In a bid to sell more products to their loyal customers, many of hardware makers these days start offering new product categories. Earlier this year at CES, MSI outlined plans to start offering SSDs under its newly introduced Spatinum brand.
At the time the company only announced its flagship module featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface rated for a 7,000 MB/s read speed as well as a 6.900 MB/s write speed, but it turns out MSI has readied a range of drives.
MSI has registered dozens of Spatinum SSD models with the with the Eurasian Economic Commission (ECC) in a bid to supply them to countries that belong to the Eurasian Economic Union, as discovered by PC Gamer. Not all products registered with the EEC actually reach the market, but at least some of them do. If MSI proceeds with what it registered with the ECC, its choice of drives will include three product families that will all include eight subfamilies, reports ComputerBase:
- The Spatinum M400: top-of-the-range SSDs with a PCIe 4.0 interface. Expected to include M480, M471, and M470 models for different sub-segments of the market. Capacities set to range from 500GB to 2TB.
- The Spatinum M300: mainstream SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 interface and capacity points from 256GB to 2TB. Projected to feature M381, M380, M371, and M370 model ranges.
- The Spatinum S200: entry-level drives in a 2.5-inch form-factor with a SATA interface that will start at 240GB and will top at 1TB.
We don't yet know the specs of MSI's drives, but typically PC and hardware makers choose to use off-the-shelf designs offered by companies like Phison and Silicon Motion, which reduces risks and allows to quickly roll out a comprehensive product family. MSI has reportedly started to offer its Spatinum M370 drives to its partner CyberPowerPC in the U.S.
Considering that MSI sells not only motherboards, but also desktops, it makes a great sense for the company to also offer a range of SSDs. Meanwhile, it is unlikely that the company will indeed proceed with eight SSD models. When you join the ranks of over 200 SSD suppliers, you'd better keep your product line lean.
