Sabrent has prepared a new line of SSDs that’s designed for hardcore Chia coin (XCH) plotting. The details are still pretty slim, but the Plotripper SSDs should make any Chia farmer very happy.
Plotting Chia can kill even the best SSDs in a matter of weeks, depending on how serious you take your Chia farming business. That’s where the Plotripper and Plotripper Pro SSDs come in. Sabrent is keeping a tight lip on the recipe that the company is utilizing for the SSDs. We suspect that the vendor may be using the Phison E18 controller. One thing’s for sure, though. Plotripper and Plotripper drives boast phenomenal endurance.
Sabrent rates the Plotripper and Plotripper Pro 2TB SSDs for 10,000 TBW and 54,000 TBW, respectively. Those figures would put the drives in the same ballpark as enterprise and Intel Optane SSDs. For comparison, a typical 2TB consumer TLC drive is good for around 3,000 TBW. That’s 233% higher endurance on the Plotripper and 1,700% on the Plotripper Pro.
Sabrent Plotripper, Plotripper Pro Specifications
SSD
Capacity
TBW
Plotripper Pro 2TB
2TB
54,000
Plotripper Pro 1TB
1TB
27,000
Plotripper 2TB
2TB
10,000
Write performance is just as important as the drive’s endurance when it comes to plotting Chia. However, the manufacturer hasn’t exposed the complete specification sheet for the Plotripper or Plotripper Pro SSDs yet.
If the drives do end up using the Phison E18 controller, we could expect PCIe 4.0-grade speeds out of Sabrent’s new offerings. Sadly, that means you’ll need a Rocket Lake or Ryzen 3000 platform to fully exploit the Plotripper and Plotripper Pro SSDs without crossing into the enterprise side.
With enterprise-level endurance, we don’t expect the Plotripper or Plotripper Pro to cost anything less than an arm and a leg. Sabrent, however, claims that its latest product line offers the “best unit cost for plotting.” While we wait for further details about the SSD’s pricing and availability, we’ll take Sabrent’s word for now.
Marvell has introduced the industry’s first SSD controllers for NVMe 1.4b-compliant drives that will feature a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. The Bravera SC5 controllers are designed primarily for bandwidth and performance-hungry servers used in cloud data centers. They will provide up to 14 TB/s throughput as well as up to 2 million random read IOPS, with the former being two times faster than today’s fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Marvell’s new controllers have already gained support from various industrial partners, including AMD, Intel, Facebook, Microsoft, and Renesas.
Marvell’s Bravera SC5 family includes two controllers: the eight-channel MV-SS1331 and the 16-channel MV-SS1333. The controllers have absolutely the same functionality and performance specifications: up to 14 GB/s sequential write speed, up to 9 GB/s sequential write speed, up to 2M random read IOPS, and up to 1M write IOPS.
The MV-SS1333 with its eight 1600 MT/s NAND channels will power SSDs with higher capacity. It is noteworthy that the MV-SS1333 is the industry’s first 16-channel controller that comes in a 20x20mm form factor and can be used for EDSFF E1.S (“Ruler”) SSDs.
(Image credit: Marvell)
Like other modern high-end SSD controllers, Marvell’s Bravera SC5 are fully-fledged system-on-chips (SoCs) packing serious compute performance and special-purpose accelerators. The Bravera SC5 family uses Arm’s Cortex-R8, Cortex-M7, and Cortex-M7 cores, yet Marvell hasn’t disclosed the exact core count. A hardware-based SLA enforcer accompanies the CPU cores to minimize server CPU utilization. The silicon also has DMA controllers, firmware accelerators, a dedicated security engine (FIPS root-of-trust with AES-256 and TCG Opal compliant), and a NAND flash controller featuring the company’s 5th Generation NANDEdge LDPC engine.
(Image credit: Marvell)
Marvell’s new controllers featuring the NANDEdge v5 LDPC engine can work with any type of 3D NAND, including SLC, MLC, TLC, and QLC from any vendor, including Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Western Digital, and YMTC.
(Image credit: Marvell)
The main selling points of Marvell’s Braver SC5 controllers are dual-port PCIe 5.0 x4, NVMe 1.4b, and extreme performance. Meanwhile, the SoCs allow manufacturers to build one SSD model for different usage models, including NVMe, SEF, ZNS, and Open Channel. Customers can also use the controller to build drives in various form factors, including E1.S, E1.L, E3, and U.2. Marvell is also especially proud of its new controllers’ relatively moderate power consumption: the MV-SS1331 consumes up to 8.7W, whereas the MV-SS1331 consumes up to 9.8W.
“There are many data center technology challenges. These include the need for PCIe 5.0 for performance scaling, E1.S for density and serviceability, and OCP data center NVMe SSD support for product features. Marvell’s Bravera SC5 SSD controller family supports technology that enables next-generation hyperscale SSD use cases,” said Ross Stenfort, Hardware System Engineer, Storage, Facebook.
Marvell is currently sampling the new controller with select customers. It is noteworthy that Marvell has already gained support from leading server platform developers and cloud datacenter operators, so it is logical to expect the adoption of PCIe 5.0 SSDS powered by Marvell’s Bravera SC5 controllers sooner rather than later.
Keeping in mind that Intel plans to release its PCIe 5.0-supporting Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ in late 2021 or early 2022, we can expect the first PCIe 5.0 SSDs to be available around the same time.
Acer announced the Swift X, its first laptop in the Swift line to use discrete graphics, during a virtual event today. The laptop will use AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti when it launches in June starting for $899.99.
The laptop, which Acer says is meant for creators, editors and streamers, has a 14-inch, 1920 x 1080 IPS display and what the company says is an 85.7% screen-to-body ratio. It comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage.
CPU
Up to AMD Ryzen 7 5800U
GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti
Display
14-inch, 1920 x 1080, IPS
RAM
Up to 16GB
Storage
Up to 2TB SSD
Battery
59 WHr
Starting Price
$899.99
The laptop weighs 3.06 pounds and is housed in a 0.7-inch metal chassis. Acer is showing off a handful of colors, including blue, pink and a sort of off-yellow, but that’s just on the lid. The rest of each laptop is the same silver color.
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Other features include USB Type-C for data and charging, Wi-Fi 6 and a fingerprint reader. The company also claims its BlueLightShield (yes, one word) tech will prevent eye strain.
To cool the thin laptop, Acer claims that air inlets in the keyboard will let it expel 8-10% more heat than other laptops (hopefully without overheating your fingers).Other cooling efficiencies include more and thinner heatpipes.
This seems like a slight pivot for the Swift line, which Acer previously used to prioritize thinness and lightness above all else. In the past it’s gone as far as
removing any click mechanism from the touchpad
and adjusting the keyboard layout to remove the function row to keep things light and compact.
Beyond a U.S. release, we’ll see the Swift X launch later in the summer in Europe, the Middle East and Africa starting at €899 and In China in the third quarter of this year beginning at ¥6,499.
Acer’s other announcements at its event include refreshes of its Concept D line of creator workstations, new Predator gaming laptops, monitors and peripherals as well as an update to new CPUs and GPUs in its existing gaming desktops.
There’s a new Acer Predator in town: the 16-inch Predator Triton 500 SE. It has a new subtle design with a touch of RGB as well as the latest chips from Intel and Nvidia. It also has a feature that I am much too excited about: a 16:10 display.
Put this next to the previous Triton 500, and this device looks much more like something you might bring to a meeting or a lecture. It’s not quite as flashy. The last model’s glowing Triton logo has been removed from the center of the lid and squeezed into the top-right corner. The previous Triton also had “Predator” printed along the large bottom bezel, which has been replaced by a smaller and subtler Triton logo as well. The corners are sharper, the keyboard is a bit blacker — it’s a more modern, professional look.
No more logo in the center.
The biggest thing you’ll probably notice, though, is that the laptop is taller. The new 16-inch 16:10 display affords extra vertical space compared to the 15.6-inch 16:9 display on the previous Triton. I got to spend a bit of time with a pre-production unit of the Triton 500 SE, and I’m going to have trouble going back to a 13-inch 16:9. This is one of the roomiest displays I’ve ever used. I had no trouble stacking 2-3 tabs and apps alongside each other and jumping in between them. I never had to zoom out of anything.
There are three panel options: a 165Hz LCD panel, a 165Hz Mini LED panel, or a 240Hz IPS PolarBlack panel (which Acer says will cover 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut). All the screens have 2560 x 1600 resolution. Mini LED, which also powers the screen of Apple’s latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro, is unusual to see on laptops. It’s designed to emulate the look of an OLED screen on an LCD panel, and it can produce excellent contrast.
The Triton has new chips as well; it’s configurable with up to an 11th-Gen Intel Core i9 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. (Acer hasn’t shared the clock speeds and graphics power you can expect from these chips yet, so I look forward to digging those up during the review process.) It also provides more ambitious specs for power users than previous Tritons, supporting up to a whopping 64GB of memory and 4TB of storage. (Last year’s Triton 500 maxed out at 32GB and 2TB, respectively.)
It’s a roomy screen.
The Triton 500 SE has pretty much every port you might need, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one on each side, in addition to two USB 3.2 Gen 2, one HDMI 2.1, one 3.5mm audio jack, one SD card reader, an ethernet port, and a DC-in for power. One of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports supports power-off USB charging as well.
There’s a fingerprint in the top-left corner of the touchpad. The webcam in the top bezel actually didn’t look too terrible in my testing and produced a viewable picture in low-light conditions. It doesn’t support Windows Hello, though.
Finally, Acer is also very excited about the new cooling system, which features what it refers to as its “5th-Gen Aeroblade 3D fan” in a triple-fan system with five heat pipes. Acer says this will provide up to 10 percent better airflow than the previous Triton 500. We’ll have more specific metrics once we’ve been able to write a full review of this device; my first impression is that the fans were often audible on this pre-production unit, but I never felt an uncomfortable amount of heat and never saw the CPU get anywhere close to a worrying temperature.
Power port, Ethernet, USB-A, USB-C, audio jack on the left.
I really like the keyboard, it’s nice and clicky.
You can make various fun effects with the per-key RGB keys.
HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, SD slot, and a lock slot on the right.
Altogether, a fun machine to use — but we’ll have to wait for the full review before making a recommendation.
The Predator Triton 500 SE will be available in North America in June, starting at $1,749.99. The base configuration that Best Buy will be selling for that price includes a Core i7-11800H, a GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and the 165Hz LCD display.
Acer also announced an updated version of its bulkier, pricier, and high-performance Predator Helios 500, which also has new 11th-Gen processors and Nvidia 3000-series GPUs. This laptop can come with a 4K Mini LED 120Hz display or an FHD 360Hz display. The Helios can be configured with up to 64GB of RAM as well. That model is coming to North America in August starting at $2,499.99.
Western Digital, owner of the SanDisk brand, has announced a new product called the Pro-Dock 4, and it’s all I’ve ever wanted in a card reading solution: it lets you mix and match four card reading modules, which can all be read simultaneously, and connect them all to your computer using a single Thunderbolt 3 cable. This dock not only fills the hole that was left in my heart by Lexar’s Workflow hub, but it makes me completely forget it existed: the Workflow didn’t have Thunderbolt daisy-chaining or a 260W power supply for charging devices and accessories (though I will admit that Lexar’s SSD modules were kind of neat).
SanDisk says it’ll be making modules for the dock that support CFast, CFexpress, Red’s Mini-Mags, CF, microSD, and SD formats.
SanDisk’s readers, which work independently or as part of the dock.Image: SanDisk
The modules themselves will be available individually, which is great for a few reasons. For one, it lets you mix and match your dock’s card reading abilities: mainly shoot Red but use a Canon R6 as a B-cam? You can load up three Red Mini-Mag readers and a combo SD / microSD / CF card reader. If you’re all-in on CFast, you could load up four of those readers. And if you change what you’re shooting with in the future, you can buy new modules instead of having to get a whole new dock.
The modularity also allows for portability. If you’re going to a location and just need to bring along one reader, you can pop it out of the dock and take it along with you — the individual readers use USB-C 10Gbps to connect to either your computer or the dock.
To be clear, I’m not a video or photo professional, and I certainly don’t need this much card-reading capacity. I’ve never even held half the cards these things can read. But does that stop me from wanting one of these docks, loaded out with enough card readers to dump every SD card I own at once? Absolutely not.
The prices for the dock and readers haven’t yet been announced, but SanDisk expects them to go on sale this summer. Lexar’s hub cost around $200 at launch, plus the price of modules (I paid around $40 for the XQD module), and it did way less. I can only wait in fear to see the price tag of SanDisk’s version.
The ongoing Chia coin craze has already increased prices of high-capacity HDDs and SSDs in retail quite significantly. Since demand for storage devices is not going to get any lower, Taiwan-based makers of SSDs are developing special-purpose SSDs for Chia mining that they plan to sell directly to miners. Furthermore, drive makers expect Chia to consume considerable 3D NAND production capacities in the coming months.
Adata, Apacer, Phison Electronics, and TeamGroup all reported significant increases of SSD orders in April when compared to March, according to DigiTimes. Adata said that demand for its SSDs increased by 400% – 500% sequentially last month, TeamGroup also saw an impressive increase and expressed optimism about the short-term Chia farming demand for SSDs. Other makers tend to agree that demand for SSDs will remain strong in the coming months.
In a bid to meet demand and offer farmers the components they need to make the best Chia plotting PC builds, Adata, Phison, and TeamGroup have started developing appropriate SSDs (or at least have created task forces).
Since the majority of SSD makers have enterprise-grade drives designed for write-intensive workloads in their lineups, developing high-endurance Chia-optimized storage solutions should not pose a significant challenge for their engineering teams. Essentially, they will have to develop high-endurance SSDs based on consumer-grade 3D NAND (with loads of over-provisioning space) that do not have enterprise features. TeamGroup has already announced its first SSDs for Chia mining and expects to ship them in high volumes in Q3 2021.
What is interesting is that Adata, Phison, and TeamGroup are looking at ways to ship their Chia farming SSDs directly to mining farms, so these drives may not end up in retail (just like we do not see many high-end HDDs and SSDs in retail). To some degree, this will ensure that large Chia farming operations will not get their drives from retail and inflate prices, which is good news. There is bad news too.
High-capacity high-endurance SSDs for Chia mining will naturally increase demand for 3D NAND memory in general. Phison already told DigiTimes that Chia SSDs would “consume considerably all the available capacity” at 3D NAND makers. To that end, demand for both 3D NAND and SSD controller are set to increase, which will cause price hikes.
While in-person Computex has been canceled, companies still have new product to roll out, and today Western Digital adds a trio of new drives to its gaming-focused WD_Black line. There are a pair of D30 Game Drives targeting next-gen consoles, with one model aiming for the PlayStation 5 market, and a WD_Black D30 Game Drive SSD for Xbox targeting Sony’s console competition. But for PC builders and gamers, the internal WD_Black SN750 SE will be of most interest, as it brings PCIe Gen4 support at a starting price of just $49.99. But without DRAM, it will probably have a hard time making it to our best SSD list.
But first, let’s tackle the console-focused externals. Both models will come in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the Xbox model starting at $99.99 and the more generic WD_Black D30 Game Drive SSD starting at $10 less ($89.99). Both come in typical bulky-looking rugged housings with detachable stands, with the non-Xbox model delivering claimed speeds of up to 900 MBps. This drive will allow you to play and store PS4 games, but only allow for archiving of PS5 games. (The PS5 only plays the latest-gen games from the internal SSD).
The D30 Game Drive SSD for Xbox, meanwhile, will ship with a one-month membership of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to help make up for the slight price difference. Similar to the other drive, you’ll be able to play and store Xbox One games on the drive, but only archive Xbox Series X/S titles. WD says the white-accented Xbox-branded drive should arrive in June, while the more generic black model should be available today at “select retailers” and the WD Store.
(Image credit: WD)
Shifting to the new internal M.2 drive, the WD_Black SN750 SE is an NVMe drive that supports PCIe 4.0 (and is also backwards compatible with Gen3). WD says it will deliver read speeds of up to 3,600 MBps. So it’s no barn-burner, but WD says it will consume up to 30% less power than the previous SN750, which may help its appeal for laptop gamers. Note, though, that this model will be a DRAM-less drive, which no-doubt helps keep costs (and power consumption) down.
The WD_Black SN750 SE will start at $49.99 for the 250GB model. Pricing on the 500GB and 1TB capacities has not been revealed, nor is there a mention of a 2TB model. But we’re sure to learn more (and hopefully have a full review for you) as we get closer to availability. WD says the WD_Black SN750 SE is available for preorder from WD now, and will land on store shelves this summer.
Samsung and Wacom have been partnering for 10 years now, ever since the first S Pen made an appearance with the huge-screened by the standards at the time Galaxy Note.
Samsung is the largest phone maker in the world, while Wacom is renowned for its digital pen tablets. Together they make devices that have almost no rivals in the smartphone world.
The pair’s latest joint-product is the Galaxy Book Pro 360′ S Pen, which is different from its tablet and smartphone counterparts.
Starting with the size, the S Pen that comes with the Galaxy Book Pro 360 laptop is thicker than your usual pen, which is said to feel very similar to a real pen and aid in long-term comfort.
The S Pen is also coated in a special paint, which enhances the grip during writing or sketching sessions.
The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 comes with either a 13.3-inch or 15.6-inch AMOLED, Intel’s new 11th gen processors, up to 16GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage and Mystic Bronze or Mystic Navy paint job. The S Pen is preloaded, but doesn’t have its own compartment within the laptop.
It is competition time again – this time, we have teamed up with Punch Technology to give away a high-end gaming PC worth £2799! Featuring hardware from Patriot, Cougar, Palit, Intel and Gigabyte, with an RTX 3070 and i7-11700K, this PC will be ready for any game you can throw at it.
Watch via our Vimeo channel (below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE
The full specifications for this PC include:
CPU: Intel Core i7-11700K
Graphics card: Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GamingPro
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z590 VISION D Intel Motherboard
SSD: Patriot VPN100 1TB M.2
Memory: Patriot Viper Steel RGB 32GB DDR4
Case: Cougar Gaming Blazer case
Cooling: Cougar Gaming AQUA ARGB 360mm AIO-Cooler
Power supply: Cougar Gaming GEX 850W 80 PLUS Gold Fully Modular PSU
TO WIN:
This competition is being hosted via Gleam, so all you need to do to enter is follow the instructions below. Alternatively, you can head to the competition directly on Gleam.
KitGuru Giveaway
This competition is open to UK residents only. The competition runs from Monday the 24th of May until the 7th of June. Shortly after closing, a winner will be announced on KitGuru.net. In compliance with GDPR, your entry data will be deleted after the competition is closed and your details will not be shared, we respect your privacy.
KitGuru Says: Good luck to everyone entering! We’ll be back in a few weeks to announce a winner.
Now that Intel has confirmed it is refreshing the Tiger Lake-U line-up with the Tiger Lake-R SKUs, laptop manufacturers are getting ready to launch the first laptops featuring these new processors. For now, only MSI has laptops equipped with Intel’s refreshed Tiger Lake processors up for pre-order, but other manufacturers should soon follow.
According to the links shared by @momomo_us, the retailer XoticPC is allowing customers to pre-order the MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo laptop powered by Tiger Lake-R processors: one with the i5-1155G7 and another with the i7-1195G7.
The new Intel processors are expected to feature a 4C/8T core configuration, Intel Iris Xe graphics with 96 EUs, and a 12-28W TDP. The difference between both processors seems to be the operating frequencies, where the i5-1155G7 has a 2.5GHz base clock and a 4.5GHz base clock, and the i7-1195G7 features a 2.9GHz base clock and boosts up to 5.0GHz.
As for the remaining specifications of these laptops, both pack a 16-inch QHD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and touch functionalities, up to 16GB of LPDRR4X memory, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. The i5 model is priced at $1,499, while the i7 laptop costs $1,699.
KitGuru says: If you’re looking for a slim and powerful portable machine for work and multimedia, it might be worth waiting as these new processors will deliver higher CPU clock speeds for the same price.
Phison’s PS5018-E18 is a high-performance PCIe 4.0×4 NVMe SSD controller that has flooded the market in many of the newest and fastest-performing SSDs. It offers up very fast sequential performance but has been outshined in random responsiveness by top picks like Samsung’s 980 Pro and WD_Black SN850 due in part to Micron’s B27B 96-Layer TLC flash holding it back. Today, we’re taking a deep look at the company’s next iteration that gets a little help from Micron’s fastest flash yet.
While the first generation of E18-based NVMe SSDs used flash that interfaced with the controller flash at somewhat restricted speeds of 1,200 MTps, our second-gen sample is no longer shackled by this bottleneck. Now, featuring Micron’s latest B47R 176-layer TLC flash operating at speeds of up to 1,600 MTps, our new sample offers much more competitive performance. Still, this is only a preview, and while SSDs based on this flash due to hit the market soon, they will only hit the market after a few more firmware revisions.
Specifications
Product
500GB
1TB
2TB
Pricing
$99.99
$159.99
$319.99
Capacity (User / Raw)
500GB / 512GB
1000GB / 1024GB
2000GB / 2048GB
Form Factor
M.2 2280
M.2 2280
M.2 2280
Interface / Protocol
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
Controller
Phison PS5018-E18
Phison PS5018-E18
Phison PS5018-E18
DRAM
DDR4
DDR4
DDR4
Memory
Micron 176L TLC
Micron 176L TLC
Micron 176L TLC
Sequential Read
6,500 MBps
7,000 MBps
7,000 MBps
Sequential Write
2,850 MBps
5,500 MBps
6,850 MBps
Random Read
170,000 IOPS
350,000 IOPS
650,000 IOPS
Random Write
600,000 IOPS
700,000 IOPS
700,000 IOPS
Security
AES 256-bit encryption
AES 256-bit encryption
AES 256-bit encryption
Phison’s PS5018-E18 supports both TLC and QLC flash and can address capacities of up to 8TB, but most retail products will ship in the popular 1TB and 2TB capacities. In terms of performance specifications, Phison’s E18 hasn’t changed much besides the faster 1,600 MTps flash transfer rate. Sequential speeds are rated for up to 7.4/7.0 GBps read/write and in terms of random performance, and the company claims the SSD controller is capable of 1 million random read/write IOPS, given the proper flash and tuning.
Phison seems to be moving away from full dynamic SLC caching in the traditional sense. Instead, its SLC caching algorithms are adapting to better suit not only consumer workloads but heavy prosumer workloads, too. We will cover this more in-depth later in the article.
Phison didn’t reveal anything about end-product endurance ratings with this new flash, but it may help improve endurance ratings over current-gen devices. The Phison E18 still features the company’s fourth-generation LDPC ECC and RAID ECC along with a DDR ECC engine and end-to-end data path protection to ensure your data is programmed and read reliably over the product’s useful lifespan. It also supports various security options such as Pyrite, AES 256, SHA 512, RSA 4096, and TCG Opal. Additionally, it comes with S.M.A.R.T. data reporting and Trim support and secure erase and crypto erase capability.
A Closer Look
The E18 interfaces with the host over a PCIe 4.0 x4 link and is NVM 1.4 compliant. Our 2TB sample comes in an M.2 2280 double-sided form factor, but smaller capacities come in single-sided form factors for broad compatibility with the latest ultra-thin mobile devices. This is in contrast to Samsung and WD M.2 SSDs, all of which come only in single-sided form factors.
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The PS5018-E18 controller is an eight-channel, DRAM-based design. Our 2TB sample features two 1GB SK hynix DDR4 ICs, one on each side of the PCB. It leverages a Penta-core design with three single-core Cortex R5 CPUs handling the host/read/write tasks while an additional R5 CPU, in a lower-clocked dual-core configuration, acts as a co-processor. The E18’s primary cores are clocked much higher than the older E16’s cores, at 1 GHz versus 733 MHz.
The E18 comes with CoXPorcessor 2.0 technology, which offloads some of the firmware code from the primary cores to the dual-core R5 to ensure responsive QoS when hammered with heavy sustained workloads and aid power efficiency. One of the co-processor cores optimizes NAND die-queues to the flash while the other is for managing the DRAM/NAND tables.
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The controller is manufactured on TSMC’s 12nm process technology and comes with multiple features to keep thermals under control while operating at high speeds. It features ASPM and ASPT support, can transition into the L1.2 low power state to sip just 3mW at idle, and can thermal throttle to preserve data integrity over performance.
Phison sent over our sample with a sleek-looking heat sink, but this heat sink does not necessarily indicate that retail models will require heat sinks to keep them cool under most consumer workloads. Although, when this controller is paired with 2TB of flash, it can gulp down over 8 watts of power under sustained load, which can create quite a bit of heat.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Speaking of the flash, our 2TB sample comes with thirty-two 512 Gb dies of Micron’s new B47R 176L TLC, aligning with the controller’s native chip enable capability to optimize interleaving, and thus, performance. Micron’s 176L TLC offers a significant improvement over previous generations, and not just due to its high layer count.
This flash features the company’s new replacement-gate architecture that combines charge traps with CMOS-under array (CuA) technology, allowing for roughly a 30% smaller die size than its competitors. Enabled through multiple advancements in the new architecture and firmware support, operating interface speeds clock in at 1,600 MTps, which improves read and write speed by roughly 35% compared to the company’s previous-generation floating-gate 96L TLC.
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Architecturally, Micron replaced the polysilicon control gates with metal, and it uses a different etching method compared to traditional NAND. This reduces resistance, thus allowing the program pulse to ramp up quickly, reducing programming complexities and overhead. The design reduces the electric field duration on the circuits since they can be programmed much more quickly. Micron also increased the etch diameter, allowing for more structural stability as the company ramps layer counts in future generations of the flash.
Additionally, in traditional NAND, cell-to-cell capacitive coupling issues limit performance, but by utilizing a nonconductive layer of silicon nitride (SiN) acting as a NAND storage cell, the replacement-gate design demonstrates almost no capacitance between cells.
These changes, along with other cell geometry adjustments, directly improve performance, endurance, conserve energy, and allow for increased storage capacity, especially as Micron continues to develop newer iterations of its flash.
It’s no secret that farming Chia might drastically reduce an SSD’s lifespan. The company behind the cryptocurrency published a blog post on Monday that effectively gave wannabe Chia farmers two options: Either stop farming on consumer SSDs or stop complaining about the endurance of those drives.
”The Chia team and community advocate using data center class SSDs or consumer drives meant for high-end desktops and workstations with a high TBW endurance rating for the plotting process,” Chia Network VP of Storage Business Development Jonmichael Hands said. “If a user selects a high-endurance data center SSD, they can plot for up to 10 years before wearing out the device during the plotting process.”
Hands said that consumer-grade SSDs are designed to handle much less intensive tasks, which explains why it’s possible to wear out a cheap 512GB drive in as little as 40 days by farming Chia on it. That reduced lifespan combined with Chia’s high price could lead to a storage shortage as miners rush to farm as much of the cryptocurrency as they can before the market corrects itself (or consumer SSDs become more expensive.)
Hands also quoted a relevant tweet from Chia Network founder Bram Cohen:
(Image credit: Twitter)
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all consumer SSDs lack the grit required to farm Chia. “The Chia team realizes that consumer SSDs are the ones that are generally available,” Hands explained, “and there are some models that have enough endurance where users can plot all the farming capacity they have and still have a surplus of endurance.” But it’s up to aspiring farmers to find the best SSDs for farming, which we address in our guide on how to farm Chia.
The messaging is clear, though: There’s little Chia Network can—or at least will—do to make farming Chia less intensive. That puts the onus on would-be farmers to find whichever drives hit their desired performance, durability, and return on investment. It might not be the most satisfying response, but at least the company was direct about who should take the blame when a given SSD starts to fail.
If you’ve been following the SSD space at least a little bit, you definitely know Phison. An SSD controller vendor that started with low-performance budget chips, Phison has improved tremendously since and is now offering solutions that rival the fastest controllers available. Phison was founded in 2000 in Taiwan and is shipping hundreds of millions of controllers each year.
The Phison E18 controller is the company’s first PCI-Express Gen 4 controller. It has been used on drives like the Corsair MP600 Pro, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, and Addlink S95. In our MP600 Pro review, we found that Corsair’s fastest SSD delivers performance comparable to the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850.
All these Phison E18-based drives have one thing in common: They use 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash from Micron, also known as B27B. These flash chips were released in 2018, so they aren’t exactly based on the latest technology. Especially compared to Samsung, this aging flash tech puts the Phison E18+Micron B27B combination at a small performance disadvantage. That’s why Phison has now qualified Micron’s 176-layer B47R TLC flash chips for the E18 controller. Technically, the controller is the same physical silicon as all changes are done in firmware, which helps keep manufacturing cost down.
Today, we are previewing the performance of this Phison E18+Micron 176-layer B47R flash by using a pre-production sample SSD provided directly by Phison. The drive uses not only B47R, but B47R Fortis Flash, which is the enterprise version of regular B47R. While rated for much higher endurance, it should be very similar otherwise.
Phison hasn’t indicated any pricing because it’s ultimately the SSD vendor’s decision. I have no knowledge of how expensive B47R is compared to B27B, but I doubt it’ll be cheaper. The controller itself shouldn’t be significantly different in pricing because it is the same silicon with firmware changes.
High demand for PCs and, importantly, desktop PCs has already resulted in increased graphics card, PSU, HDD, and SSD pricing, but apparently, now DRAM is getting even more expensive, too. According to a new report from Taiwan, memory prices are set for double-digit growth in the coming months.
Contract memory prices are projected to increase by 10% – 20%, DigiTimes reports (based on a Seeking Alpha story). According to the report, memory prices may rise by up to 25%, depending on the kit. Keeping in mind that demand is high and DRAM is transiting to DDR5 memory, the increase is not surprising.
Most enthusiasts who buy premium memory kits shouldn’t be particularly worried — high-end memory kits already carry a hefty price tag. Hence, a 10% increase in DRAM IC prices isn’t too extreme. However, every penny counts when it comes to mainstream desktop and laptop PCs, so this is where that 10% – 25% contract price hike gains importance. In fact, even a 2% to 5% increase in the bill-of-materials (BOM) can increase the price of a laptop by a significant sum.
DRAM quotes are not alone when it comes to price hikes, according to the report. Prices of NAND memory have also increased by 10% so far this year, and given the current Chia Coin farming craze, it’s easy to expect that trend to continue.
Gigabyte’s latest Aorus SSD promises to eliminate thermal throttling and deliver extremely fast read speeds of up to 7GBps. The drive is called the Aorus 7000s Prem., and it comes with a gigantic black heatsink measuring up to 1.76 inches (44.7mm) in height, to ensure the drive stays cool under long-duration reads and writes.
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(Image credit: Gigabyte)
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(Image credit: Gigabyte)
The 7000s Prem. is basically identical in most ways to the standard Aorus 7000s solid-state drive that we found competitive with the best SSDs when we reviewed it. Both feature a second-generation Phison E18 8 channel controller, AES-256 encryption support, 3D TLC NAND, and a DDR4 DRAM cache. But with the 7000s Prem., you’re getting that big beefy heatsink to improve performance.
The heatsink itself is called the M.2 Thermal Guard Xtreme and features a dual-heatpipe design, a nanocarbon coating, and an aluminum M.2 baseplate to help cool the bottom part of the drive. All in all, this heatsink is just as large as some aftermarket M.2 heatsinks you can add onto your current M.2 SSDs, so performance should be excellent.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
With Gigabyte’s internal testing, the Aorus 7000s Prem. performed at its max read speed of up to 7GBps (7000MBps) consistently for over 8 hours of time, with no signs of slowing down. But just remember that this is Gigabyte’s internal testing and results could change if your chassis can’t supply enough airflow to the heatsink or you live in a hot ambient environment.
The biggest consideration when purchasing this SSD will be its size; many motherboards these days won’t have the necessary headroom for the SSD and its associated heatsink–at least not on all the M.2 slots. Many M.2 slots are located either behind the motherboard or right underneath your graphics card, so make sure you check the location of your PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot to see if you have enough clearance for the heatsink.
The 7000s Prem. will come in 1TB and 2TB flavors. Both capacities feature the same 7GB/s read speeds, however, the write speeds change from 5500MB/s on the 1TB to 6850MB/s on the 2TB model. Pricing and availability for the 7000 Prem. is unknown at this time. But given that the standard model sells for about $380, sans that honking heatsink, it’s a safe bet you’ll be looking at spending close to $500 for those precious sustained speeds.
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