Kingston announced the release of its 4th generation HS4 All-In-One Media Reader, which improves upon previous versions by now supporting all major card formats. The latest SD card speeds (UHS-I, UHS-II) and CF type I and II (UDMA 0-7) are now fully supported. The USB 3.0 interface is backward compatible with USB 2.0 to ensure a wide range of usability.
We’re finally beginning to see more manufacturers bring M.2 SSDs to market, and Kingston HyperX now has SATA and PCIe interface units available. The SATA interface M.2 SSDs offer similar performance to the standard 2.5″ design we’ve been using for some time now, but with the advantage of much smaller space requirements. Of course, the most intriguing M.2 interface is PCIe, which promises wicked speeds over and above 1000 MB/s. Kingston sent over one of their new HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe x4 SSDs so we can see for ourselves what these drives are capable of.
Now that SSDs have been out for a few years, manufacturers have managed to saturate the SATA 6 GB/s interface with as much speed as it’s capable of. With that in mind, attention has been turned to greater longevity, reliability, and energy efficiency. With the new 850 EVO series SSDs, Samsung aims to do just that by utilizing their new proprietary MGX controller and 3D V-NANA flash memory. So, let’s take the Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB SSD for a spin and see what Samsung has in store.
It’s been seven months since the Haswell-E X99 platform was released to the masses, but their appears to be no end in sight as far as new motherboard options hitting the market. Case in point is GIGABYTE’s recent announcement of four new X99 Champion series motherboards to add to their already impressive X99 family. GIGABYTE was kind enough to send along one of their new Champion series motherboards for us to have a look at. The X99-Gaming 5P is on tap today and is obviously aimed squarely at the enthusiast gaming market.
The push is on for motherboard manufacturers to get USB 3.1 capable products to market. ASUS is certainly doing their part as witnessed by their recent refresh to many of their Z97 and X99 motherboards making them USB 3.1 ready. Depending on the motherboard, ASUS will either provide USB 3.1 connectivity built into the motherboard’s rear I/O area or provide a PCI-E expansion card. Additionally, ASUS plans to sell the PCI-E expansion card separately, so people that already own a compatible ASUS motherboard can come along for the ride too.
Up until the release of the Z97-Pro Gamer, ASUS didn’t have much to offer a budget-minded gamer looking to build a Z97 based system. That all changes with the release of this board, and ASUS now joins other manufacturers in this very competitive arena. What really spurred this market segment was the release of Intel’s G3258 Anniversary Edition processor and the potential to acquire a Z97 gaming motherboard and CPU for just over $200. That should leave most builders a substantial amount to invest in a high-end video card, which will ultimately result in a relatively low cost, but great performing gaming system.
Samsung has been what I would consider a major player in the consumer SSD market for a couple of years now. They had at least two well known drives on the market in their 840 EVO and Pro lines, each serving a different audience. The EVO was the barely slower and best bang for the buck drive, while the Pro was the performance king of the family and still had good pricing. Both drives had a great track record for reliability. The next generation, the 850 series, greets us with second generation 3D V-NAND with the same goals as the previous generation. It’s time to take a look and see if the Samsung 850 Pro 512GB performs as well as we expect it to.
Seeing motherboards with M.2 ports is nothing new as manufacturers have been doing this for some time now. Up until recently, there haven’t been many M.2 SSDs available to actually use this new technology, but we’re beginning to see memory manufacturers roll out their new offerings. M.2 SSDs come in a couple different interface options – SATA 6 GB/s or PCI-E x2/4, with the latter obviously being the faster and more expensive option. Today’s ADATA M.2 SSD sample uses the SATA 6 GB/s interface, which should perform similar to a standard 2.5″ SSD most of us have plugged into our motherboards.
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