Check out this beast of a machine

NVIDIA teamed up the folks at Smooth Creations and a world-class case modder by the name of Richard “Darth Beavis” Surroz to build a hell of a gaming PC that is now for sale on eBay.

The idea came from NVIDIA employee, and former hardware editor guy, Paul Jastrzebski, who has had a friend of his recently diagnosed with a multiple myeloma -- a cancer of the blood. 100 percent of the proceeds of this sale will be going to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  And as you can see from the pictures, this system is pretty bad ass.

The case goes without saying; as for the rest of it: you get the best CPU out right now, the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition, watercooled, and dual GTX 295s are on graphics duty. Then you get 3D Vision (which we have a review of coming soon, by the way), and 12GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR3. Two 256GB SSD's in a Raid 0 setup will be storing the games, and two 1TB drives will take care of everything else. An Asus Rampage II Gene X58 motherboard gets the job done here.

So whatta-ya say? Want to place a bid? Right now the system is at $3,500 USD; NVIDIA probably hopes it sell for at least $10,000 USD. 

If your parents, wife, or whomever is not convinced that you need this computer, just tell them it is for charity.

Turn all your 001's into 111001010010's

Seagate has been keeping busy these days, it seems. Having just released the first third generation SATA drive recently, it seems that for one of their next tricks, they will be releasing hard drives that encrypt themselves.

Starting off with drives targeted at the server market, the new Cheetah, Savvio, and Constellation line of hard drives will encrypt any data going on to the platters, then decrypt it while being read. As hard drives targeted for servers, the drives are meant to be running all the time -- so if the hard disks are removed, by some mischievous punks, data will remain encrypted. Presumably the hard drives will only be able to decrypt the data if they are re-connected to the server they call home (so you couldn't take out a drive for instance, and use it with a different system -- the drives would recognize the change.)

These new drives will probably be of greatest interest to companies that deal with somewhat sensitive information, such as financial institutions, weapon manufacturers, K.F.C, and companies performing research.

Self encrypting drives probably will not enter the mainstream for consumers, as accidental data loss, and lower performance, would probably be two fears that would lead many regular Joes more interested in just using software-based encryption methods, like TrueCrypt. 

Ewwww -- Barracuda! (Barracuda XT 2TB, 64MB cache, 7200 RPM)

Today Seagate announced the first mass production hard drive that will handle the new third-gen SATA standard. The new standard is a 6Gbit/s max transfer rate -- which is roughly double the current, 2nd generation SATA which is capable of 3Gbit/s.

Even besides the new throughput, the hard drive --- called the Barracuda XT -- is a fairly mean piece of hardware. With a whopping 64MB cache, and a downloading-friendly 2TB capacity, the Barracuda XT is set to sell for $300 USD and will be in stores very soon. With these specs, as of now, the Barracuda XT has hardly any competition. 

Perhaps wary of consumer confidence over the whole faulty firmware catastrophe earlier in the year,the drive will ship with a 5-year warranty (some Seagate hard drive product lines had their warranty reduced from 5 years to 3 years in 2009.)

“Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office,” Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate, was quoted as saying in a press release. “Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date.”

If you want to get one of these zippy new drives, be aware that only a few motherboards support this new SATA standard. SATA is backware compatible of course, so the Barracuda XT will still run fine at 3Gbit/s, but if you want to kick into 6Gbit/s territory, you'll need something like the Asus P7P55D or the Gigabyte GA-P55-Extreme.

Affordable single-level cell NAND-based drive

Adoption of solid state drives, at least at the end-user level, has been stymied to a degree by the cost of the drives when compared to traditional hard drives. To overcome this, at least partially, manufacturers have turned to multi-level cell NAND flash memory chips which are cheaper to produce and allow them to keep prices in check. Single-level cell technology holds a couple of benefits over MLC but is more expensive; two of those benefits are performance and longevity due to greater write/erase cycle endurance. However, due to costs issues, most SLC-based SSDs have been found in the enterprise market where performance is paramount and costs are not as much of an issue.

OCZ today announced a new series of SSDs called Agility EX that make use of SLC NAND based memory at a more affordable price point. Equipped with an Indilinx controller, the Agility EX offers greater performance compared to MLC flash drives, especially when you take the greater life span and total cost of ownership into account. The drives feature 64MB of onboard cache and up to 255MB/s read and 195MB/s write speeds. The OCZ drives also come with upgradable firmware and unique performance optimization to keep the drives at peak performance.

Initially offered in a 64GB model, OCZ didn't disclose when the drives would become available but did make known a suggested retail price of $399US.

'Capcom Action Pack' bundles PC version with select memory

Patriot Memory has announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Capcom that allows them to offer 'Capcom Action Packs', the latest of which bundles Street Fighter IV for the PC with Patriot memory products.

Currently Patriot is offering a downloadable copy of the PC game with its 128GB Xporter Magnum, the 32GB Xporter Boost, its complete Torqx SSD series, and three of its top gaming modules for both DDR2 and DDR3. All told there are eight new part numbers involved, so if you're in the market for some new DDR3 memory, or maybe a solid state drive or two, here's a chance to score a copy of a pretty cool PC game for free.

Patriot didn't reveal pricing or availability on the new bundles.

X256 solid state drive offers maximum read speeds of 240MB/s and write speeds of up to 170MB/s

Corsair today announced it has expanded it lineup of high performance solid state drives with the addition of a 256GB drive. The new Extreme Series X256 drive offers sequential read speed up to 240MB/s and sequential write speed up to 170MB/s. The drive is equipped with an Indilinx Barefoot controller and uses Samsung multi-level cell NAND flash memory along with 64MB of on-board cache to eliminate any stutter issues

Corsair already offers 32-, 64- and 128GB models in the Extreme series and all of the models come with upgradable firmware that will enable end-users to add new features such as the TRIM function when it becomes available in Windows 7 which will help users avoid the performance degradation that have plagued some drives over time.

Corsair stated the drives are available now from its resellers with no official word on price, although several online retailers are currently offering the drives in the $670-$680US range.

$111 worth of discounts, plus a few MIRs

Many manufacturers teamed up to offer customers a mega bundle deal on an AMD Dragon Platform computer, available on Newegg.com. It comprises eight, yes eight components. In other words, what you get is a complete PC. The only thing left to do is build it.

This computer sets you at a not too shabby $679.88 after MIRs, or $719.88 without. Moreover, you get free shipping on this large package. Buying each part separately would cost you $831.81 and most probably a somewhat steep shipping cost.

With the already awesome price/performance ratio of the dragon platform, this deal just make it even more attracting. Don't miss out on it!

Ultra-affordable drives in capacities up to 16GB

Just in time for the back-to-school season, OCZ has announced the Zee series USB 2.0 flash drives for those seeking portable storage at an affordable price point. According to Alex Mei, CMO of the OCZ Technology Group, “The Zee is designed to be affordable to the complete range of consumers, and is available in large capacities up to 16GB yet is both lightweight and compact so that it highly portable.”

It looks like your basic USB 2.0 flash drive with a removable cap, comes in any color you want as long as it's black (with apologies to Henry Ford) and can be had in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes with a two-year warranty. OCZ is really touting the affordability aspect of the Zee drive but hasn't provided details on what it will cost. While we're waiting for more details you can amuse yourself by trying to say "OCZ Zee" ten times real fast.

Lays to Claim to world's fastest 128GB drive title

Corsair today announced the arrival of its 128GB Flash Voyager GT which it says is the world's fastest 128GB USB flash drive. While based on multi-level cell NAND flash memory, Corsair explained it's able to approach single-level cell performance through the use of a dual-controller architecture. The 128GB Voyager GT is reportedly able to achieve read speeds of up to 32MB/sec and write speeds of up to 25.6MB/sec.; depending on system overhead, the limiting factor becomes the effective speed of the USB 2.0 bus itself.

Corsair hasn't published dimensions of the drive but says "it’s less than half the size of a solid-state drive" which makes it a lot more convenient to tote around than a traditional backup hard drive unit. The Voyager GT is encased in a water-resistant rubber coating and can withstand shocks of up to 1500G and is backed by a 10-year warranty.

This is the fourth 128GB USB flash drive we've seen released in the past two months and it is currently available online for around $399.99  making it on par with the Patriot Xporter Magnum drive in both terms of price ($399.99) and speed (31MB/s). Other manufacturers with 128GB drives include Super Talent, Edge Tech and Kingston.

Value-oriented drives targeted at mainstream users

It seems as if you can't visit your favorite technology site these days without reading about the latest solid state drive offering from yet another company. We're all familiar by now with the benefits - higher speeds, lower power requirements and improved shock resistance - when compared to traditional hard drives. Many of us have looked longingly at the SSDs yet there always seems to be a "Yeah, but..." at the end of any discussion and that is around the price points at which these drives are being offered. In all fairness, prices are coming down, but I still hear you saying "Yeah, but...".

OCZ Technology has certainly been one one of those manufacturers that has been offering a full lineup of solid state drives, including some pretty snazzy high-performance units, but now the company has turned it's attention to us mere mortals by offering the OCZ Solid 2 Series SATA II 2.5" SSD lineup that includes two value-oriented models targeted at the mainstream user. Perhaps best suited as a laptop upgrade, the new drives are based on multi-level cell technology and are being offered in 60GB and 120GB models. The drives use an Indilinx controller and feature 64MB cache with what OCZ terms "performance optimization" which hopefully means the firmware can help take care of the performance degradation seen over time in many manufacturers' drives. Performance wise, the 120GB model features up to 125MB/s read and 100MB/s write speeds with the 60GB checking with read/write speeds of 125MB/s and 100MB/s respectively.

While OCZ states the Solid 2 Series drives will be available "at a price point that is truly within reach of mainstream consumers”, the company has yet to disclose pricing or availability. Hopefully these drives will make upgrading a notebook or perhaps creating a nice little RAID 0 array in your gaming rig a more reasonable proposition.

AJAX management UI now offers iSCSI, Apple Time Machine support and iPhone apps

Synology offers a full line of network attached storage servers for both home and office environments. One of the key features of its products is the management user interface call Disk Station Manager which uses AJAX technology to provide a easy to use, rich client experience for managing and accessing their NAS servers via the network and over the Internet.

Synology is announcing the beta release of DSM 2.2 that adds a lot of exciting new features including iSCSI support for virtual storage and a new built-in firewall function to prevent uninvited connections to the server and to protect the server from attacks. Apple users get new features as well such as support for Apple Time Machine allowing Mac OS X users to back up their desktop data to their Disk Stations. iPhone users will get two new applications in the Apple App Store that include DS photo and DS Audio that allow users to upload photos stored on their iPhone/iPod Touch to Disk Station as well as access music stored on Disk Stations through their iPhone/iPod Touch.

I've used an earlier version of Disk Station Manager on a Disk Station DS408 server and it is by far the easiest and slickest interface on any NAS I've come across. The beta can be downloaded from the Synology web site. Current Synology owners will be able to download DSM 2.2 for free when it is finally released sometime in September.

32GB, 64GB and 128GB drive with Indilinx Barefoot controller

Corsair added a new line of solid state drives with today's announcement of the Extreme Series in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities. The new drives slot in between its Performance and Legacy series of SSDs. Like the Performance series, the Extreme models use Samsung MLC flash memory but come with an Indilinx Barefoot controller and 64MB of DRAM cache.

Corsair is also equipping the Extreme series drives with user-upgradeable firmware so that the TRIM command can be added when it becomes available. This will allow users to upgrade in the future to overcome some of the performance degradation issues afflicting solid state drives over time.

Corsair claims the Extreme series can attain maximum sequential read speeds up to 240MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 170MB/s. Backed by a two-year warranty, Corsair announced they are available immediately. An online search turned up a couple of sites offering the 128GB version in the $400US range and the 64GB version for around $240US.

Includes AES-256 hardware encryption

Super Talent announced it has begun shipping a a 128GB version of it Luxio flash drive. The Luxio measures 3.0 x 0.81 x 0.37 inches, so it's not a mini drive but then it does pack enough storage space for you carry around 40,000 six megapixel photos or up to 32,000 MP3 songs in your pocket.

Apparently there is a demand for this much storage capacity in a USB drive as about this time last month Patriot, Edge Tech and Kingston all announced 128GB USB drives. Super Talent is also including AES-256 hardware encryption as a standard feature.

The Luxio will come in wood grain, silver or black colors and ships in a gift box with a black leather carrying case. At a suggested price of $349, the Luxio comes in a bit below the Edge Tech ($389.95) and Patriot ($399.99) models and well below the $546 MSRP for the Kingston drive. The Luxio carries a limited lifetime warranty and will be available from e-tailers this month.

Up to 16GB capacity and no cap to lose

Patriot has released a new set of USB flash drives dubbed Xporter Mini II.

Unlike its predecessor, the Xporter Mini, the new drive loses the cap - before you have a chance to - by using a cap-less slider design. The Mini II is also smaller and uses a chip-on-board design (COB), making it both waterproof and dust-proof.

The Mini II comes in an aluminum casing and weighs in at only 2.6 grams. The drives are color-coded according to capacity and come in 2GB (green), 4GB (blue), 8GB (gray) and 16GB (black) models.

Double the cache of previous models

Patriot Memory today launched a new version of it Torqx line of solid state drives called the Torqx M28 and are being offered in 128GB and 256GB models.. The new SSDs get a boost in the size of the onboard cache from 64MB to 128MB allowing the drives to reach sequential read speeds of up to 220MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 200MB/s.

Patriot is also upping the ante by increasing the warranty on all its Torqx product line from 2 to 10 years. Lest some of its customers feel cheated, Patriot also stated the new warranty is retroactive and will cover all consumer purchases prior to today's announcement. To make adoption of the 2.5" drive all that much easier for consumers, each unit comes with a mounting bracket for use in desktop computers. Patriot did not provide pricing or availability information.

Featuring Increased Host Clock-Speed and DRAM Cache Speed

OCZ, a leader in the flash memory market as well as other components, improved the already proven-to-be-performant Vertex solid state drives. A minor change, yet very significant, has allowed the drives to reach insane transfer speeds. The host clock-speed and cache were overclocked from 166MHz to 180MHz.

This drive will come in sizes of 30, 60, 120 and 250GB. Compared to the 250MB/s and 160MB/s of its predecessor, the largest version will attain an amazing 270MB/s read speed and up to 210MB/s write. It features a proprietary firmware and still provides the snappy computing, longer battery life, and shorter boot-ups of the current Vertex series, along with the increased performance. These drives are backed with a 3 Year Warranty, plus the OCZ’s exemplary service and support.

There is no word on pricing and availability yet, but let's hope they are out on the market for the beginning of classes!

DS409slim supports up to 2TB while using only 19W

Synology just launched a new addition to its lineup of network attached storage units for the home/ small office market with the release of the DS409slim. With room for up to four 2.5" drives the DS409slim can support up to 2TB of storage with a footprint of only 120 x 105 x 142 mm. The little NAS is not only small, but it's also has a small appetite for power, using an average of 19W under normal operating conditions with all four drives installed.

Maybe Synology should have called it the 'Little Giant' because, despite its diminutive size, the DS409 sports some big features like hot swappable drives, a 1.2GHz processor and 128MB of memory. The unit also features a Gigabit LAN port, two USB2.0 ports and an eSATA port. The DS409slim supports basic, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 5+Spare, RAID 6 volumes and comes with features like RAID volume expansion and RAID level migration not normally found on units this size.

The unit uses Synology's Disk Station Manager 2.1 firmware, an AJAX-based user-friendly interface, featuring a BitTorrent download manager, a multimedia server with UPnP support for the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox360 and several backup features.

Synology said it is currently shipping the DS409slim and a quick review of online pricing showed it's available for around $400US.

New line of colorful mini USB storage drives

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of flash storage devices introduced their new line of colorful and trendy Pico Mini USB drives today. Like the Pico drives, these Mini drives are built using COB  technology which enables squeezing impressive flash capacities into extremely small packages.
 
Pico Mini drives are water resistant, and support up to 200X transfer speeds. The drives are offered in four bright colors that are color coded for different capacities.

• Part Number     Description    Retail Price
• STU2GMAP    2GB Pico Mini-A, 150X, Orchid Pink    9.99
• STU4GMAG    4GB Pico Mini-A, 200X, Lime Green    14.99
• STU8GMAB    8GB Pico Mini-A, 200X, Sky Blue    23.99
• STU16GMAK    16GB Pico Mini-A, 200X, Classic Black    39.99

 
"We designed these drives to build on the success of our popular Pico family. They share a lot of the same features, but while Pico drives have a shiny chrome finish, Pico Mini drives are colorful and trendy to appeal to a different demographic", explained Super Talent Director of Marketing, Joe James.

Pico Mini drives will begin shipping this week to online retailers worldwide.

No bigger than a quarter and only 1.5 grams in weight these drives are very affordable for everyone, and what a great way to transport your information while having a little fun doing it.

IDE hard drive interface for embedded applications

Super Talent announced today it has begun shipping a new line of flash disk modules intended primarily for embedded applications. The new disk on module (DOM) units use a standard IDE hard drive interface with either a 40- or 44-pin configuration and are offered with either horizontal or vertical connectors. The NAND flash used in the DOMs make them ideal for applications such as areas exposed to high levels of dust, shock, vibration or extreme temperatures that would render traditional hard drives useless.

The line includes single-level cell models that offer sequential read speeds up to 80 MB/sec and sequential write speeds up to 60 MB/sec and multi-level cell models that achieve up to 40 MB/sec write speeds. The units include wear leveling, ECC and bad bit management as standard features for improved reliability. Both the MLC and SLC models are offered in 8, 16 and 32GB capacities.

It seems like these would also make an ideal way to embed a Linux OS on a small form factor board for that carputer or NAS appliance you've been thinking about building. Super Talent is currently shipping units but didn't disclose pricing.

Now available in 64GB and 128GB capacities

Corsair expanded its lineup of Performance Series solid state drives by filling in the niches below its existing P256 SSD with the release of the P128 (128GB) and P64 (64GB) drives. The Corsair P128 has the same performance as its larger sibling with read speeds of 220MB/sec and write speeds of 200MB/sec. The P64 is not quite as fast in the write department with read speeds 220MB/sec and write speeds of up to 120MB/sec.

Both drives are built using multi-level cell NAND flash technology and come equipped with a Samsung controller, 128MB of cache and NCQ support. Corsair claims the use of the more sophisticated Samsung controller allow the drives to eliminate the stutter problem found in cheaper drives.

The P128 is available now and a check of Corsair's retail partners showed it can be had for $339-$355US. The P128 has a MTBF of 100+ years and comes with a two-year warranty. The P64 is expected to become available in early July.

HRD is capable of 160,000 IOPS according to developer

For many years now the main storage scheme used for personal computers have been mechanical hard disc drive. In the past few years, the solid-state drive has come to market with faster performance and lower capacity and at a much higher price tag.

DataSlide has unveiled a first of its kind medium that may one day replace both HDDs and SSDs. This new medium is referred to as an HRD or Hard Rectangular Disc. DataSlide says that their technology is protected by a patent and can achieve 160,000 IOPS and 500MB/sec performance levels while consuming fewer than 4 watts of power.

The concept for the HRD was taken from the IBM Millipede concept and then reworked with common technologies. DataSlide has no idea on when or how long it might take before the HRD comes to market.
 

Xporter Magnum offers hard drive size storage

If you're experiencing a sense of déjà vu, it's not because we are repeating a news item but rather because the last couple of days have seen three different manufacturers announce 128GB flash drives. Monday it was Kingston who led off with the DT200 drive and yesterday we saw announcements from both Patriot and Edge Tech.

With yesterday's announcement, Patriot has doubled the capacity of its Xporter Magnum line of drives from 64GB to 128GB and is touting the possibilities of the Magnum not in terms of the number of photos you can store, but in the number of Blu-ray titles you can fit on the drive (in case you're wondering, Patriot says the answer is 14 movies).

Although neither Patriot not Kingston can claim to have the biggest drive on the market with offerings from three different companies out there now, Patriot is laying claim to being the fastest with a reported data transfer rate of 31MB/s. No word yet from Patriot on how much the Magnum 128GB will cost or when it will become available.

85,000 photos, 128 hours of video or 32,000 MP3s in your pocket

We just got a heads up that Edge Tech plans to announce a 128GB version of its DiskGO flash drive sometime next week. That's enough room for 85,000 photos, 128 hours of video, 32,000 MP3s, or 1,280,000 documents give or take a few megabytes. That'll take some of the thunder out of Kingston's announcement yesterday of its own 128GB drive as it will no longer be the only drive on the market with that massive amount of storage.

The Edge Tech 128GB DiskGO flash drive is encapsulated in an aluminum housing to protect the drive from wear and tear. Edge Tech is also offering protection for your data with the inclusion of CryptArchiver Lite encryption software, a trial version of CryptArchiver which allows users to encrypt up to 25MB of data using 128-bit AES encryption. Edge Tech offers the full version of CryptArchiver for download through its support site which can encrypt up to 32GB, and exceeds the U.S. government standard for encryption strength. Users can choose which cipher method they prefer: 256-bit AES or 448-bit Blowfish encryption.

The new drives will be available July 31 and can be pre-ordered today. Edge Tech will be offering the units for $389.95 with free shipping. Each comes with a lifetime warranty and toll-free tech support. That price puts the DiskGO around $150 cheaper than the Kingston DT200 128GB drive.

Stores up to 10TB

Thecus makes a full line of storage devices for both home and business with models ranging from single-unit 2.5" external drives all the way up to 8-bay rack mount servers. The company has just expanded that lineup with the N5500, a 5-bay device with some serious features to make sure your data is secure.

First of all the N5500 is a dual-DOM unit meaning the embedded OS resides on dual flash modules to ensure things keep running even if one of the modules should fail. Other redundant features include dual LAN connections with automatic failover and load balancing. Throw in support for RAID 0/1/5/6/10 as well as JBOD volumes and RAID level migration and expansion you end up with a place to securely store you data with the flexibility to grow along with your storage needs.

The five hot swappable bays are hot-swappable and feature auto rebuild capabilities and the unit can be used as direct attached storage, connected to the network or set up as an iSCSI target. The N5500 also offers many features for home users including full multimedia support including an iTunes server, photo web server and a media server with UPnP support. The device also marks the debut of Thecus' AJAX-based web management interface for a more robust, user-friendly experience.

Thecus hasn't released any pricing or availability details yet.

High performance at mainstream price

OCZ Technology, one of the leader in flash based memory products, has just unleashed another solid state drive in it's already solid lineup.

Named the Agility, the new line should be about 30% slower than their current Vertex, arguably the leader in performance SSD's.

The drive will be available with 30, 60 and 120GB, but, unlike it's big brother, OCZ has not planned a 250GB version. It's fair to guess that it would most likely be far out of mainstream price range.

Both drives sport similar features including the Indilinx controller paired with 64 MB of cache. OCZ claims relatively modest 185 MB/s and 100 MB/s read and write speeds for the 30GB version of the Agility. The larger versions score quite a bit higher, reading and writing up to 230 MB/s and 135 MB/s respectively.

Even though no pricing has been disclosed yet, those new drives will certainly carry an appealing price tag. With the 30GB Vertex selling for a mere 130$ after rebate, it's very possible this one will hit the 100$ mark.