Within the framework of Computex 2014 both Kingston and Adata are going to introduce their fresh SSD series of M.2 form-factor. In keeping with the manufacturers’ words, the products – SM2280S2 and SR1020NP — are differentiated by some spectacular performance. At present the companies provide only basic info about the drives, leaving their fans in suspense.



Kingston SM2280S3 is based on Phison PS3108 that supports SATA 6 Gb/sec interface only. It ensures 540 MB/sec and 514 MB/sec speed on sequential Read/Write operations. For sure, it’s not the performance innovative M.2 drives should demonstrate (about 10 Gb/sec), although the model considerably surpasses traditional HDDs in this respect.


This SSD series is represented by three models of 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacity. All of them employ DDR3 cache-memory with the minimal 256 MB capacity. Besides, the difference in efficiency between other M.2 offers Kingston promises to compensate by a more affordable price.
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The second generation of AMD A-Series hybrid processors, announced earlier in October, are already integrated in a number of graphics solutions. The newly appeared products are compatible with Socket FM2 only and cannot be applied for Socket FM1 infrastructure. This implies that a number of motherboards lose their upgrade facilities and can't be updated with a new advanced solution. Still, the market is currently ready to present a few boards destined to operate with the updated AMD A-Series. Gigabyte is one of the pioneers in this respect, introducing its motherboard GA-F2A85X-UP4, developed specifically for Socket FM2.



Integration


Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 is designed in ATX form-factor with 305x244 mm PCB dimensions. AMD A85X chipset is a heart of the motherboard; it secures the compatibility with A-Series (second gen.) APU and Athlon CPUs in the implementation of Socket FM2. The overall TDP level claimed for the model is not more than 100W. The PCB allots four DIMM slots …

LaCie, a French supplier of external HDD storages, RAID arrays and network storages, has started the sales of its new NAS storage with network connection. Codenamed 5big NAS Pro, this product is intended to fulfill a range of tasks, including a joint and remote access to files and data backup processes. The storage is estimated for five disk bays and can be best applied in corporate environment.



The new-comer features 173x220x196 mm dimensions and is delivered with a 3-year limited warranty. The users have got a chance to choose between the three variations of the NAS: just a casing without disks, a casing with five disks of 10TB capacity, and a casing with five disks of 20TB capacity. The price fluctuates correspondingly from $529 for just the casing and $2199 for 20TB capacity.


The heart of 5big NAS Pro is a two-core Intel Atom processor (64 bit). Its operational frequency approaches 2.14GHz and inventory involves 4GB of DDR3 RAM memory. It should be mentioned that this …