Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Microsoft brought DirectStorage to Windows PCs this week. The API promises faster load times and more detailed graphics by letting game developers make apps that load graphical data from the SSD directly to the GPU. Now, Nvidia and IBM have created a similar SSD/GPU technology, but they are aiming it at the […]
Enlarge / Western Digital’s recent WD Black SN770 SSD. (credit: Western Digital) Solid-state storage devices have so far been spared from the scarcity and high prices that the chip shortage has wrought upon graphics cards, cars , Raspberry Pi boards , and innumerable other products. But that may change soon, due in part to a […]
Enlarge (credit: Silicon Motion) Most companies still haven’t shifted their entire NVMe SSD lineups to use PCI Express 4.0, but PCIe 5.0 SSDs for PCs are already on the horizon. Storage company Silicon Motion said in a recent earnings call that it expects its PCIe 5.0-capable SSD controllers for consumer SSDs will be available sometime […]
Enlarge / A major new update to the PS5 firmware lets players upgrade the console’s internal storage via an M.2 SSD. Players will be able to add specific M.2 SSDs to the PS5 with a new system update rolling out tomorrow, two months after a beta that featured the option was made available to users […]
Enlarge / You can’t see the part number which distinguishes the newer, slower drive from the older, faster one on the box—you need to check the PN field in the top center of the label on the drive itself. (credit: Jim Salter) Recently, major SSD vendors Crucial and Western Digital have both been caught swapping […]
Enlarge / Newer versions of Western Digital’s WD Blue SN550 may perform worse than older ones. (credit: Western Digital) Western Digital’s WD Blue SN550 budget SSD is a well-reviewed, popular NVMe device that has regularly shown up on various sites’ “best SSD” lists since it was released at the tail-end of 2019. The drive uses […]
Enlarge / The new Intel H20 looks like a standard NVMe SSD—but it packs both slow QLC NAND and ultra-fast Optane into separate chips on the same M.2 drive. (credit: Intel) Intel’s got a new consumer-targeted storage product, called Optane H20—as in H twenty, not water. The new device is an M.2 2280 format drive, […]
Enlarge / The fastest storage you’ll never see: NVMe drives generally get hidden beneath an aluminum heat sink. In our test rig, that heat sink is also underneath its RTX 2070 Super GPU. (credit: Jim Salter) Samsung’s newest generation of midgrade consumer NVMe storage is out today—the new drive is simply dubbed the “Samsung 980,” […]