degrees or forwards 5 degrees. Additionally, you can adjust its height 5.5 inches. We experienced no wobble; the heavy panel stayed put.

Under the BenQ logo is a small ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the monitor’s brightness in concert with your room’s light level. This can be handy if you work in an environment with a sunny window, since conditions change throughout the day. The feature can be disabled if desired.

The PD2700U’s side view is reasonably slim but, sadly, does not include USB ports. There are plenty though, just all on the bottom-facing input panel. The KVM feature is supported by two upstream and four downstream jacks, all version 3.0. From the back, you can see a large grill that covers the top quarter of the panel. It vents heat and gives the built-in two-watt speakers a bit of breathing room. Users seeking better sound can plug in headphones underneath.

Video inputs include one HDMI 2.0 and two DisplayPort 1.4. One of the DisplayPorts is a Mini connector. You also get a DisplayPort output in support of the MST feature. All can handle UHD signals, HDR10 and 10-bit color.

OSD Features

The PD2700U’s OSD has everything you’d expect in a professional monitor. There are eight picture modes, including presets for sRGB (the default) and Rec.709. An HDR mode converts SDR material to the ST.2084 luminance curve. Also included are CAD, Animation and Darkroom modes designed for those specific tasks. Users can split the screen and view two modes at once.

A full suite of calibration controls includes five gamma presets and four color temperatures. In the User image mode, you can use RGB sliders to achieve a precise grayscale. You also get hue and saturation sliders that affect all six colors at once. Additional image enhancements include dynamic contrast, multiple aspect ratios and an overscan option. Four modes support low blue light mode, which progressively warms the color temperature to help reduce eye fatigue when staring at white screens for long periods.

The OSD allows for easily toggling between two PCs connected via the KVM feature. Additionally, you can daisy-chain two PD2700Us using DisplayPort MST. Three of the control keys are programmable for easy access to things like picture mode, luminance and input selection.

Setup and Calibration

The easiest way to set up the PD2700U is to leave it in the default sRGB mode and set brightness to taste. The backlight is quite bright, so you’ll want to turn it down to about half for 200 nits of brightness. Though color accuracy here is excellent, we got a tad more saturation by calibrating the User mode.  After a few tweaks to the RGB sliders, the mode expanded the gamut by a hair and offered better grayscale accuracy. Our SDR settings are below:

Setup and Calibration: HDR

HDR signals automatically gray-out the picture modes and most image controls, but you can still adjust brightness, contrast and color saturation, which is a plus. When the monitor detects an HDR signal, brightness is a bit over 400 nits, so some may want to lower the backlight level. For most HDR content, however, we recommend leaving brightness maxed out.

There are no calibration options in HDR mode, but accuracy is comparable to the SDR modes’ sRGB preset. Our only wish is for DCI-P3 color, but, alas, the PD2700U is strictly an sRGB monitor.

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Brightness and Contrast

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, check outDisplay Testing Explained: How We Test Monitors and TVs. We cover Brightness and Contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

We’re comparing the PD2700U against a pile of 400-nit, HDR monitors, the Dell S2719DM, LG 34GK950F, LG 27UK850, AOC Agon AG322QC4 and BenQ SW271.

In our SDR signal test, the PD2700U easily beat its claim of 350 nits max brightness. It is a very bright screen, so you’ll want to turn the backlight to about half its range to achieve a more-comfortable 200 nits.

At max brightness, black levels were excellent among the other IPS panels here with the PD2700U showing a slight edge over its brother, the SW271. Note, the SW271 is a professional display and costs a bit more ($1,089 / £1,055 at the time of writing). Resulting contrast was an excellent 1,196.1:1.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration to 200 nits brightness improved the PD2700U’s black level advantage quite a bit, though it still couldn’t keep up with the VA-based AG322QC4. We lost an insignificant amount of contrast when making our adjustments, but the slight gain in color saturation was well worth it.

ANSI contrast was strong at 1,010.2:1. Any IPS monitor that delivers over 1,000:1 in this test—a good measure of real-world performance, since the test pattern mimics actual content—is above-average. Our PD2700U sample would have performed even better were it not for a slight hotspot in the lower right of the screen.

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Grayscale, Gamma and Color

The PD2700U ships in the sRGB picture mode, which is factory-certified for accuracy. Our sample met the values on the enclosed data sheet. If you want sRGB, this monitor is right on the money.

Grayscale & Gamma Tracking

We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Default grayscale tracking is a bit cool, but the errors are all less than 3dE, the level generally accepted as the visible threshold. Based on this, we don’t see need to calibrate the PD2700U. But we did anyway and found an unexpected benefit. Check out the color results below to see what that is.

Calibration took grayscale to an extremely low error level of just 0.5dE. Only the 10 percent step measures above 1dE, which is extremely impressive. Gamma improved as well, with the dip at 10 percent now nearly erased. Luminance rides just under the 2.2 line, but that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Comparisons

Before calibration, the PD2700U placed second in grayscale error among the comparison monitors. After adjustment, it moved to the top of the pack with a superb 0.5dE score. It easily competes with professional monitors costing much more.

Gamma tracking after calibration to 200 nits was also extremely tight with a mere 0.1 range of values and a 2.27 percent deviation from 2.2. This bodes extremely well for color gamut accuracy, which we’ll cover now.

Color Gamut Accuracy

For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The PD2700U hits the marks for sRGB almost perfectly out of the box. There are slight hue errors in cyan and magenta, and blue and red are a tiny bit under-saturated. None of that causes visible problem, as the average error is just 1.45dE, well below the visible point.

Calibration fixed these issues and delivered an unexpected benefit. Normally, primary color points are not affected when grayscale is adjusted, but the PD2700U’s User mode increased their saturation a small amount. It isn’t huge, but it does make color a bit more vibrant. And accuracy is still superb at just 1.27dE average. That’s why it’s worth making our recommended changes.

Comparisons

No one will be dissatisfied with the PD2700U’s color accuracy in the default sRGB mode. But calibration not only slightly improved grayscale and gamma, it increased color saturation. This is somewhat unusual but certainly not unwelcome. With the proper tweaks, its performance is at the reference level.

It is unfortunate that there is no DCI-P3 gamut option, but sRGB volume is good at just over 108 percent. There is a little bonus green and red, which is welcome for HDR signals. Though not marketed as such, the PD2700U certainly qualifies as a professional display.

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HDR Performance

The PD2700U locks onto HDR10 signals instantly and switches into HDR mode without issue. We missed the extra color afforded by a DCI-P3 gamut, but the mode tracked color points for Rec.709 accurately and hit most of the wide gamut targets.

HDR Brightness & Contrast

With HDR content, the monitor peaked at just over 400 nits, which is a good level for bold highlights and bright color.

Shadow detail was solid, though it can’t compete with a VA panel or a screen with a full-array backlight.

Our testing revealed HDR sequential contrast to be just 1,212:1, which is only about seven percent higher than the SDR number. A more aggressive dynamic contrast feature would likely have helped.

Grayscale, EOTF & Color

Luminance tracking is a very important step towards proper HDR-rendering, and the PD2700U checks those boxes. Grayscale runs a tad cool, but errors are not visible until it passes the clip point at 65 percent. The EOTF curve is a little too bright in the blackest parts of the image but quickly snaps to the line up to a soft-clip at 65 percent. Resulting image quality is good with solid contrast and delineation of dark and light objects.

While we missed the DCI-P3 color gamut, the PD2700U manages to track targets in both Rec.709 and DCI well. 709 points are either right on the mark or a little over-saturated, but it’s not a visible issue. The DCI gamut tracks well until the display runs out of color, at which point it adjusts hue for a little deeper red and green. This is the right way to compensate for a smaller color gamut when showing HDR material. We also saw extra color luminance, which makes all hues more vivid.

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Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response and Lag

Viewing Angles

The PD2700U delivers typical IPS viewing angles with a green color shift to the sides along with a 30 percent reduction in brightness. The darkest steps retain their detail. From the top, color goes a bit blue, and detail is harder to see. At 27 inches, it’s not a problem for a single user sitting 30 to 40 inches away. Using two or three screens would also be fine, as long as they’re angled in properly.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

Our PD2700U sample had a small hotspot in its lower-right corner that we could just manage to see in a darkened room. This hurt its screen uniformity testing performance, but we couldn’t see the problem in any of the content we viewed, including some very dark movies enjoyed late at night.

Pixel Response & Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The PD2700U is not built for gaming, but its response and lag scores are commensurate with other 60 Hz UHD screens. There is no FreeSync, so some players may see tearing, unless frame rates can be kept near the limit of 60 frames per second. A 22 ms response time means motion blur is minimal, and overdrive is good at mitigating any ghosting or judder. Response is fast enough for casual play, and we had little trouble engaging a bit of light fragging.

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Conclusion

For some, a professional monitor is mandatory, and price is no object. But it’s possible to get all the color accuracy and most of the same features in an enterprise display if you know where to look. The price-to-performance ratio of BenQ’s DesignVue Series fits this well, and the PD2700U is a great addition. What do you sacrifice when buying a PD2700U instead of a pro-grade model like the BenQ SW271? Not much, it turns out.

The PD2700U has UHD resolution, factory-certified sRGB color accuracy, HDR with a 400-nit peak white level and superb build quality. The SW271 adds to that a 14-bit internal look-up table with a 10-bit native panel, built-in hardware calibration and one of the best light-blocking hoods we’ve ever seen. To some, the SW271 will be worth $1,089 / £1,055, but if you’d rather save some cash, the PD2700U is a qualified alternative at $536.99 / £439.

We loved the PD2700U’s out-of-box color accuracy and were even more impressed with the image after calibration. HDR quality is not quite at the level of more-expensive full-array backlight displays, but at this price point, we’re satisfied, especially since it adheres well to HDR standards for grayscale, EOTF and color. Our only wish is for a larger color gamut. Many HDR monitors now include coverage of much of the DCI-P3 spec.

The PD2700U is a great way to get professional-level accuracy and reliability, a super UHD image, decent HDR and build quality that ensures operation for the long haul at a reasonable price.

Want to comment on this story? Let us know what you think in the Tom's Hardware Forums.

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Kioxia America, previously Toshiba Memory America, has taken the wraps off new SSDs that target the enterprise and datacenter SSD form factor (EDSFF) market. Kioxia's demo announced today plays with brand new form factors under the EDSFF umbrella that seek to maximize the density and efficiency inside a system while enabling a simpler installation process. 

Kioxia firmly believes that the EDSFF E3.Short (E3.S) and E3.Long (E3.L) form factors are the future of storage for servers and all-flash arrays, whether they be in a cloud or data center environment.

The EDSFF E3.S and E3.L form factors enable a higher power budget in comparison to the conventional 2.5-inch form factor. The aforementioned formats support up to 40W and are ready to exploit the level of performance that the forthcoming PCIe 5.0 interface will bring to the table. Additionally, the drives come with a better thermal dissipation outfit to tackle the heat.

Today, Kioxia announced development of E3.S SSDs that connect to the host system through a standard connector PCIe interface, just like common NVMe SSDs, graphics cards or network interface cards.

Adhering to the E3.S thin standard, the drives measure 104.9mm long and 76mm wide with a 7.5mm thickness. Kioxia hasn't branded the SSDs and didn't offer any performance numbers. The label suggests they have a capacity of 3.84TB.

"Additional E3 size and width options will also be supported, including E3.S thick (16.8mm) and E3.L thin," Kioxia said in its announcement. 

According to the manufacturer, the unnamed E3.S SSDs could leverage up to eight PCIe 4.0 lanes with a power target of 28W. The E3.S drives utilize the same core components as Kioxia's recent CM6 PCIe 4.0 SSDs that landed in February. With that in mind, the E3.S units should be have a Kioxia 18-channel controller that's escorted by the brand's own 96-layer 3D TLC NAND chips. 

The CM6 series deliver sequential read and write speeds up to 6,200 MBps and 4,000 MBps, respectively. Random performance tops out at 1.4 million IOPS reads and 350,000 IOPs writes. However, CM6 drives are limited to four PCIe 4.0 lanes, and the E3.S drives can be configured for up to eight. It's reasonable to expect they'll deliver around better performance if their composition allows it.

Apparently, Intel has added two new drives to its DC P4510 SSD family. The new SSDs adhere to the Enterprise & Data Center SSD Form Factor (EDSFF), casually called the ruler form factor.

The EDSFF-based DC P4510 SSDs respect the E1.L standard and are available with 9.5mm or 18mm heatsinks. They slide vertically into a 1U enclosure and communicates via a standard PCIe 3.1 x4 interface. 

The whole point of the EDSFF presentation is to maximize the storage capacity per SSD in a 1U server unit, and Intel has done just that. The original DC P4510 that comes in U.2 form factor maxes out at 8TB. With EDSFF, Intel has almost doubled the capacity up to 15.3TB.

Internally, the EDSFF drives are still using Intel and Micron's 64-layer 3D TLC (triple-level cell) NAND chips. Intel hasn't specified the name or model of the controller. However, they should be leveraging the same second-generation Intel NVMe SSD controller present in the U.2 offerings.

Intel DC P4510 SSD Specifications

The 15.3TB EDSFF drives deliver sequential read and write speeds up to 3,100 MBps. Despite featuring the same ingredients as the U.2 counterparts, the EDSFF versions are just one small step behind the 8TB U.2 drive. In terms of random performance, the EDSFF models offer 583,800 IOPS reads and 131,400 IOPS writes. For comparison, the 8TB U.2 drive flaunts random read and write speeds that are 9.9% and 2.4% faster, respectively.

The DC P4510 targets data center and enterprises, so its endurance level is pretty impressive. Intel rates the EDSFF version with a 22.7 PBW (petabytes written), which is 63.5% higher than that of the 8TB U.2 model.

Typical of the DC P4510 lineup, Intel backs the two EDSFF drives with its limited five-year warranty. 

Worldwide distributor Mouser Electronics has the Intel DC P4510 EDSFF 15.3TB SSD (SSDPEWKX153T801) listed for $4,712.65 a piece.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) sent out a warning Friday that some of its enterprise SAS-SSDs will brick themselves after 40,000 hours of operation. Based on the sale dates of the afflicted parts, most are expected to reach the 40,000-hour mark in October 2020 at the earliest.

To fix the problem, system administrators must install the HPD7 (or newer) firmware update. This update is considered critical, and failing to install it will result in unrecoverable data loss.

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HPE did not mention in its bulletin what the exact cause of the problem is. Some might suspect that HPE implemented a timer-based obsolescence at such a non-random figure, but that would simply be too obvious. The issue is said to have been reported to HPE by one of its unnamed SSD manufacturers.

What's Affected

HPE ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo 4200, Synergy Storage Modules, D3000 Storage Enclosure and StoreEasy 1000 Storage are systems that may contain SSDs with this bug.

Given that many SSDs in an enterprise environment might be running in RAID arrays, it is especially critical to apply the update: many of the SSDs will be failing simultaneously, and without a non-RAID backup, all data will be unrecoverable surpassing 40,000 hours.

In November, HPE issued a similar update for a different set of SSDs that would fail after 32,768 hours of operation.

Supermicro might not be as known to gamers and enthusiasts as ASRock, Asus, or Gigabyte. But in the professional computing industry,the company provides solutions for many IT and server deployments. Reliability has propelled the company into a lucrative position in the data center.

Specifications

Features

On the flip side, Supermicro’s Professional Gaming brand attempts to deliver server-infused products into the enthusiast community. Though the previously reviewed X11SRi-IF had an unusual form factor and niche, Supermicro aims the C9X299-PG300F at the higher-tiered gaming PC or workstation near you. Sporting Intel’s X299 chipset, it supports Intel's i7 and i9 Core X-series processors with support for up to 165W TDP SKUs. Though it does support our Core i9-10980XE, it does not enable the additional four lanes equipped through the refreshed Intel processors.

Sporting a black and gun-metal finish, the PG300F in some ways looks a lot like some of the other X299 boards on the market. The 8-phase voltage regulator is cooled by a heatsink that looks similar to some older ASRock models, and the M.2 shield vaguely resembles some of MSI's earlier implementations. The I/O panel cover looks and feels like the plastic shrouds of old (MSI’s X370 Krait comes to mind), but beyond that, we start to see some of the server DNA beginning to show through.

Let's talk about PCIe. This board supports both 28-lane and 44-lane configurations, where the top two PCIe x16 slots are wired out for full-lane allotments (when available), and the bottom two can provide a variety of bifurcation (see table below). The PG300F also offers full bandwidth for both 80mm M.2 NVMe drives through the lanes provided by the PCH. The PCH further routes out 6 SATA ports, and depending on the processor deployed, one or both of the U.2 ports. However, when using the U.2_1 slot, the bottom slot gets reduced to an x4 connection.

Now let's dig into the server and workstation features. Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is available for users that require remote access to the system, and Aquantia supplies its AQC107 hardware for 10Gb ethernet. You might also be curious about the VGA connector on the back, which is for viewing the UEFI and console output through the AST2500  baseboard management controller (BMC). COM, TPM, and chassis intrusion headers round out the other header interfaces on this board.

The back panel of the PG300F is straightforward, with two ports of USB2.0, USB3.0 Gen1, and USB 3.1 Gen2. The PG300F equips the Realtek ALC1220 chipset, and the standard five analog and one digital port are available for audio devices. The Intel I210-AT controller drives an additional 1Gb network connection.

Moving back to the board, six 4-pin fan headers are scattered evenly across the PCB, along with additional USB2.0 and USB3.0 Gen1 headers. Since this is technically a "gaming" motherboard, Supermicro provides two 12V RGB headers, which are programmable through the company’s SuperO software.

Overclockers will appreciate the Power, Reset, and Clear CMOS buttons located on the bottom edge of the board, along with the numeric debug display. One difference we see between the stock photos and our motherboard sample is the removal of the EQCD Samtec header below the 24-pin, which would be very helpful for low-level debug scenarios. Also, the stock photo shows a removable BIOS chip, whereas production units are not removable.

One deficiency for overclockers is the underwhelming voltage regulator heatsink. It’s sufficient, but our overclocking performance was a little spicy due to the mass of the heatsink.

Physically, this board is an ideal mix of convenience and features that leaves us with very few complaints. However, it could use a little bit more polish in terms of aesthetics and branding to make it stand-out from this firm’s server products, as well as competing offerings in the market. In short, Supermicro manages a decent job of blending the features of a workstation into a "gaming" motherboard with the C9X299-PG300F.

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The Supermicro PG300F motherboard's UEFI needs a bit of work to compete with the likes of MSI or Asus' consumer products. Don't get us wrong; the UEFI is simple to navigate and is functional for base-level operation, but after digging into the options for a week, we've identified a few sore spots.

EZ Mode is the default window upon hitting the DEL key at bootup and shows us boot order, DRAM status, high-level overclocking profiles, and general processor health. After activating the Advanced mode, CPU, memory, and other advanced menus are available on the left. We briefly perused the IPMI and Advanced menus. There you’ll find IPMI configuration, TPM, PCIe slot, boot, and other options for configuring the platform to fit your specific use case.

Also, the Advanced menu is where you will find most of the lower-level Intel CPU and chipset options such as CPU C States, Hyper-Threading and virtualization. We would have preferred more helpful information in the UEFI, and some of the formattings can be a bit weird.

For overclocking, our first stop is the CPU overclocking segment, with options for All Core OC presets, BCLK presets, and by-core max ratio limits. For the most part, tweakers can select either adaptive or override controls over various settings. Still, it isn't exactly clear which settings override others -- for example, BCLK Frequency and the BCLK Scale setting. Also, numeric options are highly configurable, but users will find that setting a 0 max ratio for core #1 will likely cause the system not to boot. In other words, make sure your settings make sense before saving and rebooting.

We had mixed success when tinkering in the Memory Overclocking section. XMP profiles work flawlessly, and our Corsair Dominator Platinum kit boots up with no problems. However, when tweaking timings, we noticed that subsequent reboots and entry into the UEFI wiped our previous settings. We have addressed this with Supermicro and hope to see the issue fixed in future UEFI versions.

Voltage controls are our last stop in UEFI checkout, and Supermicro doesn't do much hand-holding for users in this regard. We'll cover this in more depth in the overclocking section, but voltage levels can be as low as 0V to an uncomfortable 2.5V on some rails. With this in mind, we strongly suggest reading the manual to understand each setting and its limits. The documentation is an excellent resource and well worth saving to your hard drive.

This reviewer doesn't regularly install manufacturer's software, but it is necessary to install the SuperO Booster utility to program the RGB components of the system. The patterns and color selection are straightforward and required minimal tweaking in our setup.

On the CPU menu, we found that the frequency graph doesn't necessarily reflect the individual operating frequencies of our chip while running workloads bound to specific cores. Also, the overclocking functionality was less than accurate at times. When engaging single-threaded Cinebench runs, we often did not hit our desired overclocks. Again, read the manual if you intend to use this feature.

The Thermal menu is a nice feature to see while running the operating system, so that we can dial in our fan speeds while running an active workload. Beyond that, though, the voltage and memory menus aren't as attractive to us as we favor the UEFI, but they are there nonetheless.

Test Setup

Overclocking

Overclocking testing is where the Supermicro C9X299-PG300F begins to lose some ground. With mild success on other motherboards, setting a straight 4.8GHz all-core to overclock is not unreasonable and is our first step in testing. Immediately upon running AIDA64 at that setting with the Supermicro board, temperatures were well above 95C, causing minor heart palpitations. Digging into the UEFI, it appears that Supermicro defaults the VCORE setting when using the frequency presets to a massive 1.4V! After consulting with Supermicro, this is indeed the default option, and we strongly advise builders to set their clock speeds AND voltages on each boot. Skipping this step might cause permanent damage to your components.

Dialing back the voltage to a reasonable 1.25V, AIDA runs comfortably at around 80C while using our Fractal Design S36 360mm AIO. With additional thermal headroom, we hit 4900MHz without extra voltage for our extended-duration verification run. Hoping to catch the elusive 5.0GHz on this cooler, we increased the voltage to 1.325V, and temperatures approached the 100C threshold that we do not recommend for extended workloads. So, officially we hit 4900MHz at 1.25V and 82C with AIDA64 (pushing 82C on the VRMs).

Moving to the AVX-based workloads, thermals again became a problem, and we started dialing back the multiplier and voltages to compensate. Also, to keep things consistent with previous boards, we enabled AVX offset values of 3. Prime95 runs well at 4300MHz at 1.05V, which is only 100MHz behind some competitors.

As we alluded to in the UEFI discussion, memory overclocking with this board is both annoying and straightforward. Enabling XMP was our first step and worked fine out of the box. We could increase the data rates up to DDR4-3800 without issue or tweaking, but above that, we had to adjust our timings. Again, each reboot caused the timings to reset, which made this unsustainable. Fortunately, the DDR4-3800 ran at very tight timings compared to the other overclocks, which helped keep bandwidth results in line.

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The Asus board we tested continues to be a chart-topper, with an impressive 11% lead in memory bandwidth over the PG300F, while only besting it by 4.7% better latency.

Now with two samples tested with the EVGA RTX 2080 Super Hybrid, 3DMark Time Spy narrowly favors the Asus board, while the PG300F does perform better than both the ASRock and Gigabyte samples when it comes to CPU score. We observe similar behavior with Firestrike Extreme, but the physics scores appear to favor the ASRock Taichi CLX.

Moving to PCMark 10, we started to see some noise in the data with the previously tested boards scoring better with Essentials, but both Productivity and Content Creation leaned slightly in favor of the server DNA of the PG300F. The automated Microsoft Office suite rounds out the PCMark data, with the CLX narrowly beating the Supermicro C9X299-PG300F.

Gaming results today will focus on the RTX 2080 Super data. With Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, the Asus ROG Strix refresh provides between 2 and 10 more frames per second (fps) across the resolutions and detail levels. It is interesting to note that the RTX 2070-equipped testbeds (ASRock CLX and Gigabyte Designare) still managed to place well at 1080p (when the CPU is the bottleneck), though the RTX 2080 is the better performer at 1440p.

F1 2017 runs very well on this platform, with only a narrow spread at the 1080P Medium settings, still managing to cap out 144Hz monitors at Ultra. GPUs aside, the Asus again pulls the lead here but only by a few frames at each of the settings.

The 18-core 10980XE is no slouch in the encoding department, and these timed workloads show tight timing margins across the tested motherboard samples. On average, the Supermicro PG300F slips a bit in this regard. but manages to get 2nd place in at least two workloads.

Aside from its name being similar to the current health crisis, the Corona 1.3 RT results here were mostly uneventful.

Cinebench shows very close results among the Supermicro, Asus, and ASRock boards, but the Gigabyte Designare 10G pulls ahead by between 2 and 6% compared to the lowest-performing competitor.

A new workload for our X299 analysis is Davinci Resolve rendering times, driven by the Puget Systems automated framework. This benchmark tests various video codecs and formats with different applied video effects and measures the total rendering time. Here, the Supermicro PG300F races past the three other tested systems but hits a snag when encoding the 4k RED footage.

Power and Temperatures

Supermicro leans heavily on its server-grade designs and manages to shave three watts at idle from the leader. but tacks on a bit at full load. Regardless, the average power consumption reported by the Kill-A-Watt is right in line with the ASRock CLX.

On the flipside, servers are designed to run in warmer environments, and the voltage regulator temps reflect that in spades. Despite ample airflow in our Thermaltake Suppressor F51 case, temps are 10 degrees warmer than the nearest competitor.

Aggregating all of our performance metrics, the Supermicro C9X299-PG300F manages to place second in overall performance due to its strong showing in productivity and creativity workloads, while slipping in timed applications and application startup. Above-average system performance and power consumption, in turn, place the PG300F in second place in efficiency as well.

Value and Conclusion

As we did in the last X299 motherboard review, we'll take into account system costs to account for the different GPUs equipped in the systems. Supermicro aggressively prices the PG300F at $440, which puts it within striking distance of the ASRock CLX Taichi. while saving builders up to $140 compared to the Gigabyte model. But GPU cost eats into those margins by quite a lot when building a complete system, forcing the Supermicro board into third place. Regardless, we think Supermicro did a good job of balancing features, performance, and price, which make this board a decent option for those looking to build a workstation.

But that leads to the trouble we have here. Out of the box, the product works as designed and performs well compared to others on the market. However, the UEFI experience and the fact that it’s aimed at gamers just make it hard to compare against brands that have had many product cycles in this market segment. Just as Asus managed to polish its X299 ROG Strix, maybe future additions to the Professional Gaming Brand from Supermicro can refine the company’s formula while still delivering on value.

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Seagate’s IronWolf 110 is a NAS-focused SATA drive with enterprise-grade reliability and endurance. Its primary drawback is its high price. The 3.84TB model we tested sells for $750, and lower-capacity models sell for roughly twice the price of low-end mainstream SATA drives.

Are there a bunch of data and users in the office who need to interact with your business data? Network-attached storage drives are essential to many small and medium-sized businesses for this very reason. They are useful storage devices that enable IT admins or even just your local office IT personnel to consolidate the majority of the business’ data on a reliable network-attached storage array so that users have a safe place to store to and read from.

Seagate‘s IronWolf 110 SSD aims to be the SSD of choice if you are looking to speed up your NAS experience. It was designed to keep going strong, even in multi-user environments that operate 24/7. From using a single IronWolf as a caching device or going all out and building a high-performance RAID array with a few more for multi-gigabytes per second bandwidth, the IronWolf should be able to handle it all. 

Specifications

Available in a broad range of capacities from 240GB all the way up to 3.84TB, Seagate’s IronWolf 110 can suit most capacity needs -- depending in part on the size of your NAS enclosure. Pricing is just as broad-ranging, from $79.99 all the way up to $749.99 for the 3.84TB model.

Seagate rates the IronWolf 110 NAS SSD to hit speeds upwards of 560/535 MBps read/write over it’s SATA III interface. In terms of random performance, the company rates the SSD like an enterprise SSD -- listing sustained performance, not peak like most consumer/prosumer drives The IronWolf 110 is rated to deliver 90,000/20,000 IOPS read/write. Performance suffers slightly on the 240GB and 480GB models, as per the norm, usually due to fewer NAND dies compared to the higher capacities.

Seagate’s IronWolf 110 packs some heavy endurance figures, too. Rated at up to seven terabytes of writes, our 3.84TB IronWolf 110 test drive boasts some of the highest warrantied endurance ratings out of any consumer NAND flash-based SSD. Seagate backs the IronWolf 110 for up to 5-years -- if the amount of data written to it doesn’t surpass the endurance rating, that is. 

Software and Accessories

On top of the standard warranty, the IronWolf 110 SSD includes a complimentary 2-year Rescue Data Recovery Services plan. So, in the event your SSD were to fail within the plan’s time, you can send it out for recovery and hopefully get your data back.

Seagate offers a few downloads for the IronWolf 110, too. SeaTools is a simple-to-use diagnostic tool that checks your drive’s health. DiscWizard is Seagate’s locked-down version of Acronis True Image HD drive cloning software, but it doesn’t recognize the IronWolf 110 as a Seagate drive. Hopefully the company will fix this in an update soon. Then there is SeaTools SSD, which allows you to monitor your drive, update the firmware and more.

Additionally, Seagate is working on offering IronWolf Health Management (IHM). This is another piece of software for those using the company’s SSDs in a supported NAS. At this time, Asustor, QNAP, QSAN, Synology, TerraMaster, and Thecus all support IronWolf Health. Unfortunately, it was not available for download at the time of publishing.

A Closer Look

The IronWolf 110 is built like most enterprise-grade SATA SSDs. It comes in a 2.5-inch 7mm form factor and has a solid metal casing. Seagate made sure to take thermals into consideration to keep the components on the PCB cool. Strangely, the company decided to use a bunch of thermal paste instead of thermal pads, but it works the same. 

Also, the drive comes with onboard polymer tantalum caps to provide Power Loss Data Protection (PLDP) to prevent data loss if the power goes out while in use. The added circuitry allows in-flight writes to complete and any buffer data to copy to NAND. It recharges upon the next power on.

Seagate is tight-lipped about the IronWolf 110’s architecture, so we could only get a few details, but it should suffice to give you a good overview. Powering the IronWolf 110 is a Seagate-branded controller that seems to have some SandForce roots to give it a modern-day edge. Its design is of a DRAM-based architecture and the basics like Trim, S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, and secure erase are all supported.

The controller interfaces with four 1GB DDR3 DRAM packages for caching flash translation layer (FTL) data. To keep up with professional workloads, the IronWolf 110 features Seagate’s DuraWrite lossless data reduction technology built into its AgileArray firmware, along with Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) ECC and RAID like data protection, ensuring data integrity over its lifetime use.

The IronWolf 110 utilizes Kioxia’s (formerly Toshiba Memory) BiCS3 64L TLC NAND flash. In total, our 3.84TB sample features sixteen NAND flash packages, each packed with sixteen 512Gb dies, operating at 400-533 MT/s. To help manage their sustained performance, the IronWolf 110 NAS SSD features about 13% over-provisioning from the factory, hence the 240GB, 480GB, 960GB capacities and so forth.

DuraWrite builds upon this even more, enabling dynamic over-provisioning that compresses inbound compressible user and OS files as they are written to free up NAND space. That extra space, in turn, is used for background operations, helping to increase the NAND’s lifespan by reducing write amplification. The user data appears uncompressed to the end-user, however, so don’t opt for one of these looking to fit more data on the drive than the capacity is rated for.

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Comparison Products

Today, we pit the Seagate IronWolf 110 NAS SSD against its arch-nemesis, the WD Red SA500, also at a 4TB capacity. As well, we threw in some other SATA contenders including the Samsung 860 EVO, Crucial MX500, and a WD Black HDD. Additionally, we’ve included the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, one of our favorite M.2 NVMe SSDs, as well as a WD Blue SN550 and a speedy PCIe Gen4 SSD, the Corsair Force MP600 for good measure. Those last two drives are also M.2, rather than the SATA drives' 2.5-inch form factor.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood and Stormbringer are two free real-world game benchmarks that easily and accurately compare game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Being built for sustained write workload performance, Seagate’s IronWolf 110 isn’t the highest-performing SATA SSD for this read focused gaming benchmark. It scores seventh place overall, but it is much faster than an HDD. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom blocks of data. Our 50GB data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. Our 100GB includes 22,579 files with 50GB of them being large movies. We copy the data sets to new folders and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file, 8GB test file, and a 15GB movie file.

Seagate’s IronWolf 110 scores fifth place in the 50GB copy, just a few MBps shy of the Samsung 860 EVO, and it leads the WD Red SA500. But once we throw the 100GB copy test at the group, we see the NAS SSDs take the lead over the Samsung 860 EVO and Crucial MX500. 

Unlike most consumer drives, the Seagate IronWolf 110 and WD Red lack of an SLC write cache, thus they are best suited for sustained write performance, especially at smaller capacities. However, they aren’t quite as optimized for reads as the Samsung and Crucial because of this. Compared to the standard HDD, the Seagate offers a nice boost in performance, though.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs lightly, while the full benchmark relates more to power users. If you are using the device as a secondary drive, the data test will be of most relevance. 

The IronWolf 110 is close in performance to other SATA SSDs, but without a bursty SLC cache, it falls behind a bit compared to the Crucial and Samsung. Overall, Seagate’s IronWolf 110 scores sixth place in both the Data Drive and Quick System Drive benchmarks and falls into seventh in the Full System Drive benchmark when things are turned up a notch.

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 10, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

Like in PCMark 10, the Seagate IronWolf 110’s performance compares closely with other SATA SSDs, but lags the NVMe competition. It was able to best the WD Red SA500 here though, completing the test a few minutes faster. It scores sixth place overall and offers a significant improvement in performance over the standard HDD. 

Synthetics - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

In ATTO, we tested Seagate’s IronWolf 110 at a QD of 1, representing most day-to-day file access at various block sizes. When it comes to reading, the Seagate lags behind the other SATA SSD at the smaller file sizes. The Seagate’s performance doesn’t catch up until the 512KB block size. But, on the other hand, write performance is on par with most SATA SSDs. The IronWolf 110’s Performance here peaks at 517/469 MBps, doubling the HDD’s.

Synthetic Testing - iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool that vendors often use to measure the performance of their devices.

On our X570 platform, the IronWolf 110’s sequential performance peaked at 529/496 MBps read/write, and again, write performance is a bit better than read. Random performance is lacking a bit at QD1. Seagate’s IronWolf 110 displays higher random latency at QD1 than the WD Red SA500 and almost triple the latency of the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro. Still, while not the most responsive drive available, this is practically  light speed compared to an HDD, especially once you send it more than one request at once.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.  

When possible, we also log the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

As mentioned previously, the Seagate opted to do without an SLC write cache on the IronWolf 110. Our sample was able to write at a sustained rate of 495 MBps indefinitely, which is exactly how an enterprise-grade SSD should perform. As well, when moving around a few hundred gigabytes of data at once, the maximum temperature reported was under 45C in our 25C environment with static air (no airflow).

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

When it comes to power consumption, Seagate’s IronWolf 110 is definitely enterprise-grade. At idle, the IronWolf 110 consumes more power than the other SATA SSDs in the group, even the NVMe options. Enabling LPM doesn’t help too much either, only saving about 300mW. Its power efficiency also falls behind the SATA SSD pack with the highest average consumption in the group, but maximum power consumption is decently regulated. Overall, it's still a much more efficient storage device than an HDD.

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Seagate's first NAS focused SSD is definitely a durable contender. The IronWolf 110 boasts some of the highest endurance ratings for a NAND based SSD we have seen thus far. The IronWolf 110’s high endurance ratings aren’t just marketing. Thanks to its endurance-optimized firmware and enterprise-grade design, it really is built to last. With a 5-year warranty and 2-years of data recovery provided free of charge, Seagate wants to make a statement. When it comes to its SSD’s reliability, the IronWolf 110 is ready to be deployed for use in professional workflows.

But, while Seagate’s IronWolf 110 can sustain some of the heaviest of write use cases, it’s not the best-performing option. Sequential read performance isn’t as well optimized, exhibiting a bit more latency upon requests than competing SATA SSDs. We think this has to partially do with the controller’s DuraWrite technology. When writing/compressing the data, the SSD is able to sustain great write performance, but when reading/uncompressing the data you request, there’s a minor performance penalty. As well, there is a lack of an SLC write cache. Fortunately, without the cache, NAND flash performance over SATA is still significantly faster than the mechanical design of HDDs.

Lots of mainstream NAS drives are starting to come out with 10GbE connections and support for SSD caching, too. So, adding one of these bad boys to your system should be rather simple and easy to beef up your throughput over an HDD and help to significantly speed up your file access times and application performance. Or, maybe you are the more adventurous type with deeper pockets. Throwing 8, 16, or even 24 of these into an all-flash array would suit your needs better and help to speed up your video production workflow. What’s a little 4K or even 8K footage for a well-tuned array of SSDs?

WD’s Red SA500 gives this drive some competition for those on a tighter budget. The WD is not quite as robust, but for home users and small businesses who don’t need so much endurance, it’s a better bang for the buck. The Seagate IronWolf 110’s build quality is absolutely a tier above WD’s Red SA500 though. Holding both in our hands, the Seagate drive is much heavier and more ridged than the more flimsy WD drive. And, if you don’t need such a robust SSD, the Crucial MX500 is a great value, and Samsung’s 860 EVO is still one of the best SATA options available. So keep these alternatives in mind when making your SSD buying decision.

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AnandTech's recent review of the AMD Threadripper 3990X contained an interesting caveat: The website noted that Windows 10 Enterprise provided more performance than the Windows 10 Pro operating system that AMD recommended for testing. But AMD has told us that this isn't the case.  

We've spent some time re-testing our Threadripper 3990X with a direct update from Windows 10 Pro to the Enterprise version and noticed little to no performance improvement outside of the expected standard deviation we experience with our benchmarks (test results below). We reached out to AMD to troubleshoot, which provided us with the following statement:

"AMD officially recommends Windows 10 Professional or Linux for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X. Higher editions/versions of Windows 10 confer no additional performance or compatibility benefits to the processor. We understand that this suggestion has been made in the media, but we believe this to be an error in testing that our team is presently diagnosing.” 

AnandTech's rationale behind using Windows 10 Enterprise is pretty simple: AMD has pushed core counts up to 64 with the 3990X, and Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) brings us up to 128 threads on the HEDT platform. Windows is simply ill-prepared for this massive jump in thread counts, so, as we noted in our own Threadripper 3990X review, it splits up the threads into two "processor groups." Due to the vagaries of the Windows scheduler, the operating system still sees the first 64 threads as one 'processor group,' while anything above that number of threads appears as a second group. In the case of the 3990X, that means threads 65-128 appear as their own processing group to the operating system.

Some applications can span across both groups, but many cannot, and you can either configure the 3990X with one NUMA node or two, adding the complexity and erratic performance trends of multiple NUMA nodes. We configured our system with the AMD-recommended single-NUMA node, as extensive testing with two nodes proved problematic, but we still experienced sub-par scaling in some workloads with both the 3990X and our server test platforms. 

AnandTech noticed that while the Windows 10 Professional operating system supports 128 threads (right in the 3990X's sweet spot), the Pro for Workstation and Enterprise versions of Windows support 256 threads, which AnandTech surmised would lead to scheduler enhancements that could improve performance. 

And in their test environment, it did. However, in our test environment, a direct upgrade of our Windows 10 Pro operating system did not lead to any performance improvements beyond what we would expect with normal run-to-run variation in the selection of workloads we targeted for re-testing. And they certainly aren't impactful enough to recommend spending the extra cash on the more-expensive Windows 10 Enterprise. 

The Threadripper 3990X, like all third-gen Ryzen processors, is extremely sensitive to environmental factors, such as thermal dissipation, so even a poor (or slightly different) cooler mounting can introduce some (mostly minor) variability into our test results. As such, we ensured accuracy for our re-tests by using the same cooler and mount for these tests with the Windows 10 Pro image and the updated Enterprise image, so a few of these numbers are slightly different than those in our review. 

AnandTech's purportedly incorrect test results could simply boil down to NUMA configurations of Windows versioning: AMD recommended testing with Windows 10 Pro OS build 18362.592 (or greater) due to unspecified optimizations that ensured maximum performance. As a standard manner of course, our Windows 10 test image remains constant over time (usually no longer than 9 months), but we've had to update more frequently due to a rash of patches for Intel security vulnerabilities. Every update to a new major OS revision requires retesting all comparable processors in our test pool, so we lag one distribution behind to assess any negative impacts from Microsoft's erratic updates. 

Luckily, our test image was already on 18362.476, and after a series of regression tests with our update to 18362.592, we found that the slight update did not impact performance outside of our standard deviation for either Intel or AMD architectures, though it did provide better performance for the 64-core 3990X. That implies that whatever changes were made only impact super-high core-count processors, specifically. 

It's possible that testing with an older version of Windows than the recommended distribution led to the performance gains AnandTech recorded, but there is currently no visibility into what led to the issue. It remains possible that there are a few scattered advantages for using the Enterprise version of Windows instead of the Pro, but AMD said that its testing, like ours, didn't find any meaningful performance improvements that would merit a step up to the Enterprise or Workstation versions of Windows 10. 

Microsoft isn’t backtracking on its support for the Arm64 chip architecture, despite some initial criticism and setbacks in terms of how the Windows 10 operating system (OS) and various apps work on it. The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19559 for the Fast Ring update cycle adds Arm64 support to Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor for Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users. 

Hyper-V can yield higher performance from virtual machines (VMs) on Windows  because VMs running on a hypervisor can run at a lower level than when running on top of another OS.

Even if you don't typically bother with creating a VM for another Windows 10 instance or Linux distro, you may still want to use the Windows Sandbox feature. Windows Sandbox is one-click Windows 10 VM that allows you to browse more safely or download risky email attachments that get wiped after you close it (a feature most likely inspired by Qubes OS).

We don’t know if Hyper-V performance on Arm64 devices, such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, is just as good as on other devices with x86/AMD64 chips. However, it's clear Microsoft is making strides on supporting Arm.

Arm64 Gaining Steam

Despite a decades-long relationship with Intel, Microsoft has been one of the Arm architecture's biggest supporters during the past few years. Initially, the architecture suffered from a lack of support for third-party applications and supporting processors that were primarily designated for mobile phones with tiny power envelopes.

This has changed more recently, with Qualcomm launching the first truly desktop-class Snapdragon 8cx processor, which is, in a slightly modified version, in Microsoft’s Surface Pro X. The processor’s performance doesn’t blow away the competition, but it shows that Arm CPUs can finally run desktop-class OSes and apps. 

It’s also a sign of things to come, as the pace of improvement for Arm processors has been quite high over the years at around 20% annual improvement. The gradual improvement is much higher than the x86/AMD64 competition, but it’s also starting from a lower performance base, so a stronger uplift is somewhat expected.

On the server processor side, Arm’s “Neoverse” series of processors has recently shown that they can provide not just good value for the money, but can actually hold their own in terms of overall performance in the data center. 

Arm still has quite a bit of work to do before more developers jump on board and build native support for apps for the Arm architecture. But that's looking increasingly like a matter of when, not if. 

Western Digital (WD) announced Thursday that it has finished the development of its fifth-generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS5, which is based on triple- and quad-level-cell (TLC and QLC) to deliver increased storage capacities at lower price points. 

WD expects some of its potential customers for these high-density SSDs will be companies storing connected car data, mobile device makers and AI companies.

"As we move into the next decade, a new approach to 3D NAND scaling is critical to continuing to meet the demands of the rising volume and velocity of data," Dr. Steve Paak, WD's SVP of memory technology and manufacturing, said in a statement accompanying the announcement. 

Paak added that by advancing WD's multi-tier memory hole technology for an increase in "density laterally, as well as adding more storage layers," the vendor has dramatically "scaled the capacity and performance of our 3D NAND technology, while continuing to deliver the reliability and cost which our customers expect."

WD has already started shipping TLC-based products using BiCS 512-bit technology but expects to ship much more significant volumes in the second half of 2020. It will make available a range of capacities for its TLC- and QLC-based NAND flash chips, including 1.33 terabit.

According to WD, the “lateral scaling” improvements to the BiCS5 technology combined with 112 layers of vertical memory offers multiple advantages over the company’s previous 96-layer BiCS4 technology. This includes a 40% increase in density (more bits per wafer), an optimized cost of production, as well as 50% higher I/O performance than the older technology.

WD partnered with Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory), to develop BiCS5. The companies will co-manufacture BiCS5 products at two joint-venture factories in Japan. 

Intel has launched the NUC 8 Pro (formerly code-named Provo Canyon) as its latest generation of enterprise-focused mini PCs. The Windows 10 systems start as low as $475 and as high as $890. Models with Intel Core i5 and i7 processors offer vPro support, although the Core i3 variants do not. The new line also includes bare-bone kits and developer boards.

Unlike the Coffee Lake-based NUC 8 line, which has a TDP of 28W, the new computers more highly prioritize energy efficiency. The NUC 8 Pro promises a 15W TDP (configurable up to 25W), due to the new Whiskey Lake microarchitecture and its use of Intel's weaker HD Graphics, compared to the NUC 8's Iris Pro Graphics.  

The new NUC 8 Pro also has bevy of ports:

• 2x HDMI 2.0a 
• 1x Thunderbolt 3
• 3x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A
• 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
• 1x Gigabit Ethernet

It supports as many as three displays, up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, as well as Intel Optane H10 or M10 memory. 

The chassis is similar to those on previous NUCs, coming in two variants, a taller one that is 2.1-inches high and can support an additional HDD or second SSD, as well as a slimmer one that is 1.5-inches high and SSD-only. 

A full list of NUC 8 Pro models is available on Intel’s website. 

The new NUC 8 Pro systems are currently available for pre-order at SimplyNUC for May shipping and should be available on other retail stores soon, too.

Intel recently started selling the NUC 10 with configurations built around the i7-10710U CPU featuring a with turbo clock speed of up to a 4.7 GHz and Intel UHD Graphics. Some details about a 10nm Tiger Lake-based NUC 11 also leaked recently, pointing to a TDP of 28W and even higher clock speeds.

According to a MyDrivers report, Chinese chipmaker Loongson, formerly known as Godson, has announced its latest quad-core 3A4000 and 3B4000 processors. The first is aimed at the mainstream market while the latter is designed for the server market. The chips are 100% made in China and don't rely on any third-party intellectual property.

Loongson president Hu Weiwu has stated that the 3A4000 delivers twice the performance of its predecessor, the 3A3000. Hu goes on to mention that processor's performance is comparable to that of AMD's 28nm Excavator parts, which launched in 2015.

Both 3A4000 and 3B4000 employ the GS464V microarchitecture and are built on STMicroelectronics' 28nm FD-SOI (Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator) manufacturing process and utilize the FCBGA-1211 package. The processors are equipped with four cores, 8MB of L3 cache and operating clocks that span between 1.8 GHz to 2 GHz. 

Loongson's latest pair of 28nm parts support DDR4-2400 memory, dynamic frequency and voltage regulation, which should help improve battery life in laptops. The 3A4000 draws up to 30W, 40W and 50W at 1.5 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 2 GHz, respectively.

The 3B4000, which is the server chip, plays nice with ECC (error-correcting code) memory and can be deployed in a eight-way configuration to offer fourfold the performance of the previous 3B3000 that was limited to a two-way configuration.

In terms of security features, the 3A4000 and 3B4000 come with integrated mechanisms to shield against vulnerabilities, such as Meltdown and Spectre. The processors also support encryption and decryption algorithms, including MD5, AES and SHA.

Loongson has already plotted the path for next year. The chipmaker expects to introduce the quad-core 3A5000 and 16-core 3C5000 chips to the Chinese market. The new processors would be based on a more up-to-date 12nm manufacturing process and come clocked up to 2.5 GHz.

New information about Intel's future enterprise processors has surfaced during an Asus presentation. Korean publication Brainbox snapped a photograph of a PowerPoint slide that seemingly compares Intel's past and present processor microarchitectures with the upcoming Cooper Lake and Ice Lake.

Cooper Lake-SP (CPL-SP) will allegedly make its way to the market first. The 14nm chips are scheduled to land in the second quarter of 2020. The table from the PowerPoint slide states that Cooper Lake carries up to 48 cores with TDP (thermal design power) ratings up to 300W. However, Intel has already confirmed that there will be a 56-core Cooper Lake chip. Cooper Lake processors will support up to four Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI) links and 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

Ice Lake-SP (ICL-SP), which is based on Intel's latest 10nm process node, is supposed to arrive shortly after Cooper Lake-SP. The PowerPoint slide points to the third quarter of 2020. Apparently, Ice Lake-SP parts will max out at 38 cores and 270W TDP. They allow up to three UPI links and offer up to 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes.

Cooper Lake-SP and Ice Lake-SP reside on the Whitley platform. Both support dual-socket configurations, eight memory channels and DDR4-3200 modules. However, only Ice Lake-SP parts are compatible with second-generation Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory. 

The new processors will likely drop into the LGA4189 socket, which comes in two variants. The LGA4189-4 socket (Socket P4) houses Ice Lake-SP and Cooper Lake-4 parts while the LGA4189-5 (Socket P5) is exclusively for Cooper Lake-6 parts.

AMD has already set the bar really high with its EPYC Rome processors. The chipmaker's EPYC Milan processors, which are reportedly based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture and 7nm+ node, are rumored to drop next year as well. Whichever way you look at it, Intel has a hard road ahead.

Micron is announcing two new series of SSD’s: the 5300 series and the 7300. Both of these series are aimed at data center use, and both are built on Micron’s new 96-layer NAND. Where the 7300 series is optimized for high-performance and high throughput workloads, the 5300 series is aimed towards more read-oriented workloads that require high reliability.

Micron 7300 Series NVMe SSDs

As mentioned, the 7300 series SSDs are meant for high-throughput, and are therefore built on NVMe, sporting four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for access, and they will receive a dual-port NVMe support update in the near future.

The 7300 series will come in four different flavors: U.2 drives and M.2 drives, each coming in PRO and MAX versions. The Pro versions are more oriented towards read-intensive tasks, handling wear and tear of up to one drive write per day, with the MAX series able to handle up to three drive writes per day in endurance. Mean time between failure for these units is rated at two million hours.

Micron 5300 Series SATA SSDs

Despite slowly reducing in the consumer market, Micron is still pushing SATA SSDs hard in the enterprise space, where it claims that lots of system upgrades can be accomplished on infrastructure still running on SATA. The 5300 series drives also feature the 96-layer NAND, and because they’re more built for mass storage and reliability of data, they are rated to a mean time between failure of three million hours.

The 5300 series will exist in a handful of different flavors too. There is a “Boot” series intended for the OS installation which will only come in an M.2 format, and a PRO line that will come in M.2 and 2.5” formats, although the 3.84 TB and 7.68 TB variants of these will only come in a 2.5” format. There is also the 5300 MAX series, which come only in the 2.5” format, but feature significantly higher write endurance than their PRO counterparts.

HP announced the Chromebox Enterprise G2, a desktop computer that runs Chrome OS, yesterday as part of its new lineup of Chrome Enterprise products. (The company also revealed new Chromebooks made for business customers last week.) That should give Dell a bit more competition in the "Chromebooks but for enterprise" market, and help Google convince businesses of Chrome OS' potential.

The Chromebox Enterprise G2 probably won't impress many enthusiasts. There are two configurations: the first offers a dual-core Intel Celeron 3867U with Intel HD Graphics 610 and relies on a 65W external PSU; the second boasts a dual-core Intel Core i3-7130U with Intel HD Graphics 620 that requires a 90W external PSU. Both offer 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory and either 32GB or 64GB storage via an M.2 SSD.

Offering a maximum of 64GB storage capacity on a desktop would be insane on any other platform. But HP is essentially just wrapping a device around the Chrome browser, so it can safely assume that anyone considering the Chromebox Enterprise G2 is content to use cloud-based storage. Most web apps don't require that much processing power, either, so it's not like HP needed to use top-of-the-line CPUs.

The only thing the Chromebox Enterprise G2 really needs is an abundance of connectivity options. That's why HP outfitted the device with two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports and one USB 3.0 Type-C port; one Gigabit Ethernet port; the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 support; and one 3.5mm audio jack. (Which could prove useful in an office.)

Anandtech reported that HP plans to release the Chromebox Enterprise G2 in the U.S. sometime in November. Pricing information wasn't revealed; HP hasn't yet shared details about the new device on its website. We suspect it will be priced low enough to convince potential enterprise customers they should buy the Chromebox Enterprise G2 in bulk for their employees who spend most of their days in a browser.

Security firm Morphisec identified a zero-day bug in Apple’s Software Update utility that comes packaged with iTunes for Windows. The flaw allowed attackers to install ransomware on vulnerable machines.

Apple Programmers Make Coding Error

According to the researchers, the attackers used an "unquoted path" to install ransomware and remain undetected. An unquoted service path vulnerability is created when a service has an executable path with spaces and isn’t enclosed within quotes. This often happens when the developer forgets to enclose the file path within the quotation marks.

The attackers abused this flaw to create malicious child processes underneath trusted and digitally-signed parent processes. This allowed them to bypass antivirus protection because this sort of behavior isn’t generally regarded as unsafe by antivirus vendors due to all the potential false alarms it could otherwise create.

The unquoted path bug is not often seen in the wild, but it’s been found in other popular pieces of software, too, such as Intel’s graphics driver, ExpressVPN, and ForcePointVPN. The reason it doesn’t often happen is because programmers are usually well aware of it. However, the flaw somehow landed in one of Apple’s most used software libraries.

Apple also repeated one of Zoom’s recent mistakes, and that is to leave the update utility installed on users’ machines, even if the users uninstall the main software. The researchers found that although the iTunes software had been uninstalled on many machines years ago, the update utility remained, thus leaving users exposed to this sort of zero-day attack. 

Bug Exploited In The Wild To Install BitPaymer Ransomware

The bug isn’t just theoretical, as the Morphisec researchers found the attackers were using it to install the BitPaymer ransomware on the Windows machines of an unidentified automotive company as recently as this August. 

The exploit allowed attackers to execute a malicious file called "Program," which may have already existed on the automotive company’s network. The file didn’t use an .exe extension, which also allowed it to avoid antivirus scanners. 

Apple’s update utility was attempting to run from “Program Files,” but instead it ran the malicious "Program" file, because Apple didn’t enclose its software’s file path within quotation marks.

Morphisec notified Apple immediately about the bug in August. The company patched the flaw on Monday in both iTunes 12.10.1 for Windows and iCloud for Windows 7.14. Morphisec complained on its website that Apple has yet to patch other similar bugs that the security firm has already reported to Apple.

Micron’s New Heavy Hitter

NVMe devices have taken off these past few years, but adoption is accelerating in 2019. They now surpass both SAS and SATA as the preferred interface and are getting faster with each generation. That's a trend that won’t go away any time soon because we are currently creating over 2.5 exabytes of data a day, and by 2025, the global datasphere is predicted to hit upwards of 175 zettabytes. We once made data lakes; we are now making data oceans.

In fact, that brings us to today’s review. Micron has updated its 9300 series of enterprise-class NVMe SSDs to boost capacity and performance to help handle the explosion of data.

Micron's main goal was to improve the drive's write speed and achieve balanced sequential throughput by tweaking the firmware for the monstrous Microsemi NVMe controller under the hood. As a result, the new 9300 series SSDs hit 3.5 GB/s in both sequential reads and writes over its PCIe 3.0 x4 U.2 connection. Micron also reduced power consumption by 28% on average over the previous-gen model, and the drives are less expensive per gigabyte of storage than the prior-gen models, too.

Finding Balance

Why did Micron focus on achieving a balanced read and write speed? It is what today’s workloads demand, and it enables more efficient utilization of resources.

In today’s markets, data-driven decision making is increasingly important. The 9300 series devices will usually find themselves used as caching devices in AI, machine learning, deep learning servers, or similar database or block- and object-acceleration scenarios. In many of these workloads, the applications need high-performance storage so that they can ingest the data from huge data lakes and then export back out as fast as possible. That allows GPUs and other accelerators to read the data as fast as possible to process and extract any valuable data.

But it’s not just about sheer speed – efficiency is a big factor in enterprise storage. The 9300 series comes in capacities of up to 15.36TB, which a 40% increase over the previous generation and essentially ties with the most capacious HDDs. But these SSDs come in a compact U.2 form factor so you can fit many more into the same space, or use fewer racks and save on overall power consumption. The 9300 drives also support 16 power states ranging from 10W up to 25W. (We tested ours at the stock 25W mode)

Micron's flex capacity feature allows IT admins to configure capacity to match their application’s workloads and requirements. Some users demand a cost-sensitive approach for upgrading their infrastructure for their workloads, while others need the fastest drive they can get. No one solution can satisfy every need, but a flexible one might be able to satisfy most.

Customers are demanding storage tuned just for their needs. That’s where Flex Capacity comes into play. It gives the customer cost flexibility and the ability to adjust write endurance, performance, and consistency, along with capacity, for their applications. In fact, both the Micron 9300 PRO and MAX have the same hardware through and through. The MAX is simply preconfigured with more over-provisioning.

We don’t have official pricing from Micron, but the PRO sells from ~$0.19 -$0.20 per GB online, while the MAX sells for ~$0.24 - $0.26 per GB depending on the capacity point. This gives customers the option to save a few bucks by buying the PRO, but remember, while it won’t be an upfront cost, it will take some time to reconfigure the drives in the field, if needed.

Furthermore, Micron enabled the option to define up to 32 namespaces on a drive. This allows the drives to accommodate multitenancy deployments in hyperscale data centers and cloud infrastructure and enables more parallel sessions for single storage devices, which improves elasticity and application utilization. But while these features are awesome in their own way, note that Micron states that Flex Capacity and manual Namespace Management are not intended to be configured together and should be implemented independently.

Specifications

While Micron’s 9300 series puts out sequential performance of up to 3.5 GBps read/write, its no slouch in random workloads. These SSDs are rated to deliver up to 850,000/310,000 random 4K read/write IOPS and have average read/write latency ratings of 86/11us.

The 9300 MAX and PRO comes with a 5-year warranty, and endurance figures are variable based on the model and capacity. Designed for read-intensive tasks (one drive write per day), the 9300 PRO’s endurance ranges from 8.4 to 33.6 petabytes (PB) written. While these figures by themselves are quite impressive, the MAX, with its greater over-provisioning, withstands anywhere from 18.6PB of writes at the smallest capacity, and up to a staggering 74.7PB at the highest. The MAX is only rated for three drive writes per day, but its huge capacity helps it to scale endurance to ultra-high levels.

Furthermore, the drive comes with crypto erase support, power loss protection for data in-flight and data-at-rest, and enterprise data path protection (user & metadata). The Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER) is less than 1 sector per 10^17 bits read, and the Mean Time to Failure rating comes in at 2 million device hours.

Software and Management

Micron supports the 9300 series with its Storage Executive Software. It is compatible with both Windows and Linux. With it, you can monitor and manage the SSD. Micron’s 9300 series can also be updated from a single secure signed firmware file without the need to reset the system, helping prevent downtime.

A Closer Look

As mentioned earlier, the 9300 series SSDs come in a U.2 15mm form factor, unlike the 9200 series that has models in the HH-HL AIC form factor, too. Stuffing this compact enclosure with so much NAND and such a big controller can heat it up under load when consuming upwards of 21W at the highest capacity. That is why Micron opted to etch fins and cooling vents into the case to aid cooling.

Once cracked open, we see that the PCB in all its glory. The 9300 series is powered by Microsemi's Flashtec 2nd generation NVMe controller, the PM8607 NVMe2016. It features 32 independent flash channels, each supporting up to 8 chip enables for high performance and capacity, but Micron may not be taking advantage of all of them. In Micron’s literature on the drive, it states that it only has 16 channels. Regardless of specifics, it is still quite impressive to open up our 7.68TB sample and see 32 of Micron’s 64L 3D TLC NAND packages jammed in there.

Additionally, the controller supports the nine 1GB DDR4 2666MHz CL19 DRAM chips configured in an ECC arrangement for FTL caching and is backed by a large supercapacitor to improve reliability.

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Micron 9300 Sequential Performance Results

Comparison Products

In today’s review, we’ve included a few various types of enterprise-class SSDs from SATA to AIC NVMe devices with memory faster than traditional flash. While these comparisons drives are not direct competitors, they do help to show where the 9300 PRO stands. The list includes a very powerful, but now aging 3.2TB Toshiba PX04 with 2D NAND, and Intel’s slightly older 1.2TB DC P3520, which features last-gen 32L 3D TLC.

We also threw in two very fast drives into the mix, the 960GB Samsung 983 ZET, which is the lowest-latency NAND product we've tested, and the 960GB Intel Optane SSD 905P. While the 905P is technically a consumer product, its 3D XPoint memory allows for much faster performance than flash across almost any workload. We also included an 800GB Toshiba HK4E, a powerful and efficient SATA SSD, to highlight the big performance gap between NVMe and SATA drives.

128KB Sequential Read Performance

Samsung’s 983 and Intel’s Optane 905P are more optimized for shallow queue depths (QD) than their competitors, and it really shows. At QD1, they both read at over 1750MB/s. Micron’s 9300 on the other hand, while it can deliver a ton of performance when there are many data requests at once, a single request proves somewhat difficult. Delivering just 650MB/s at QD 1, the drive starts slow and lands between the PX04 and DC P3520. When workload intensity increases past QD4, however, it scores first place in the sequential read test at 3.5 GB/s.

128KB Sequential Write Performance

The Micron 9300 PRO delivers the fastest write performance of any single-controller SSD we've tested, maintaining an impressively low write latency of just 0.68ms QD1. This nearly matches the Samsung 983 ZET, which outperforms it by only 0.02ms (0.66ms), but once the drives are tasked with multiple requests at once, the Micron takes off to deliver 3.5 GB/s of write throughput, just as it did in reading.

128KB Mixed Sequential Performance

Trading blows with the Intel Optane 905P, the Micron 9300 PRO’s mixed sequential performance is pretty good, even without heavy over provisioning like the 9300 MAX. It also exceeds Samsung’s write performance at QD 4 and beyond.

128KB Sequential Power Consumption

Average power consumption ranged from ~6.5W up to a little over 17W during sequential workloads. Slower sequential performance at lower QDs results in rather low efficiency scores. At QD4, the 9300 takes second place overall but falls behind even the SATA Toshiba HK4E in the 100% read workload. Once it gets loaded up with work, however, the efficiency score climbs to second place during a read workload and first place overall in mixed write-heavy workloads at higher queue depths.

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4KB Performance Results

4KB Random Read Performance

Micron’s 9300 PRO hits a high of 850K IOPS at a queue depth of 256, just as rated. This is higher than both the Intel Optane SSD 905P and the Samsung 983 ZET, even with their faster memories. But, while peak IOPS is higher on the 9300 PRO, these SSDs exhibit a significantly lower latency profile at the low and middle range of our QD sweep. The Samsung drive also surpasses the 9300 PRO up to QD128. The Micron otherwise has very similar performance to the PX04 and DC P3520.

4KB Random Write Performance

When it comes to pure random writes, Micron’s 9300 PRO can deliver up to 150,000 IOPS. This lands behind both the Intel Optane SSD 905P and Toshiba PX04, but is much faster than the Samsung 983 ZET and others. At QD 1, it ties the Samsung 983 ZET, but leaves it behind at QD2 and beyond.

4KB Mixed Random Performance

When it comes to mixed performance, the 9300 PRO appears to be a bit less latent than the Toshiba PX04 and DC P3520 up to QD 128, though it is pretty similar to the PX04 overall. The 983 ZET has lower write performance at higher QDs, but even so, at lower QDs, the Micron can’t touch it or Intel Optane’s massive performance. At QD 1-4 these devices display very low latency profiles and offer 3 to 4 times the performance of the 9300 PRO.

4KB Random Power Consumption

The 9300 PRO is much more efficient in sequential workloads. Micron’s 9300 PRO consumed a peak of 17W during our random 4KB write testing. Hammering it with write-heavy 4KB tasks, the 9300 PRO doesn't have the best efficiency, trailing the Intel DC P3520. But this is to be expected as it has significantly more flash than the comparison drives, and random writes take the biggest toll on the read-optimized drive.

During reads, the 9300 PRO's efficiency was lower than all the drives in our comparison pool up to QD 16, but it improved as performance increased over QDs 16. Beyond QD64, the 9300 PRO outperformed the pack in read efficiency and ranked second to the Samsung 983 ZET.

Latency Distribution and Consistency

When comparing enterprise and data center-class storage, it is always important to not only make sure the product delivers the rated performance from the manufacturer, but also ensure it will deliver a good quality of service. Or in other words, solid performance consistency. There are multiple ways to test the consistency of an SSD, but we chose a rather simple way to display it on a scale from 0-100% by taking the lowest IOPS result and dividing it by the average. We took out chunks of our results at a QD of 4 from 100% write, 70/30% read/write, and 100% read.

The Micron 9300 PRO delivers exceptional consistency in read and mixed read/write workloads. But, without the extra over provisioning that the 9300 MAX features, it fell behind slightly in random writes, even though consistency is still solid.

This is also a good time to check out the latency distribution of the multiple SSDs and interfaces we have in our comparison pool. Ideally, the fastest drives will have the majority of their latency results fall into lower brackets and will complete more operations overall.

It’s easy to see that Intel Optane memory is in a league of its own, although Samsung’s Z-NAND does a pretty good job at keeping up with its ultra-low latency design. Conventional 3D TLC, both 3D and planar, can deliver similar latency results to one another. The Micron 9300 PRO proves to be just slightly less latent than the PX04 at QD 4 during a 70/30% read/write test.

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Conclusion

The 9300 series is consistently fast, responsive, and may be the perfect match for your next upgrade. The 9300's 3.5 GB/s of sequential throughput saturates its interface during both read and write workloads, and can deliver upwards of 850,000/310,000 read/write IOPS. But with terabytes of Micron’s 64L 3D TLC feeding into the monstrous PM8607 NVMe2016 controller, it can be a bit power-hungry. The drive is a powerhouse at mid- to high-QDs, which is also where it is most efficient, so be sure to load up these SSDs with a heavy workload to get the most out of them.

Latency is still pretty similar to other flash-based devices. At best you’re going to see response times of 86-100us read, and around 11-20us in write workloads depending on your specific drive’s configuration and system hardware. While this is fast, especially considering its performance in steady state, it still doesn’t match Intel’s Optane SSDs and Samsung’s 983 with Z-NAND. For applications that need the absolute lowest latency, those may be a better option at the expense of capacity and/or write performance, and of course, upfront costs.

We like the compact size and flexibility of the 9300 series. This time around Micron dropped the ECO model and the AIC form factor because the market demands U.2 devices due to their compact size and high density. But, while Micron dropped a model and form factor, it helps to streamline the product stack and makes the buying decision even easier.

The 9300 series SSDs also gives IT admins a simple choice to leverage either more capacity or performance. If the performance of the 9300 MAX is needed, but budgets are tight, the PRO can be reconfigured to match the MAX. Pricing depends on model and volume, but Micron has cut costs compared to the 9200 series, so there’s some value to be had with the new release.

The sheer capacity is impressive, too. The 9300 PRO maxes out at 15.36TB, a nice bump up from 11TB over the previous-gen’s highest-capacity drive. That enables more storage density, and thus lower TCO. The drives also come with a proven enterprise feature set to ensure your data is not only fast but safe and protected. Overall, the Micron 9300 series is a solid buy and, without a doubt, earns our recommendation.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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