Thread: Anandtech News

In response to the increasing popularity of compact and portable gaming PCs in the past couple of years, we've seen several PC peripheral manufacturers release larger collections of SFX form factor cases and power supplies. Chief among these has been Cooler Master, where the prolific PC part vendor recently expanded their SFX series to include ATX 3.0-compliant PSUs. This has finally given the company a modern, miniature platform that can drive the latest NVIDIA video cards.
Today we're looking at Cooler Master's V850 SFX Gold, which represents a more budget-friendly option in the SFX power supply market compared to their previously reviewed V1100 SFX Platinum. The SFX Gold series includes four models, ranging from 550W to 850W, with the 850W unit that we are reviewing today being the most potent. This 850-Watt power supply carries an 80 Plus Gold certification and is designed for high-performance gaming and workstation builds. As the top-tier model in the SFX Gold series, it offers substantial power output for an SFX unit and maintains ATX 3.0 compliance, including a 12VHPWR connector in a compact SFX format.


More...

Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage.
Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream SSDs. Externally, the controller supports a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection, and per WD's specifications, even this budget drive should be fast enough to put the additional bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 to good use. All of the drives are single-sided, and are covered with a thin graphene heatspreader for heat dissipation.
More surprising here is WD's choice of NAND. According to the company, they are using a mix of different generations and different types of NAND, depending on the model. The 500GB/1TB/2TB models are using WD/Kioxia's older 112 layer BiCS 5 TLC NAND. Meanwhile the new 4TB capacity is being enabled with the company's newer BiCS 6 NAND – but the QLC variety. All drive capacities are being backed by the same controller, so there is a thread of commonality between them, but at a high level WD seems to be using the higher performance of BiCS 6 to offset the switch from TLC to QLC.

WD Blue SN5000 SSD Specifications
Capacity	500 GB	1 TB	2 TB	4 TB
Controller	WD In-House: 4 Channel, DRAMless
NAND Flash	WD BiCS 5 TLC			WD BiCS 6 QLC
Form-Factor, Interface	Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe
Sequential Read	5000 MB/s	5150 MB/s	5150 MB/s	5500 MB/s
Sequential Write	4000 MB/s	4900 MB/s	4850 MB/s	5000 MB/s
Random Read IOPS	460K	730K	650K	690K
Random Write IOPS	770K			800K
Peak Power	6.3W?
SLC Caching	Yes
TCG Pyrite Encryption	2.01
Warranty	5 Years
Write Endurance	300 TBW 0.33 DWPD	600 TBW 0.33 DWPD	900 TBW 0.24 DWPD	1200 TBW 0.16 DWPD
MSRP	$70	$80	$140	$280

When it comes to performance, the WD Blue SN5000 series drives are rated for read speeds between 5000 MB/sec and 5500 MB/sec depending on the capacity, while write speeds range from 4000 MB/sec to 5000 MB/sec. As for random performance, we are looking at up to 690K 4K IOPS random read speeds as well as up to 900K 4K IOPS random write speeds for the highest capacity model, while the lower-end 500 GB model is rated for 460K/770K 4K random read/write IOPS.
Overall, even with the 4TB model using QLC NAND, WD is touting it at offering better performance than any of the lower capacity models. We're accustomed to seeing QLC drives come in behind TLC drives in this respect, so that newer generation of NAND is doing a lot of heavy lifting to put it ahead of the other models.
This goes for write endurance as well; the 4TB QLC model has the highest endurance rating, at 1200 TB written, followed by 900, 600, and 300 TBW for the lower capacity models respectively. Depending on the specific drive model, this works out to between 300 to 600 drive writes in total, or around 0.164 drive writes per day, which is typical for drives in this class.
Overall, the new drive family supplants WD's previous generation of Blue drives, last year's SN580 series. Comparatively, the SN5000 drives are rated to offer better sequential and random drive performance at every tier. And the the tiny 250GB drive has been dropped entirely, making room for the new high-capacity 4TB model at the high-end while the 500GB drive model is the new entry-level capacity.
While the WD Blue SN5000 NVMe family seems to be well positioned to be a low-cost drives meant to compete aggressively on the pricing, for now WD's launch prices are a bit ambitious. The $70 price tag for the 500 GB version is pretty typical, while the $280 recommended price for a 4TB model puts it in a weird spot between a number of other 4TB drives. The tad slower Crucial P3 Plus 4TB can be found for $217, while WD's own considerably faster WD_Black SN850X 4TB is only $30 more, at $310. Ultimately, given that Western Digital's Blue drives are meant to be inexpensive SSDs, we expect retail drive prices to catch up with market realities shortly.



More...

While the new CAMM and LPCAMM memory modules for laptops have garnered a great deal of attention in recent months, it's not just the mobile side of the PC memory industry that is looking at changes. The desktop memory market is also coming due for some upgrades to further improve DIMM performance, in the form of a new DIMM variety called the Clocked Unbuffered DIMM (CUDIMM). And while this memory isn't in use quite yet, several memory vendors had their initial CUDIMM products on display at this year's Computex trade show, offering a glimpse into the future of desktop memory.
A variation on traditional Unbuffered DIMMs (UDIMMs), Clocked UDIMMs (and Clocked SODIMMs) have been created as another solution to the ongoing signal integrity challenges presented by DDR5 memory. DDR5 allows for rather speedy transfer rates with removable (and easily installed) DIMMs, but further performance increases are running up against the laws of physics when it comes to the electrical challenges of supporting memory on a stick – particularly with so many capacity/performance combinations like we see today. And while those challenges aren't insurmountable, if DDR5 (and eventually, DDR6) are to keep increasing in speed, some changes appear to be needed to produce more electrically robust DIMMs, which is giving rise to the CUDIMM.
Standardized by JEDEC earlier this year as JESD323, CUDIMMs tweak the traditional unbuffered DIMM by adding a clock driver (CKD) to the DIMM itself, with the tiny IC responsible for regenerating the clock signal driving the actual memory chips. By generating a clean clock locally on the DIMM (rather than directly using the clock from the CPU, as is the case today), CUDIMMs are designed to offer improved stability and reliability at high memory speeds, combating the electrical issues that would otherwise cause reliability issues at faster memory speeds. In other words, adding a clock driver is the key to keeping DDR5 operating reliably at high clockspeeds.
All told, JEDEC is proposing that CUDIMMs be used for DDR5-6400 speeds and higher, with the first version of the specification covering speeds up to DDR5-7200. The new DIMMs will also be drop-in compatible with existing platforms (at least on paper), using the same 288-pin connector as today's standard DDR5 UDIMM and allowing for a relatively smooth transition towards higher DDR5 clockspeeds.


More...

OLED panels have a number of advantages, including deep blacks, fast response times, and energy efficiency; most of these stemming from the fact that they do not need backlighting. However they also have drawbacks, as well, as trying to drive them to be as bright as a high-tier LCD will quickly wear out the organic material used. Researchers have been spending the past couple of decades developing ways to prolong the lifespans of OLED materials, and recently LG has put together a novel (if brute force) solution: halve the work by doubling the number of pixels. This is the basis of the company's new tandem OLED technology, which has recently gone into mass production.
The Tandem OLED technology introduced by LG Display uses two stacks of red, green, and blue (RGB) organic light-emitting layers, which are layered on top fo each other, essentially reducing how bright each layer needs to individually be in order to hit a specific cumulative brightness. By combining multiple OLED pixels running at a lower brightness, tandem OLED displays are intended to offer higher brightness and durability than traditional single panel OLED displays, reducing the wear on the organic materials in normal situations – and by extension, making it possible to crank up the brightness of the panels well beyond what a single panel could sustain without cooking itself. Overall, LG claims that tandem panels can hit over three-times the brightness of standard OLED panels.
The switch to tandem panels also comes with energy efficiency benefits, as the power consumption of OLED pixels is not linear with the output brightness. According to LG, their tandem panels consume up to 40% less power. More interesting from the manufacturing side of matters, LG's tandem panel stack is 40% thinner (and 28%) lighter than existing OLED laptop screens, despite having to get a whole second layer of pixels in there.
In terms of specifications, the 13-inch tandem OLED panel feature a WQXGA+ (2880×1800) resolution and can cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The panel is also certified to meet VESA's Display HDR True Black 500 requirements, which among other things, requires that it can hit 500 nits of brightness. And given that this tech is meant to go into tablets and laptops, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the display panel is also touch sensitive, as well.
"We will continue to strengthen the competitiveness of OLED products for IT applications and offer differentiated customer value based on distinctive strengths of Tandem OLED, such as long life, high brightness, and low power consumption," said Jae-Won Jang, Vice President and Head of the Medium Display Product Planning Division at LG Display.
Without any doubts, LG's Tandem OLED display panel looks impressive. The company is banking on it doing well in the high-end laptop and tablet markets, where manufacturers have been somewhat hesitant to embrace OLED displays due to power concerns. The technology has already been adopted by Apple for their most recent iPad Pro tablets, and now LG is making it available to a wider group of OEMs.
What remains to be seen is the technology's cost. Computer-grade OLED panels are already a more expensive option, and this one ups the ante with two layers of OLED pixels. So it isn't a question of whether it will be reserved for premium, high-margin devices, but a matter of just how much it will add to the final price tag.
For now, LG Display does not disclose which PC OEMs are set to use its 13-inch Tandem OLED panel, though as the company is a supplier to virtually all of the PC OEMs, there's little doubt it should crop up in multiple laptops soon enough.



More...

As GPU families enter the later part of their lifecycles, we often see chip manufacturers start to offload stockpiles of salvaged chips that, for one reason or another, didn't make the grade for the tier of cards they normally are used in. These recovered chips are fairly unremarkable overall, but they are unsold silicon that still works and has economic value, leading to them being used in lower-tier cards so that they can be sold. And, judging by the appearance of a new video card design from MSI, it looks like NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace generation of chips has reached that stage, as the Taiwanese video card maker has put out a new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super card based on a salvaged AD102 GPU.
Typically based on NVIDIA's AD103 GPU, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super series sits a step below the company's flagship RTX 4080/4090 cards, both of which are based on the bigger and badder AD102 chip. But with some number of AD102 chips inevitably failing to live up to RTX 4080 specifications, rather than being thrown out, these chips can instead be used to make RTX 4070 cards. Which is exactly what MSI has done with their new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X Black OC graphics card.
The card itself is relatively unremarkable – using a binned AD102 chip doesn't come with any advantages, and it should perform just like regular AD103 cards – and for that reason, video card vendors rarely publicly note when they're doing a run of cards with a binned-down version of a bigger chip. However, these larger chips have a tell-tale PCB footprint that usually makes it obvious what's going on. Which, as first noticed by @wxnod, is exactly what's going on with MSI's card.

Ada Lovelace Lineup: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 TiS (AD103), RTX 4070 TiS (AD102), & RTX 4090 (AD102)

The tell, in this case, is the rear board shot provided by MSI. The larger AD102 GPU uses an equally larger mounting bracket, and is paired with a slightly more complex array of filtering capacitors on the back side of the board PCB. Ultimately, since these are visible in MSI's photos of their GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X Black OC, it's easy to compare it to other video cards and see that it has exactly the same capacitor layout as MSI's GeForce RTX 4090, thus confirming the use of an AD102 GPU.
Chip curiosities aside, all of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics cards – no matter whether they are based on the AD102 or AD103 GPU – come with a GPU with 8,448 active CUDA cores and 16 GB of GDDR6X memory, so it doesn't (typically) matter which chip they carry. Otherwise, compared to a fully-enabled AD102 chip, the RTX 4070 Ti Super specifications are relatively modest, with fewer than half as many CUDA cores, underscoring how the AD102 chip being used in MSI's card is a pretty heavy salvage bin.
As for the rest of the card, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X Black OC is a relatively hefty card overall, with a cooling system to match. Being overclocked, the Ventus also has a slightly higher TDP than normal GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super cards, weighing in at 295 Watts, or 10 Watts above baseline cards.
Meanwhile, MSI is apparently not the only video card manufacturer using salvaged AD102 chips for GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super, either. @wxnod has also posted a screenshot obtained on an Inno3D GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super based on an AD102 GPU.
Sources: MSI, @wxnod



More...

When Micron announced plans to build two new fabs in the U.S. in 2022, the company vaguely said both would come online by the decade's end. Then, in 2023, it began to optimize its spending, which pushed production at these fabrication facilities. This week, the company outlined more precise timeframes for when its fabs in Idaho and New York will start operations: this will happen from calendar 2026 to calendar 2029.
"These fab construction investments are necessary to support supply growth for the latter half of this decade," a statement by Micron in its Q3 FY2024 financial results report reads. "This Idaho fab will not contribute to meaningful bit supply until fiscal 2027 and the New York construction capex is not expected to contribute to bit supply growth until fiscal 2028 or later. The timing of future [wafer fab equipment] spend in these fabs will be managed to align supply growth with expected demand growth."
Micron's fiscal year 2027 starts in September 2026, so the new fab near Boise, Idaho, is set to start operations between September 2026 and September 2027. The company's fiscal 2028 starts in September 2027, so the fab will likely begin operations in calendar 2028 or later, probably depending on the demand for DRAM memory in the coming years. That said, Micron's U.S. memory fabs will begin operations between late 2026 and 2029, which aligns with the company's original plans.
Construction of the fab in Idaho is well underway. In contrast, construction of the New York facility has yet to begin as the company is working on regulatory and permitting processes in the state.
Micron's capital expenditure (CaPex) plan for FY2024 is approximately $8.0 billion, with a decrease in year-over-year spending on wafer fabrication equipment (WFE). In Q4 FY2024, the company will spend around $3 billion on fab construction, new wafer fab tools, and various expansions/upgrades.
Looking ahead to FY2025, the company plans a substantial increase in capex, targeting a mid-30s percentage of revenue to support various technological and facility advancements. In particular, it expects its quarterly CapEx to average above the $3 billion level seen in the fourth quarter of FY2024, which means that it plans to spend about $12 billion in its fiscal 2025, which begins in late September.
Half or more of the total CapEx increase in FY2025 (i.e., over $2 billion) will be allocated to constructing new fabs in Idaho and New York. Meanwhile, the FY2025 CapEx will significantly rise to fund high-bandwidth memory (HBM) assembly and testing and the construction of fabrication and back-end facilities. This increase also includes investments in technology transitions to meet growing demand.
"Fab construction in Idaho is underway, and we are working diligently to complete the regulatory and permitting processes in New York," said Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive officer of Micron, at the company's conference call with investors and financial analysts (via SeekingAlpha). "This additional leading-edge greenfield capacity, along with continued technology transition investments in our Asia facilities, is required to meet long-term demand in the second half of this decade and beyond. These investments support our objective to maintain our current bit share over time and to grow our memory bit supply in line with long-term industry bit demand."



More...

Over the past couple of years, Frore Systems has demonstrated several ways that its AirJet solid-state active cooling systems can be used to improve cooling in fanless devices like laptops, tablets, SSDs, and edge computing devices. But there are a subset of those applications that need their cooling options to also be waterproof, and Frore is looking to address those as well. To that end, this week Frore introduced its AirJet Mini Sport, a waterproof, IP68-rated solid-state cooling device that is aimed at use in smartphones and action cameras.
Introduced at MWC Shanghai to attract attention of China-based handset vendors, edge and industrial computing devices, and action cameras, the AirJet Mini Sport is an enhanced version of Frore's AirJet Mini Slim. This version has been fully waterproofed, offering IP68-level protection that allows it to work while being submerged in over 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. Internally, the AirJet Mini Sport can effectively dissipate 5.25 Watts of heat by generating 1750 Pascals of back pressure, while consuming 1 Watt of energy itself.

Elsewhere, Frore claims that the AirJet Mini Sport can be used to provide 2.5 Watts of cooling capacity to smartphones. Which, although not enough to cover the complete power consumption/heat dissipation of a high-end SoC, would have a significant impact on both burst and steady-state performance by allowing those chips to run at peak clocks and power for longer periods of time.

To ensure consistent performance of Frore's AirJet Mini Sport in diverse environments, the cooling device includes features such as dust resistance and self-cleaning. In addition, just like AirJet Mini Slim, the Sport-badged version its own thermal sensor to control its own operation and maintain optimal performance. As a result, Frore claims that smartphones and action cameras with the AirJet Mini Sport can achieve up to 80% better performance.
"We are excited to announce the waterproof AirJet Mini Sport," said Dr. Seshu Madhavapeddy, founder and CEO of Frore Systems. "Consumers demand increased performance in compact devices they can use anywhere, on land or in water. AirJet unleashes device performance, now enabling users to do more with their IP68 dustproof and waterproof devices."



More...