BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR, you just might get it. That’s essentially how it’s shaken out with the new generation of QLC solid-state drives. QLC, of course, refers to the quad-level cells in the latest NAND flash memory, translating into four bits of data stored per cell, and thereby increasing storage density over existing TLC … Read more
Crucial blows it with this bargain-basement SSD We’re big fans of Crucial’s SATA SSDs. In fact, it’s been our go-to brand in this segment of the solid-state market for years. Its MX500 is our default recommendation for those wanting a big. reliable, and reasonably fast SATA SSD. So. when we say its blown it with … Read more
Chris Szewczyk investigate whether Intel’s cache drives actually deliver real-world benefits. Intel’s Optane storage technology has all the potential to be a game changer. According to Intel, Optane products have the capability to be orders of magnitude faster than traditional SSD solutions, never mind traditional hard drives. While there are already large capacity Optane drives that … Read more
We’re always on the lookout for a good solid-state drive. Whether it’s booting Windows in a snap, accessing files with little to no wait time, or quickly jumping into the action of our favorite games, nothing raises PC quality of life quite like an SSD. PNY’s family of XLR8 CS2111 drives promises to be the … Read more
Samsung makes some scorching hot hardware, but not in the Galaxy Note 7 way Dо you recall when the PC transitioned from IDE to SATA? Then most motherboards came with both ports, and I recall looking at IDE and wondering why they still existed. SATA was so superior that, other than for legacy reasons, IDE … Read more
When solid-state drives first arrived, there was much rejoicing. Surely, the PC had crossed the final frontier. All mechanical devices could finally be banished, and with them any performance bottlenecks. The PC’s work was done. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that. The first consumer SSDs had some serious performance flaws. Once those were … Read more
Time to ditch your hard drive? Solid-state drives (SSDs), which store data on flash memory chips, will never be as cheap (per GB) as hard drives, but they’re now cheap enough to be worth considering. If you’re thinking of adding one to an existing system, they come in a format that fits both desktop PCs … Read more
Intel Optane 900P 280GB Review – INTEL FINALLY BRINGS 3D XPOINT TO THE CONSUMER MARKET IN CAPACITIES THAT ARE ACTUALLY USEFUL WE TOOK ONE FOR A SPIN Having waited eight months since Intel’s tantalising but ultimately lacklustre tiny Optane Memory SSDs, we’ve finally got our hands on the consumer product that 3D Xpoint (“cross point”) deserved … Read more
THE ORIGINAL WD Black, released last year, was a pretty underwhelming M.2 SSD: with sequential read and write speeds up to 2,050MB/s and 800MB/s respectively, it was easily outpaced by Samsung’s blistering 960 Pro and 960 Evo. Read our WD Black 1TB Review. [sc name=”Youtube”] This 2018 update is a different story. For one thing, it’s the … Read more
Peak performance in your pocket. [sc name=”Youtube”] Table of ContentsEXTERNAL STORAGEVerdict EXTERNAL STORAGE With portable SATA SSDs now almost at commodity level, the next step up to dramatically increase speed is to move to the NVMe protocol. In essence this is a Samsung 970 Evo feeding through one of Intel’s Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controllers … Read more
Samsung 970 Pro 512GB Review SSD makers across the globe: Prepare for a world of pain. The 970 Pro is part of Samsung’s third generation of high-end NVMe SSDs. Its previous efforts have been about as good as consumer SSDs got. So if third time truly is lucky, and the 970 Pro is even better, … Read more
It’s thin, short, and energy-efficient, if not particularly fast. Read our Toshiba RC100 NVMe SSD Review. BY JON L. JACOBI Even though Toshiba’s RC100 is the slowest NVMe SSD we’ve tested, it’s still a kick in the pants after SATA. And because it’s so thin and light, it’s a worthy laptop upgrade. The RC100 caught us just … Read more