ADATA is Taiwan’s largest manufacturer of flash storage and DRAM memory for computers. They have been at the forefront of SSD development for many years, bringing us famous SSDs like the SX8200, SX900, and S510.
Today we are reviewing the ADATA SE900G, which is the company’s latest portable SSD. It is one of the first external storage drives that utilizes the blazing fast USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20 Gbps interface, which doubles the transfer rates over USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 aka USB 3.1 Gen 2. Many portable SSDs using USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 were bottlenecked by the USB interface speed, so it makes sense to increase the interface transfer rate another notch. At this time, not a single AMD AM4 motherboard natively supports the 20 Gbps USB interface, on the Intel side there’s about 60 motherboards, most using the Z590 chipset. For all our testing we used a Gigabyte GC-USB 3.2 Gen2x2 PCI-Express x4 add-in card—so we can properly test ADATA’s SE900G portable SSD.
Another highlight of ADATA’s SSD is that it has a dazzling RGB lighting implementation that covers almost the whole front of the SSD.
Internally, the SE900G uses a USB-to-PCIe bridge chip, paired with a full-size ADATA SX8200 Pro SSD. The SX8200 Pro uses Micron 96-layer B27A 3D TLC flash, and a Silicon Motion SM662EN controller, with 1 GB of Samsung DRAM.
We review the ADATA SE900G in the 2 TB variant, which retails for $285, but it is also available in capacities of 512 GB, and 1 TB. Warranty is set to five years for all these models.
Adata SE900G is a speedy USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 portable SSD that features a dazzling RGB design but lacks the features and warranty support that we see with other SSDs.
For
+ Competitive performance
+ Stylish RGB lighting
+ Competitive pricing
Against
– 3-year warranty
– Lacks AES 256-bit encryption
– Lacks IP rating
– RGB lights aren’t controllable
Features and Specifications
RGB has made its way into everything these days: fans, cases, PSUs, motherboards, GPUs, RAM, and even M.2 and SATA internal SSDs. Now we can add portable SSDs to the list, too. Adata’s new SE900G is a speedy portable USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 SSD that is also quite the show stopper with its stylish and hypnotizing RGB shine.
The SE900G also comes with plenty of horsepower under the hood in the form of an M.2 SSD that is very similar to
the company’s controversial XPG SX8200 Pro NVMe SSD
. Like the SX8200 Pro, Adata says that the components inside this SSD can change with newer revisions. Adata guarantees that the drive will meet its performance and endurance specifications regardless of the chosen internal componentry.
Paired with a fast USB 20 Gbps interface, the SE900 flies past its 10 Gbps competition and comes with reasonable pricing, making it a great value for those looking for a flashy portable SSD.
Specifications
Product
SE900G 500GB
SE900G 1TB
SE900G 2TB
Pricing
$99.99
$159.99
$289.99
Capacity (User / Raw)
512GB / 512GB
1024GB / 1024GB
2048GB / 2048GB
Interface / Protocol
USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
Included
USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A
USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A
USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A
Sequential Read
2,000 MBps
2,000 MBps
2,000 MBps
Sequential Write
2,000 MBps
2,000 MBps
2,000 MBps
Interface Controller
ASMedia ASM2364
ASMedia ASM2364
ASMedia ASM2364
NAND Controller
SM2262EN
SM2262EN
SM2262EN
DRAM
DDR4
DDR4
DDR4
Storage Media
Micron 96L TLC
Micron 96L TLC
Micron 96L TLC
Power
Bus-powered
Bus-powered
Bus-powered
Dimensions (L x W x H)
110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm
110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm
110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm
Weight
160g
160g
160g
Part Number
ASE900G-512GU32G2-CBK
ASE900G-1TU32G2-CBK
ASE900G-2TU32G2-CBK
Warranty
3-Years
3-Years
3-Years
Adata’s SE900G is available in three capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB at reasonable pricing, given its sequential performance ratings of up to 2,000 MBps of read/write throughput.
Our 2TB sample carries the lowest price-per-GB of the lineup. At $0.14 per gigabyte, it undercuts many USB 20Gbps SSDs on the market and even USB 10Gbps SSDs like SanDisk’s Extreme v2. Unfortunately, Adata only backs the SE900G with a basic three-year warranty rather than the five-year warranty we typically see with most enthusiast-grade storage.
The SE900G also doesn’t feature an Ingress Protection rating like our best external SSDs, nor does it come with AES 256-bit hardware encryption support to keep your data secure. The SE900G does come with the standard support for S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, UASP, and Trim, though.
Accessories
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The SE900G comes with two USB cables — one 11.5-inch long USB Type-C cable for newer systems, and another USB Type-C to Type-A for compatibility with older ones.
A Closer Look
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The SE900G is reasonably sized at 110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm, and it also has some heft to it. At 160 grams, the SE900G weighs two to three times more than many competing 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps portable SSDs. However, most of those drives also don’t run as fast as the SE900G and thus don’t need such robust thermal consideration. Adata’s SE900G features a large vented metal, heatsink-like back housing to provide adequate thermal dissipation under heavy use and provide some drop protection for the internals.
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A black and clear plastic panel covers the top of the SSD, allowing the RGB lights to shine through. The RGB lighting also doubles as a power indicator, and there’s also an indicator light next to the USB Type-C port.
A white PCB with eight LEDs resides under the top panel and provides the light show. Unfortunately, you cannot control the lights. This PCB also contains the ASMedia ASM2364 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe bridge chip, M.2 slot, and supporting circuitry.
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At the heart of the SSD is a drive very similar to the XPG SX8200 Pro — this variant is powered by Silicon Motion’s very responsive SM2262EN PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD controller. This controller is a high-end eight-channel, DRAM-based design that leverages dual Arm Cortex R5 CPUs clocked at 625 MHz. This controller interfaces with 2GB of Samsung DDR4 DRAM at a clock speed of 700 MHz.
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Our SE900G sample also shipped with Micron’s 512Gb B27A 96L TLC NAND flash. There are 32 dies distributed into the four NAND packages and interface with the controller at speeds of 650 MTps. Each die has a quad-plane architecture, meaning the controller can achieve even higher levels of parallelism than dual-plane flash, which equates to faster performance. It even features subdivisions of tile groupings for faster and more efficient random reads over competing flash, such as BiCS4.
The tiles are redundant latches grouped for small I/O (4K), while BiCS4 has other means such as SBL (shielded-bitline) current sense as opposed to ABL (all bitline) current sense. Also, unlike BiCS4, Micron’s 96L TLC takes advantage of the CuA (Circuitry Under the Array) architecture where the NAND cell arrays are placed on top of the periphery circuitry (decoders, sense amplifiers, timing circuitry, buffers, etc.) to help shrink the die as well as enable the use of the company’s unique tile grouping. Additionally, Micron claims its floating gate design gives it some inherent data retention benefit over competing charge trap flash, too.
It’s noteworthy that while these internal components came inside our review sample, Adata may change the DRAM, NAND, SSD controller, and/or bridge chip at any point in the production cycle for this drive. That means the components can vary over time. Adata guarantees that the drive will meet its performance and endurance specifications regardless of the chosen internal componentry.
HP has recently announced the first Radeon RX 6000M-powered laptop, the Omen 16 2021. Aside from being the first laptop with a Radeon RX 6000M GPU, it is also the first 16-inch Omen laptop.
The HP Omen 16 laptop will come with up to an Intel Core i7-11800H processor or 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. As for memory and storage, it can feature up to 32GB of DDR4-3200 and up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD or up to two 1TB PCIe SSDs in Raid 0, respectively.
The other GPU options are from Nvidia and can go up to an RTX 3070. Taking the RTX 3070 laptop GPU performance into account, we expect to see a similar option from AMD, which would most likely be the RX 6700M.
Alongside the Omen 16, HP also announced a few other laptops. One of them is the new Omen 17, which has been revamped to feature up to an RTX 3080 16GB laptop GPU and up to an Intel Core i9-11900H CPU. The other one belongs to HP new sub-brand called Victus. Designed as an entry-level gaming laptop, it will come with up to an RTX 3060 6GB or Radeon RX 5500M and up to Core i7-11800H or Ryzen 7 5800H.
The announcement didn’t include only laptops. HP introduced the new Omen 25i gaming monitor featuring an 8-bit FHD IPS panel with 165Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync compatibility, VESA DisplayHDR 400, and DCI-P3 90% coverage. Moreover, it also revealed a new add-on for the Omen Gaming Hub called Omen Oasis, which allows up to 16-person calls and streams.
KitGuru says: If you’re looking for a new gaming laptop, it might be worth waiting a little bit longer as Radeon RX 6000M laptop GPUs are finally starting to roll out.
The Intel Iris Xe DG1 graphics card has made a surprising appearance. A US retailer began listing a CyberPowerPC listing, which appears to be the very first system to feature Intel’s desktop graphics card.
The system (via VideoCardz) is an entry-level gaming PC, priced at $750 and bundled with a keyboard and mouse. The main components include an Intel DG1 graphics card, an Intel Core i5-11400F processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB NVMe SSD drive.
The Intel DG1 graphics card inside the system features 80 EUs (640 shading units) and 4GB of LPDDR4X memory on a 128-bit memory bus. For the GPU to work, an Intel B460, H410, B365, or H310C motherboard with a “special BIOS” is needed.
Despite looking like a rather basic gaming system, this desktop marks the entrance of the third competitor in the desktop graphics card market. Now with the DG1 heading into the hands of consumers, we can look ahead to the release of DG2, which should provide decent competition up against AMD and Nvidia.
KitGuru says: Intel is beginning to break into the desktop graphics market – did you ever think this day would come?
Today we are back with another extensive performance analysis, as we check out the recently-released Days Gone. As the latest formerly PlayStation-exclusive title to come to the PC, we test thirty graphics cards in this game to find out exactly what sort of GPU you need to play at maximum image quality settings. Has this game launched in a better state than when Horizon Zero Dawn first came to PC? Let’s find out.
Watch via our Vimeo channel (below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE
The first thing to know about Days Gone is that it is developed by Sony’s Bend Studio, and is built on Unreal Engine 4. Interestingly though, it uses DirectX 11, and there’s no option for DX12. That means there’s no ray tracing or DLSS features in Days Gone, something which is becoming more unusual these days.
In terms of visual settings, there are a number of options in the display menu. Textures, lighting, shadows and more can all be adjusted, while it’s great to see a field of view (FOV) slider as well as a render scale setting. There’s also a selection of quick presets – Low, Medium, High and Very High – and for our benchmarking today we opted for the Very High preset, with V-Sync of course disabled.
Driver Notes
AMD GPUs were benchmarked with the 21.5.2 driver.
Nvidia GPUs were benchmarked with the 466.47 driver.
Test System
We test using the a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Comet Lake-S platform. You can read more about it over HERE, and configure your own system from PCSpecialist HERE.
CPU
Intel Core i9-10900K
Overclocked to 5.1GHz on all cores
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi
Memory
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHz (4 X 8GB)
CL 18-22-22-42
Graphics Card
Varies
System Drive
500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2
Games Drive
2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5″ SSD
Chassis
Fractal Meshify S2 Blackout Tempered Glass
CPU Cooler
Corsair H115i RGB Platinum Hydro Series
Power Supply
Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System
Windows 10 2004
Our 1-minute benchmark pass came from quite early on in the game, as Deacon is riding on the back of Boozer’s motorbike, headed to Crazy Willie’s. This represents a reasonably demanding section of the game based on the first hour or so that I played through, and it is also highly repeatable which makes it great for benchmarking multiple GPUs.
1080p Benchmarks
1440p Benchmarks
2160p (4K) Benchmarks
Closing Thoughts
By and large, Days Gone is an impressive PC port that almost everyone will be happy with. I say almost everyone, as currently my main issue with the game is related to visible stuttering when using an RDNA 2 GPU. This didn’t happen for other AMD cards though, or Nvidia GPUs, so hopefully it is a quick fix for AMD’s driver team or the game’s developers.
As a DX11 title built on Unreal Engine 4, if we had to guess before testing the game, we would’ve thought Nvidia GPUs would perform the best, and that is certainly true. RTX 2070 Super is significantly faster than the RX 5700 XT, for example, while RTX 3070 also beats out the RX 6800 across the board, which isn’t something we usually see.
Even then, the game does run well across a wide variety of hardware. GTX 1060 and RX 580, for instance, aren’t far off from hitting 60FPS at 1080p with maximum image quality settings, with just a few small tweaks to the IQ needed to hit that figure. VRAM doesn’t appear to be in high demand either, with both the 4GB and 8GB versions of the RX 5500 XT performing almost identically.
If you do want to drop down some image quality settings, the game’s options scale well. We found that the High preset offered 35% more performance than Very High (which is more than enough to get a GTX 1060 averaging over 60FPS at 1080p), while you can almost double frame rates using the Low preset when compared to Very High.
The only other issue I noticed is what appears to be an animation hitching problem in the game, which is particularly noticeable when riding a motorbike – the game feels like it is slowing down but then correcting itself by speeding up again. This wasn’t a game breaker for me but it was most noticeable when frame rates were below 60FPS – the higher the frame rate, the less I noticed the issue.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
KitGuru says: Days Gone is definitely in a better state at launch than what we saw when Horizon Zero Dawn hit PCs in 2020. There’s a couple of issues to be fixed, but by and large this game performs well across a good range of graphics cards.
Intel is about to release Optane H20 memory for laptop systems. Announced late last year, Intel’s Optane H20 memory aims to deliver the best of RAM and SSD storage in a single solution, accelerating loading times and data transfers.
Available with 512GB and 1TB capacities, Intel Optane H20 memory packs both QLC 3D NAND and Optane technologies into a module featuring an M.2 2280 form factor. Whether you choose a 512GB or a 1TB H20 memory module, both feature 32GB of Optane memory. Those interested in the Intel Optane H20 should know that this memory is only compatible with systems equipped with 11th Gen Intel Core processors.
Rated sequential read and write speeds are similar to a PCIe 3.0 SSD, featuring up to 3400MB/s reading speeds and up to 2100MB/s write speeds. Random 4K speeds vary between 65-390K IOPS while reading and 40-280K IOPS on writing. The drive’s endurance isn’t on par with the best PCIe 3.0/4.0 SSDs, but 185/370TBW should still enough for most users. The rated MTBF is set at about 1.6M hours, and all drives come with a 5-year warranty.
Intel has scheduled the release date of Optane H20 memory for June 20th, but pricing is still unknown.
KitGuru says: Are you thinking about acquiring a new laptop with Intel Optane H20 memory? What type of workloads would you use it for?
HP, aka Hewlett Packard, is one of the most well-known tech companies in the world. They produce nearly every product you can think of: laptops, desktops, printers, enterprise hardware, and solid-state drives.
We’ve previously reviewed the HP P700 Portable SSD, which impressed with outstanding performance and high transfer rates. Today’s review is for the HP P500 Portable SSD, which is a much more cost affordable design for people who aren’t as focused on performance.
The HP P500 is actually produced by HP business partner BIWIN Storage, a large Chinese OEM for SSD solutions with 25 years of experience in the storage and microelectronics business. They were granted authorization from HP to produce SSDs in their name. Internally, the HP P500 is built using a UFS flash chip paired with the appropriate glue chips and USB interface. UFS is a highly popular storage standard with cell phones, tablets, and digital cameras. It was invented as a high-performance alternative to SD memory cards for multi-gigabit transfer rates.
The HP P500 uses a UFS 2.1 compatible storage chip from Samsung, which means it’s not the latest revision 3.1, so slower speeds are expected. For external connectivity, HP opted for the fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface, which is handled by a Silicon Motion SM3350 controller acting as a USB-to-UFS bridge. In a move typical for most portable SSDs, the P500 does not include a DRAM cache chip.
We review the HP P500 in the 1 TB variant, which retails for $115, but it is also available in capacities of 250 GB (price unknown) and 500 GB ($75). Warranty is set to three years for all these models. The HP P500 is available in four colors.
Solid-state drives have a number of advantages when compared to hard drives, which include performance, dimensions, and reliability. Yet, for quite a while, HDDs offered a better balance between capacity, performance, and cost, which is why they outsold SSDs in terms of unit sales. Things have certainly changed for client PCs as 60% of new computers sold in Q1 2021 used SSDs instead of HDDs. That said, it’s not surprising that SSDs outsold HDDs almost 3:2 in the first quarter in terms of unit sales as, in 2020, SSDs outsold hard drives (by units not GBs), by 28 perecent.
Unit Sales: SSDs Win 3:2
Three makers of hard drives shipped as many as 64.17 million HDDs in Q1 2021, according to Trendfocus. Meanwhile, less than a dozen SSD suppliers, including those featured in our list of best SSDs, shipped 99.438 million solid-state drives in the first quarter, the same company claims (via StorageNewsletter).
(Image credit: Trendfocus/StorageNewsletter)
Keeping in mind that many modern notebooks cannot accommodate a hard drive (and many desktops are shipped with an SSD by default), it is not particularly surprising that sales of SSDs are high. Furthermore, nowadays users want their PCs to be very responsive and that more or less requires an SSD. All in all, the majority of new PCs use SSDs as boot drives, some are also equipped with hard drives and much fewer use HDDs as boot drives.
Exabyte Sales: HDDs Win 4.5:1
But while many modern PCs do not host a lot of data, NAS, on-prem servers, and cloud datacenters do and this is where high-capacity NAS and nearline HDDs come into play. These hard drives can store up to 18TB of data and an average capacity of a 3.5-inch enterprise/nearline HDD is about 12TB these days nowadays. Thus, HDD sales in terms of exabytes vastly exceed those of SSDs (288.3EB vs 61.5EB).
Meanwhile, it should be noted that the vast majority of datacenters use SSDs for caching and HDDs for bulk storage, so it is impossible to build a datacenter purely based on solid-state storage (3D NAND) or hard drives.
Anyhow, as far as exabytes shipments are concerned, HDDs win. Total capacity of hard drives shipped in the first quarter 2021 was 288.28 EB, whereas SSDs sold in Q1 could store ‘only’ 66 EB s of data.
Since adoption of SSDs both by clients and servers is increasing, dollar sales of solid-state drives are strong too. Research and Markets values SSD market in 2020 at $34.86 billion and forecasts that it will total $80.34 billion by 2026. To put the numbers into context, Gartner estimated sales of HDDs to reach $20.7 billion in 2020 and expected them to grow to $22.6 billion in 2022.
Samsung Leads the Pack
(Image credit: Trendfocus/StorageNewsletter)
When it comes to SSD market frontrunners, Samsung is an indisputable champion both in terms of unit and exabytes shipments. Samsung sold its HDD division to Seagate in 2011, a rather surprising move then. Yet, the rationale behind the move has always been there for the company that is the No. 1 supplier of NAND flash memory. Today, the move looks obvious.
Right now, Samsung challenges other SSD makers both in terms of unit (a 25.3% market share) and exabyte (a 34.3% chunk of the market) shipments. Such results are logical to expect as the company sells loads of drives to PC OEMs, and high-capacity drives to server makers and cloud giants.
Still, not everything is rosy for the SSD market in general and Samsung in particular due to shortage of SSD controllers. The company had to shut down its chip manufacturing facility that produces its SSD and NAND controllers in Austin, Texas, earlier this year, which forced it to consider outsourcing of such components. Potentially, shortage of may affect sales of SSDs by Samsung and other companies.
“Shortages of controllers and other NAND sub-components are causing supply chain uncertainty, putting upwards pressure on ASPs,” said Walt Coon, VP of NAND and Memory Research at Yole Développement. “The recent shutdown of Samsung’s manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, USA, which manufactures NAND controllers for its SSDs, further amplifies this situation and will likely accelerate the NAND pricing recovery, particularly in the PC SSD and mobile markets, where impacts from the controller shortages are most pronounced.”
Storage Bosses Still Lead the Game
(Image credit: Trendfocus/StorageNewsletter)
Western Digital follows Samsung in terms of SSD units (18.2%) and capacity (15.8%) share to a large degree because it sells loads of drives for applications previously served by HDDs and (perhaps we are speculating here) mission-critical hard drives supplied by Western Digital, HGST (as well as Hitachi and IBM before that).
The number three SSD supplier is Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) with a 13.3% unit market share and a 9.4% exabyte market share, according to TrendFocus. Kioxia has inherited many shipment contracts (particularly in the business/mission-critical space) from Toshiba. Kioxia’s unit shipments (a 13.3% market share) are way lower when compared to those of its partner Western Digital (to some degree because the company is more aimed at the spot 3D NAND and retail SSD markets).
Being aimed primarily at high-capacity server and workstation applications, Intel is the number three SSD supplier in terms of capacity with an 11.5% market share, but when it comes to unit sales, Intel controls only 5% of the market. This situation is not particularly unexpected as Intel has always positioned its storage business as a part of its datacenter platform division, which is why the company has always been focused on high-capacity NAND ICs (unlike its former partner Micron) for advanced server-grade SSDs.
Speaking of Micron, its SSD unit market share is at an 8.4%, whereas its exabytes share is at 7.9%, which is an indicator that the company is balancing between the client and enterprise. SK Hynix also ships quite a lot of consumer drives (an 11.8% market share), but quite some higher-end enterprise-grade SSDs (as its exabytes share is 9.1%).
Seagate is perhaps one exception — among the historical storage bosses — that controls a 0.7% of the exabyte SSD market and only 0.3% of unit shipments. The company serves its loyal clientele and has yet to gain significant share in the SSD market.
Branded Client SSDs
One interesting thing about the SSD market is that while there are loads of consumer-oriented brands that sell flash-powered drives, they do not control a significant part of the market either in terms of units nor in terms of exabytes, according to Trendfocus.
Companies like Kingston, Lite-On, and a number of others make it to the headlines, yet in terms of volume, they control about 18% of the market, a significant, but not a definitive chunk. In terms of exabytes, their share is about 11.3%, which is quite high considering the fact that most of their drives are aimed at client PCs.
Summary
Client storage is going solid state in terms of unit shipments due to performance, dimensions, and power reasons. Datacenters continue to adopt SSDs for caching as well as business and mission-critical applications.
Being the largest supplier of 3D NAND (V-NAND in Samsung’s nomenclature), Samsung continues to be the leading supplier of SSDs both in terms of volumes and in terms of capacity shipments. Meanwhile, shortage of SSD controllers may have an impact on the company’s SSD sales.
Based on current trends, SSDs are set to continue taking unit market share from HDDs. Yet hard drives are not set to give up bulk storage.
Seagate has finally listed its dual-actuator hard disk drive — the Mach.2 Exos 2X14 — on its website and disclosed the official specs. With a 524MB/s sustained transfer rate, the Mach.2 is the fastest HDD ever, its sequential read and write performance is twice that of a normal drive. In fact, it can even challenge some inexpensive SATA SSDs.
The HDD is still available to select customers and will not be available on the open market, at least for the time being. Meanwhile, Seagate’s spec disclosure shows us what type of performance to expect from multi-actuator high-end hard drives.
Seagate Describes First Mach.2 HDD: the Exos 2X14
Seagate’s Exos 2X14 14TB hard drive is essentially two 7TB HDDs in one standard hermetically sealed helium-filled 3.5-inch chassis. The drive features a 7200 RPM spindle speed, is equipped with a 256MB multisegmented cache, and uses a single-port SAS 12Gb/s interface. The host system considers an Exos 2X14 as two logical drives that are independently addressable.
Seagate’s Exos 2X14 boasts a 524MB/s sustained transfer rate (outer diameter) of 304/384 random read/write IOPS, and a 4.16 ms average latency. The Exos 2X14 is even faster than Seagate’s 15K RPM Exos 15E900, so it is indeed the fastest HDD ever.
Furthermore, its sequential read/write speeds can challenge inexpensive SATA/SAS SSDs (at a far lower cost-per-TB). Obviously, any SSD will still be faster than any HDD in random read/write operations. However, hard drives and solid-state drives are used for different storage tiers in data centers, so the comparison is not exactly viable.
(Image credit: Seagate)
But performance increase comes at the cost of higher power consumption. An Exos 2X14 drive consumes 7.2W in idle mode and up to 13.5W under heavy load, which is higher than modern high-capacity helium-filled drives. Furthermore, that’s also higher than the 12W usually recommended for 3.5-inch HDDs.
Seagate says the power consumption is not an issue as some air-filled HDDs are power hungry too, so there are plenty of backplanes and servers that can deliver enough power and ensure proper cooling. Furthermore, the drive delivers quite a good balance of performance-per-Watt and IOPS-per-Watt. Also, data centers can use Seagate’s PowerBalance capability to reduce power consumption, but at the cost of 50% lower sequential read/write speeds and 5%~10% lower random reads/writes.
“3.5-inch air-filled HDDs have operated in a power envelope that is very similar to Exos 2X14 for many years now,” a spokesman for Seagate explained. “It is also worth noting that Exos 2X14 does support PowerBalance which is a setting that allows the customer to reduce power below 12W, [but] this does come with a performance reduction of 50% for sequential reads and 5%-10% for random reads.”
Since the Exos 2X14 is aimed primarily at cloud data centers, all of its peculiarities are set to be mitigated in one way or another, so slightly higher power consumption is hardly a problem for the intended customers. Nonetheless, the drive will not be available on the open market, at least for now.
(Image credit: Seagate)
Seagate has been publicly experimenting with dual-actuator HDDs (dubbed Mach.2) with Microsoft since late 2017, then it expanded availability to other partners, and earlier this year, it said that it would further increase shipments of such drives.
Broader availability of dual-actuator HDDs requires Seagate to better communicate its capabilities to customers, which is why it recently published the Exos 2X14’s specs.
“We began shipping [Mach.2 HDDs] in volume in 2019 and we are now expanding our customer base,” said Jeff Fochtman, Senior Vice President, Business and Marketing, Seagate Technology. “Well over a dozen major customers have active dual-actuator programs underway. As we increase capacities to meet customer needs, Mach.2 ensures the performance they require by essentially keeping the drive performance inside the storage to your expectations for hyperscale deployments.”
Keeping HDDs Competitive
Historically, HDD makers focused on capacity and performance: every new generation brought higher capacity and slightly increased performance. When the nearline HDD category emerged a little more than a decade ago, hard drive makers added power consumption to their focus as tens of thousands of HDDs per data center consumed loads of power, and it became an important factor for companies like AWS, Google, and Facebook.
As hard drive capacity grew further, it turned out that while normal performance increments brought by each new generation were still there, random read/write IOPS-per-TB performance dropped beyond comfortable levels for data centers and their quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. That’s when data centers started mitigating HDD random IOPS-per-TB performance with various caching mechanisms and even limiting HDD capacities.
(Image credit: Seagate)
In a bid to keep hard drives competitive, their manufacturers have to continuously increase capacity, increase or maintain sequential read/write performance, increase or maintain random read/write IOPS-pet-TB performance, and keep power consumption in check. A relatively straightforward way to improve the performance of an HDD is to use more than one actuator with read/write heads, as this can instantly double both sequential and random read/write speeds of a drive.
Not for Everyone. Yet
Seagate is the first to commercialize its dual-actuator HDD, but its rivals from Toshiba and Western Digital are also working on similar hard drives.
“Although Mach.2 is ramped and being used now, it’s also really still in a technology-staging mode,” said Fochtman. “When we reach capacity points above 30TB, it will become a standard feature in many large data center environments.”
(Image credit: Seagate)
For now, most of Seagate’s data center and server customers can get a high-capacity single-actuator HDD with the right balance between capacity and IOPS-per-TB performance, so the manufacturer doesn’t need to sell its Exos 2X14 through the channel. Meanwhile, when capacities of Seagate’s HAMR-based HDDs increase to over 50TB sometime in 2026, there will be customers that will need dual-actuator drives.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart brings alternate realities to the beloved PlayStation franchise on June 11th, and along with leveraging the PlayStation 5’s SSD, Insomniac Games announced new accessibility features on Thursday that build on the studio’s recent work and address the limited options presented in the earlier PS4 Ratchet & Clank.
As an action platformer, Ratchet & Clank often requires multiple types of movement: You’ll shoot through waves of oncoming enemies while running around a level, and quickly shift to jumping across floating platforms, and using various gadgets to fly, swing, and now reality-warp through stages. Rift Apart seems to keep those core mechanics but adds even more potentially sensory-overloading visuals, from cracks in reality to exploding fragments of buildings. All of which makes the new features Insomniac is adding all the more welcome. You can get a taste of what Rift Apart actually plays like in the demo below:
That occasionally hectic gameplay of the earlier game can be fun, but without customization options for controls — as noted in this accessibility review — it could also make the game hard to play for people with disabilities that impact fine motor skills. Along with full controller remapping, Rift Apart addresses the issue in a few ways, like how you can repeatedly fire one of the game’s various weapons with a button press instead of squeezing a trigger. The game can also automatically switch between targets, and correct your aim, if for instance flying enemies give you trouble.
For movement, Rift Apart includes features to make flying in the game easier to control, automatically leveling off your glider so you don’t nose dive, and an “Off-Screen Ledge Guard” which should save you from falling off ledges you can’t see if you’re distracted while smashing robots. There’s also an option to assign all of your movement controls to a single button so you don’t have to hit jump and swing on different parts of the controller.
The various toggles in Rift Apart.Image: Insomniac Games
Visually, Rift Apart also allows you to tone down the game’s striking, but over-the-top visual effects. You can adjust all the obvious settings like contrast and field of view, but the game also smartly uses a visual shading system similar to what developer Naughty Dog used in The Last of Us Part IIto help make things legible. You can apply colored shaders to your character, any of the enemies in game, even interactable objects to make things easier to visually track and find. The game also offers a similar array of adjustments for changing the size of the in-game HUD and button prompts.
Visual shaders can help provide contrast, visibility, and make it easier to track things if you’re color blind.Image: Insomniac Games
As part of this new generation of consoles, Sony appears to be trying to be a bit more mindful of the various accessibility issues that can come up while playing. It’s been praised for offering software accessibility options on the PS5 by default, like a built-in screen reader, but the real way you can see how things are changing is by looking at the developers Sony owns, works with, and publishes.
Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog clearly seem focused on making their games more accessible. Insomniac’s been building up to this over time as well; the company took special care to add a wide range of accessibility features to Spider-Man: Miles Morales when that game launched with the PS5. The real trick with accessibility options, though, is standardizing them across the board, which seems like it might at least be starting to happen with these Sony exclusives.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart launches June 11th on PS5. You can see an exhaustive list of the accessibility options Insomniac is building into the game by visiting its website.
Phison and Cigent introduced a co-developed SSD platform that protects against ransomware and data theft with mechanisms built directly into the SSD’s firmware. The drives even automatically encrypt and hide data from prying eyes in the event of an attack. These ‘self-defending’ drives will be available to everyone this year.
Antiviruses can detect already-known malware and analyze programs’ behavior to detect potentially illicit behavior patterns. However, custom ransomware developed by hacker groups can remain undetected until it is too late, leaving systems open to attack. Therefore, it makes sense to protect data at the hardware level in many cases since this is usually secure from manipulation.
Cigent’s Secure SSD K2 and Secure SSD Denali drives are based on Phison’s PS5012-E12DC Crypto-SSD NVMe controllers and come with embedded firmware-based security features as well as Cigent Dynamic Data Defense Engine for Windows (D³E).
When a threat is detected, these drives automatically encrypt and hide sensitive files completely from the OS layer in ‘safe rooms.’ In fact, Cigent’s drives can work in a ‘Dual Mode’ that splits an SSD into independent private/secure and non-private storage partitions that are invisible to one another and adversaries. Meanwhile, to protect data against physical theft, Cigent’s drives also come equipped with attack detectors and sensors.
Furthermore, the Cigent Denali Secure SSD can actually detect ransomware (although it is unclear whether the firmware detects that a program encrypts data or the D³E software does it) and will support machine learning-based data protection later this year.
(Image credit: Cigent)
“The Cigent Secure SSD product family was developed by Cigent’s team of experts in data recovery and cybersecurity working in close cooperation with the cutting-edge storage experts at Phison,” said Greg Scasny, CTO of Cigent. “This combined team developed holistic data protection solutions with security built-in, making it virtually impossible for critical data and applications to be accessed from unauthorized sources. Software-only security is often easily bypassed, but our multi-patented, multi-layered self-defending storage can make critical data completely inaccessible and literally invisible to adversaries, giving customers peace of mind that their sensitive data and digital assets are safely stored and protected.”
Previously only available to select government agencies and the U.S. army, Cigent’s Secure SSDs will now be available to broader audiences. The K2 Secure SSD and D³E software are available now, starting at $299 for a 480GB drive. The Cigent Denali Secure SSDs will be available in Summer 2021. The drives come in 480GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations.
Additionally, Cigent has developed its FIPS 140-2 Level 2-certified Secure SSDs exclusively for the U.S. government and military.
Recently Singapore-based company Flexxon launched its X-Phy SSDs with ‘AI-based’ security features that seem to work similarly to the SSD platform developed by Cigent and Phison. It is unclear whether these drives use Phison’s E12DC controller, though.
Sony’s elusive PlayStation 5 console is in stock at Walmart. If you’re one of the many people who has struggled to get one for yourself, today is looking good for you, and it’ll look better if more retailers jump in with stock later today. As usual, Walmart might not immediately appear to be selling consoles today, but you might be able to get one added to your cart if you refresh frequently. (Note: make sure your payment method and shipping address are entered ahead of time on each site before you try to buy a console. The faster you can checkout, the more likely your chance of success. Also, Walmart tends to release more consoles in 10-minute waves, so try again if 3:00PM ET doesn’t work, try again at 3:10PM ET.)
The PS5 with a UHD Blu-ray disc drive and 1TB of built-in SSD storage costs $499.99 and is available from Walmart. Due to the disc drive, this model is slightly thicker and heavier than the digital edition.
PlayStation 5
$500
Prices taken at time of publishing.
Sony’s flagship next-gen console, which includes a disc drive, allowing you to play both digital and physical games on the PS4 and PS5.
$500
at Walmart
If you want to save a little money (and a little space in your entertainment center), the PlayStation 5 digital edition without a disc drive is available for $399.99. Other than lacking the ability to play discs, this model is exactly the same as the more costly version.
I wish you the best of luck in getting a console today. Whether you get one today, or plan to get one when the next restocking happens, there are a few must-have accessories to accompany your purchase.
Returnal
$70
Prices taken at time of publishing.
The latest title from Housemarque is a roguelike third-person shooter that puts you in the shoes of Selene, an astronaut tormented by a seemingly never-ending time loop.
The PlayStation 5 has one of the smallest storage sizes of any console over the last decade, but it’s not as bad as it seems. Sony is reportedly using a specialized data compression technology that can shrink game file sizes by as much as 60%. This would more than compensate for 825GB of storage on the console.
Twisted Voxel reported that the survival game Subnautica has just a 5GB file size on the PS5. Compare this to 14GB on the PlayStation 4 and you’re saving more than 60% of storage space.
TechRadar reports that Control: Ultimate Edition also benefits significantly from Sony’s compression tech, coming in at just 25.79GB on the PS5 compared to 42.5GB on the Xbox Series X. That’s a 39% reduction in file size.
A lot is still unknown about Sony’s compression technology, all we know at this time is Sony’s name for the tech, so-called “Kraken”. We don’t know if all PS5 games are supported, or if games need to be optimized for this compression tech. Kraken could also extend to support PS4 games and older but we’re making educated guesses at this point.
Traditionally, compression technologies have never required game developers to optimize for compression, so technically all games running on the PS5’s built-in SSD should support Kraken.
Hopefully, PS5’s Kraken compression will expand to the console’s second M.2 SSD slot, once Sony unlocks it. We could also see Kraken coming to external USB drives, but that could be wishing for too much.
It’s great to see such massive advances in compression technology in an era where games are doubling in size every three to four years. Hopefully it means people can upgrade their storage a bit less often and keep more games on their systems.
HP is revitalizing its Omen gaming notebooks with a new 16.1-inch size, the latest processors and a new sub-brand called Victus. All of the laptops announced today are scheduled to release next month.
The new laptop competing with the 16.1-inch display is the HP Omen 16, which is very close in size to the older 15-inch model, due to thinner bezels on the top and sides.
Competing for a spot on our
Best Gaming Laptop
list, versions of the Omen 16 with Intel processors will start at $1,149.99, while AMD options will begin at $1,049.99. The machine will go up to 115W with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU (HP also mentions “next-gen” AMD graphics). You will be able to configure it with up to a 1TB
PCIe
Gen 4×4
SSD
, Wi-Fi 6E networking options and an 83WHr battery. The 16-inch screen will go up to
1440p
resolution (2560 x 1440) resolution with a 165 Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time.
Specifications
HP Omen 16
HP Omen 17
HP Victus 16
CPU
Up to Intel Core i7-11800H or AMD Ryzen 7 5800H
Up to Intel Core i9-11900H
Up to Intel Core i7-11800H or AMD Ryzen 7 5800H
GPU
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, “next-gen” AMD GPUs
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, AMD Radeon RX 5500M
RAM
Up to 32GB DDR4-3200
Up to 32GB DDR4-3200
Not specified
Storage
Up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD (Intel) / Up to 1TB PCIe Gen 3×4 SSD (AMD)
Up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD
Up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD
Display
16.1-inch, 2560 x 1440
17.3-inch, 2560 x 1440
16-inch, up to 2560 x 1440
Networking
Up to Wi-Fi 6E
Up to Wi-Fi 6E
Not specified
Availability
June 2021
June 2021
June 2021
Starting Price
$1,049.99 (AMD), $1,149.99 (Intel)
$1,369.99
$799.99 (AMD), $849.99 (Intel)
The Omen 17 desktop replacement is also getting a refresh, but only with Intel. It will start at $1,369.99 and be slightly smaller than the previous 17-inch Omen, including 2.9mm thinner and 15% lighter. With an improved cooler at more outlets for air, HP claims the keyboard will be 5 degrees Celsius cooler than the older model.
(Image credit: HP)
The bigger laptop will have a keyboard optical mechanical switches featuring 1.7mm of travel and per-key RGB lighting. There will be a specialized panel to easily access the SSD and RAM for upgrades. HP is offering up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD or 2 1TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in RAID0. The 17-inch screen will go up to QHD with a 165 Hz IPS panel.
Meet Victus
The new Victus brand is meant to put a focus on performance and graphics at a cheaper price. HP has literally sliced part of the logo out of the Omen mark to show its place in the lineup. As of this announcement, there’s just one Victus laptop, the HP Victus 16. It features the “V” logo, has similar design elements, like the screen size marked on the chassis, and comes in mica silver, performance blue or ceramic white.
Like the 16.1-inch Omen, the Victus’ 16-inch screen will fit in a near 14-inch chassis, thanks to thin bezels on three sides. Its V-patterned speakers, turned by B&O, bear a striking resemblance to HP’s Spectre ultraportables.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: HP)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: HP)
Besides offering both Intel and AMD processors, there will also be configurations up to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 graphics or AMD Radeon RX 5500M. The IPS display goes up to 2560 x 1440 and 165 Hz.
It appears that Victus won’t take over the extreme low-end. HP said that Pavilion Gaming isn’t going away, which suggests we’ll still see the Pavilion name on entry-level laptops.
XMG has added a new processor option to the company’s existing Neo 15 and Neo 17. Intel’s new Core i7-11800H (Tiger Lake) processor will be powering XMG’s refreshed gaming laptops.
Built on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin process, the Core i7-11800H wields eight Willow Cove cores with Hyper-Threading and up to 24MB of L3 cache. The 45W chip rocks a 2.3 GHz base clock and 4.6 GHz boost clock. In contrast to the Ryzen-powered Neo 15 and Neo 17 models, XMG has outfitted the Intel equivalent with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut for improved cooling.
It’s not just the processor upgrade. XMG also upped the Neo 15 and Neo 17’s graphics card game. Previously, the GeForce RTX 3080 (Ampere) was limited to 150W (135W plus 15W from Dynamic Boost 2.0). With the Tiger Lake-H model, XMG was able to increase the thermal envelope up to 165W for even more performance. XMG doesn’t force you to roll with the GeForce RTX 3080, either. The company also offers the GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 as other viable options.
The Neo 15 (359.8 x 243 x 26 mm, 2.2 kg) and Neo 17 (395.7 x 260.8 x 27.45 mm, 2.5 kg) boasts a screen that will make any gamer happy. The devices feature a WQHD (2560×1440) IPS screen with a 165 Hz refresh rate and 95% sRGB color space coverage and a maximum brightness of 350 nits. The Neo 15 comes with a 15.6-inch display, while the Neo 17 arrives with a 17.3-inch screen.
XMG Neo 15 (Image credit: XMG)
The Tiger Lake-H version of the Neo 15 and Neo 17 also offers 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet networking, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 functionality, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, high-speed PCIe 4.0 M.2 storage and native support for DDR4-3200 memory.
The base configuration for the Neo 15 (XNE15IM21) and Neo 17 (XNE17IM21) starts at €1,949 or $2,380. It model comes with the Core i7-11800H, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD and the beautiful WQHD 165 Hz IPS panel. There’s ample room for upgrades too. Both gaming laptops support up to 64GB of memory and RAID 0 or 1 arrays, thanks to the presence of two M.2 2280 slots.
Due to the global shortage of components, the pricing could vary. Pre-orders for the Tiger Lake-based Neo 15 and Neo 17 starts at the beginning of June with orders expected to go out by the end of June.
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