Content and news by Robert Tanner

Another year, another Valve sponsored Dota 2 tournament is here. As it has done since 2012, The International once again broke its previous record with a $33 million gamer-funded prize pool (as of this writing) to be split among participating teams, with the TI9 champions set to receive a cool $15 million…..

It’s taken some time for Western Digital to hit the consumer side of the SSD market hard, but momentum is growing fast – and for good reason. The company is now producing its own in-house controller, and based on our in-depth testing of the WD Black 1TB NVMe, we’re excited to see where things are going.

In a possible foreshadowing of things to come, Samsung is today introducing the 860 QVO SATA SSD series, in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. These drives are intended to hit ultra-low price points and do double-duty as long-term data storage drives while offering many of the advantages of modern flash drives. Samsung…..

Budget SSDs are not hard to find, but the price shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor. SATA SSDs might have been relegated to the bargain basement, but ultra-cheap “SATA Only” M.2 drives remain a hidden minefield that litters the budget M.2 marketplace. ADATA’s XPG S10 GAMMIX comes to the rescue, offering high-end NVMe performance at a budget price.

Storing data is easy, but storing data reliably is a fair bit harder to pull off. Sure, RAID protects against a disk failure, but is not a safe backup solution in of itself, nor does RAID offer protection against data corruption. Synology’s DS1618+ solves this by offering a combined Btrfs & RAID solution in a 6-bay NAS that can be upgraded to meet practically any home or business need.

Synology has officially launched the DiskStation DS1618+, a six-bay prosumer NAS geared for anyone from enthusiasts to small and medium-sized businesses that need room to safely store, manage, and backup impressively large amounts of data. The DS1618+ marks the first Synology NAS utilizing Denverton C3000 Atom processors, replacing the aging five-year old Rangeley Atom C2000…..

Valve’s The International Dota 2 tournament happens once a year like clockwork, and just like clockwork, it never fails to break new records. With a prize pool already 25% higher than the equivalent period last year, The International 8 is already past $6.5 million and seems poised to reach $30 million this…..

On the very day the 970 generation of EVO and PRO NVMe solid-state M.2 drives hit retail shelves, it would appear Samsung has already reduced prices from those initially disclosed to the press. We are unsure if this is simply a marketing ploy or a genuine reconsideration on launch prices, but in…..

While ADATA has a wide variety of budget SSDs on offer, it also has a growing number of more premium offerings. Under review today is one such drive, the SATA-based SU900, an MLC drive with a five-year warranty. Let’s see how it performs compared to other drives in the same budget range.

For the last several years running, Samsung has been at the forefront of raw NVMe M.2 solid-state drive performance, constantly expanding the performance envelope since the debut of the 950 PRO three years ago. Today that trend continues with the launch of the third-generation 970 Series powered by Samsung’s new “Phoenix” controller.…..

Full drive AES-256 encryption used to be ubiquitous among most SSDs, but in recent years it has become a rarer feature to find on entry-level solid-state drives. Kingston is looking to change that with the UV500 Series SSDs which feature full AES-256 encryption and support for the TCG Opal 2.0 specification. The…..

Good things really do come in small packages. Samsung’s 30.72TB 12Gb/s SAS solid-state drive doubles its previous-gen counterpart while retaining a svelte 2.5-inch form-factor. If that doesn’t sound impressive, then lets phrase it this way. The PM1643 leverages 64-layer, 3-bit (TLC) 512Gb chips across 32 16-die packages to attain its impressively dense…..

You might find it hard to be impressed with a SATA based SSD in a world where PCIe SSDs exist, but despite their speed-capped interface, companies like Crucial continue to optimize, and use new tricks, to eke as much performance as possible out of those flash chips. The BX300 is a great example of where we stand today.

Samsung has just hard launched a long-awaited update to its venerable 850 PRO and 850 EVO solid-state drives. Although the 850 series received several changes in its 3.5 year span on the market, the 860 family introduces an updated Samsung MJX controller, 64-layer V-NAND, and LPDDR4 DRAM. Thanks to the adoption of…..

The march of technology never ceases, and Western Digital announces its latest achievement with the creation of 96-layer NAND flash chips. Western Digital’s fourth generation of 3D NAND memory will reach volume production in 2018 and feature TLC, as well as QLC BiCS4 chips. What is noteworthy is that as recently as last…..

ADATA is a well-known flash storage company that offers the most prolific range of SSD models currently available on the market. While this makes it hard to determine which SSD is best for you, it also guarantees there’s a model at practically every price point. Is the midrange SU800 that offers better endurance and performance consistency worth the increase in price over budget models? We find out.

The DrivePro 520 is a full-featured dashcam that has it all. With dual cameras, low light usage, infrared, GPS, mic, and a battery, this cam targets the full range of professional drivers from commercial haulers, passenger carriers, or just business vehicles. It also offers a proper toolkit for parents, so whatever your needs, Transcend’s DrivePro 520 can probably exceed them.

Kingston announced today a new enterprise-based SSD, the DCP-1000, and it’s an intriguing NVMe enabled PCIe card targeting data center deployments. Developed in partnership with Liqid, Kingston’s drive incorporates four 8-channel SSD controllers on a single card. The drive makes use of an x8 PCIe 3.0 slot (it actually requires PCIe 3.0,…..

ADATA is no stranger to SATA SSDs with an extensive catalog of models to choose from. We were impressed by the super budget-friendly SP550 and are currently finalizing a review of the midrange SU800, but that leaves out still more options like the SP900 and SU900. Deciding there wasn’t enough choices, ADATA is…..

With all the AMD rumors “Ryzen” to the surface lately it is easy to miss a bunch that are cropping up over on the blue side of the fence. At the top of the list, CPCHardware (French) claims Intel is cooking up some new chips to bolster its Kaby Lake offerings launched just…..