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CES 2015 - OCZ Storage Solutions had two upcoming products in the suite at CES 2015 that we want to talk about today.

The first is known as JetExpress, a native PCIe 3.0 x4 solution that may appear in three form factors, M.2 (as shown), SFF-8639 and even a 2.5" AHCI SATA model. Given the AHCI SATA connection, the controller will be able to detect connection rates and negotiate with the system based on the connection method.

The model number on the controller tells us quite a bit. JX should stand for JetExpress, 1600 could be a connection rate or performance specification such as 1600 MB/s for the first model. M00 was used on early versions of the Barefoot 3 to the first version (OCZ also has an M10 second generation model for lower power consumption and slightly less performance).

CES 2015 -Samsung had several enterprise SSDs on display in their meeting rooms, highlighting the wide range of storage options they provide. Samsung has all the connectivity bases covered for SATA, SAS, and PCIe.

NVMe SSDs always attracts my immediate attention. NVMe is a hot topic, as outlined in our Defining NVMe Article. Pairing the refined and efficient interface with exciting new NAND technologies is exciting, and the SM1715 comes with massive capacities of 1.6 and 3.2TB. The SM1715 comes in the familiar HHHL form factor, and cramming all of that capacity into such a small space is made possible by Samsung's 3D V-NAND. Readers can find deeper analysis of V-NAND in The V-NAND Paradigm Shift Whitepaper. The SM1715's obligatory feeds and speeds are 750,000/185,000 random read/write IOPS and a sequential read/write speed of 3,000/2,200 MB/s, but NVMe advantages of reduced CPU overhead, in-box driver support in leading operating systems, and refined latency performance are also a big attraction.

M.2 offers the same NVMe goodness in a slimmer form factor , which is generating incredible interest for hyperscale deployments. The Samsung SM953 packs 480GB of 1x nm planar MLC NAND flash, but this inaugural design will likely be augmented with 3D V-NAND in the future. The UBX controller delivers sequential read/write speeds of 1,750/750 MB/s, and random read speed weighs in at 250,000 IOPS. Random write speeds haven't been disclosed as of yet, but the SM953 also features power loss protection. The race is on for the first datacenter-class M.2 SSD to hit the market, and look to these pages soon for an evaluation of the first one to hit our labs.

CES 2015 - Plextor officially announced the M6e Black Edition at CES, a product we broke an exclusive story on just a few weeks ago. The M6e Black Edition is a gamer focused version of the original M6e PCIe 2.0 x2 SSD released one year ago at CES 2014.

The new model will ship in three capacity sizes, as shown from our suite high up in the MGM Grand on the beautiful Las Vegas Strip.

Enhancements include a new black and red aluminum cover that doubles as a heat sink, allowing the new drive to perform well in systems without a lot of air cooling. Sorry for the fingerprints on the package in this image. We're a bit excited and are all checking out the product details on the back.

Warner Bros. certainly has form in the area of splitting films unnecessarily, as seen with 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', and 'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies' which is currently steaming it's way to a billion dollars at the international box office, so today's news that the upcoming sequel to 'Man of Steel' might be split into two film releases does have more than a whiff of authenticity about it.

Currently pegged for a March 25, 2016 release date, FlickeringMyth is reporting that Warner are poised to announce that the Superman sequel, which has morphed into a trojan horse to launch the Justice League as a fully fledged franchise, will be split into two films - the first ' Batman v Superman Part I: Enter the Knight' coming on October 23rd 2015, with 'Batman v Superman Part II: Dawn of Justice' to be released on the original release date of March 25th 2016.

With a theatrical teaser attached to next month's release of the Wachowski's 'Jupiter Rising', it won't be long before this rumour is confirmed either way - but I'd put my money on happening.

CES 2015 - Despite the new M6e Black Edition with PlexTurbo 2.0 software just hitting the market, Plextor was prepared to talk about a future M7e SSD that doubles the available bandwidth of the just announced M6e Black Edition.

The new M7e moves the PCIe AHCI SSD to PCIe 2.0 x4. This doubles the theoretical bandwidth from the M6e and M6e Black Edition. Users will need to balance the fact that the M6e Black Edition is available now with the performance increase offered by the new model available in six months or so.

The new M7e is build with the Marvell Altaplus controller we first broke cover on in an exclusive report at CES 2014.

CES 2015 -Phison is poised to make waves with their new PS5007-E7 controller. This new controller will power enterprise NVMe SSDs in both the M.2 and 2.5" form factors, with the latter sporting the new SFF-8639 connector. The controller will provide plenty of bandwidth with a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection. The new controllers support capacities from 16GB all the way up to 2TB. Sequential reads are rated for 2,800 MB/s, and sequential writes come in at 1,500 MB/s. The controller also features random read/write speeds of 350,000/300,000 IOPS.

The controller supports both AHCI 1.3 and NVMe 1.1. Current designs do not include power capacitors, but power loss protection will be included in the final designs. It is also only rational that an NVMe controller with this type of grunt power will eventually make its way to a standard PCIe form factor product, but we did not receive official confirmation of that possibility. The M.2 form factor is starting to pop up in roadmaps of more manufacturers for enterprise applications, so there is definitely an emerging customer base for these products as well.

An interesting tidbit of info is in the flash the controller supports. First, the controller is being qualified with Toshiba A19 MLC and TLC. There aren't any TLC NVMe SSDs with the SFF-8639 connector as of yet, but the transition to TLC will help lower cost, thus speeding NVMe adoption. The second interesting item is Phison is working on qualifying another type of NAND as well, but covered up the listing on the spec card. We were informed this is due to that particular manufacturer not being ready to announce the product, so Phison may be working with 3D NAND as well.

CES 2015 - Crucial announced a new 'SSD Toolbox' type software at CES 2015. Officially, the new software is called Crucial Storage Executive. The software installs on your system and is browser based for quick and easy management. It works with all SSDs back to the M500 model.

The interface looks really good and scales with resolution of your browser window. This is just the above the fold image on a 1920x1080 display with the browser set to 50% size.

The menu system was thought out well and shows you information on every drive in your system, not just the Crucial SSDs.

Sony Pictures managed to release "The Interview" to the Internet on Christmas Eve and in theaters on Christmas, but it continues to be a bumpy road for the movie studio. The Guardians of Peace hacker group compromised SPE servers, took all the data, and then "wiped them clean" so Sony no longer had backups.

The initial breach took place shortly before Thanksgiving, and the movie studio's networks are still down - and likely won't be back online for a few more weeks, at the earliest.

"We are the canary in the coal mine, that's for sure," said Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures CEO, in an interview with the Associated Press. "There's no playbook for this, so you are in essence trying to look at the situation as it unfolds and make decisions without being able to refer to a lot of experiences you've had in the past or other peoples' experiences. You're on completely new ground."

Companies struggle to keep their networks secure, and are becoming frustrated by cyberattacks and data breaches. Despite some interest in launching retaliatory attacks, there are a number of hurdles that make it difficult, legal issues aside - not only would it be ineffective because it could escalate the matter further, but there are concerns victims would launch cyberattacks against the wrong targets.

The topic came back to life after JPMorgan Chase may have recruited hackers to launch attacks in retaliation for a cyberattack. Cybersecurity experts and the US government don't recommend companies seek revenge, as US infrastructure has the most to lose - and it'll likely end poorly for the victim either way.

"The technical sector is the backbone of the American economy, and if we start engaging in these kind of behaviors, in these kind of attacks, we're setting a standard, we're creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do," said former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, in a an interview that PBS Nova will publish soon.

CES 2015 - Two themes stuck out this year in the consumer SSD world at CES 2015, Silicon Motion and 3bit per cell NAND flash.

At the ADATA suite we found these two topics merging together in the new ADATA SP320 SSD, the first retail branded product with a SMI SM2256 controller. Paired with the new Silicon Motion controller is 3bit per cell (TLC) NAND. ADATA didn't tell us what flavor of TLC rests under the cover. At this time the pool is fairly shallow but in the coming months several NAND flash fabs will deepen the pool.

The SP320 will ship in four capacity sizes, read up to 560 MB/s and write up to 510 MB/s, both sequential. No word on the random performance or price but we expect both to be low considering the low cost consumer placement of this product.

CES 2015 -ADATA had a working reference Seagate SandForce SF3700 SSD on display at CES 2015. The SF3700 has run over the expected release date, but with manufacturers highlighting the SF3700 in working demo's we know the controller is coming closer to market. Speculation is that shipping products will be ready around June, which is around the Computex trade show.

The demonstration was powered by a SandForce SSD placed on a PCB adapter board which allows an M.2 SSD to work over a standard PCIe slot. The SF3700 controller on display, commonly referred to by the code-name Griffen, communicates over a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection, though a x2 variant is also under development. The Griffen controller can communicate via either the AHCI or the NVMe protocol across the PCIe connection.

An important distinction between earlier demo's is the fact that the working demo was running without a heat sink. This points to continued optimization of the power consumption metrics, which relate directly to heat generation. The SF3700 has several key technologies, such as DEVSLP functionality, to allow it to operate within a very low power and thermal envelope.

CES 2015 - Today we spoke with Silicon Motion (SMI) on several topics, but later learned more details that helped to piece a puzzle together. Analyst reports show that 3bit per cell (TLC) will quickly overtake 2bit per cell (MLC) NAND in the future. Samsung dominates the 3bit per cell area, but Sandisk has also started shipping products with the technology. Toshiba will soon follow suit, the company actually produces TLC wafers with Sandisk in the Flash Forward joint venture. It's been stated that Micron will have TLC ready for consumer SSD devices as early as Q2 2015, and the technology is already utilized in other product types from Micron/Lexar/Crucial, such as SD cards.

Silicon Motion's upcoming SM2256 controller was designed exclusively to usher in the TLC era, and today we saw the controller working inside this laptop with Samsung TLC flash. At this time only two companies selling to the channel use Samsung NAND flash - Samsung and Seagate.

Samsung already has two existing low cost consumer SSD products on the market with 3bit per cell flash, the 840 EVO and 850 EVO. This leaves us to wonder why Silicon Motion would spend valuable engineering resources with Samsung TLC NAND. Enter Seagate and the the company's strategic alliance with Samsung for guaranteed Samsung flash, as seen with the Seagate 1200 SSD. Did we inadvertently just capture a quick look at what may be an early test of a Seagate consumer SSD that uses a Silicon Motion controller today?

CES 2015 - Over the last year we've often discussed Silicon Motion's rise in the SSD controller space. The fabless semiconductor's SM2246EN controller was well received, first by smaller SSD manufacturers, and now by NAND flash fabs.

This week, Sandisk announced the new SSD Plus that is priced less than $70 in 128GB. The SSD Plus won't break any performance records but is clearly designed to break price barriers. Sandisk didn't brief media before introducing the SSD Plus at Storage Visions 2015, but since that time we've learned that Silicon Motion is inside with a custom variant of the SM2246EN controller.

Getting one NAND fab company to use your controller is a big step for a controller maker that was virtually unheard of one year ago. Getting two is big news for investors. Just days after the Sandisk announcement, Crucial, a division of Lexar and also a NAND flash manufacturer, announced the new BX100. Again, this new low cost consumer SSD with 16nm MLC flash is managed by a Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller.

CES 2015 - We had a chance to take a sneak peak at Intel's widely anticipated computing stick here at CES 2015. The tiny dongle-like computer will feature a quad-core Atom-based CPU, and come in two versions; one supporting Windows and the other supporting Linux. The Windows-based stick will feature 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage while the Linux version will have only 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. Storage can be expanded through the microSD slot.

The stick features HDMI as its video output and features both micro USB and full-size USB connectors, however one will have to be used for powering the device as it will not be powered through HDMI like some other dongles. Intel said as more and more TVs start supporting the new power-over-HDMI standard, future versions of the NUC will feature this technology. While the stick is very small, it is a full-blown PC with its own mini fan. The stick will cost $149 and $89 for the Windows and Linux versions respectively.

Intel is also launching a new series of Broadwell-U based NUCs. These NUCs will feature M.2 for storage as well as a special USB connector able to provide 1.8A of current for fast charging. They will also have replaceable lids, which can be used for customization. You could have a lid featuring a picture of your significant other and give the NUC as a gift. The replaceable lid also hints at the possibility of customized versions featuring add-ons like a TV tuner, which I saw in its infant stages.

CES 2015 - We went on down to the GIGABYTE CES event here in Vegas, where we looked at all of the latest stuff that the company has on offer. So without further delay, let's dive right into the juicy goodness.

GIGABYTE just launched their greatly anticipated X99 SOC Champion. The board had been in the works for months, during that time top overclockers from around the world gathered to see how far GIGABYTE's champion could go. They ended up with 9 world records, 14 global firsts, 2 hardware firsts, and even the top X99 reference clock. This motherboard's name is well deserved.

I was invited to overclock at GIGABYTE's CES ballroom event, and the champion does live up to all the hype. Much of its success comes from the hardware on the board. Since the board has 4 SMT DIMMs instead of the typical 8 through-hole DIMMs found on most X99 motherboards, memory signaling is much cleaner and memory overclocks are higher as a result.

CES 2015 - SAPPHIRE didn't have anything new to show off at CES 2015, so instead it was just showing off a handful of their most popular products.

We went in and talked to a few of the executives at the company, teeing up some new projects going into the New Year that you will have to check back with TweakTown in the near future to check out. All we can say is: it'll kick ass. Until then, here are some images of video cards that you can check out, starting with the Radeon R9 290X 4GB and R9 280X 4GB.

Here's the SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon R9 4GB.

To celebrate next week's release of 'Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Fifth Season' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have five copies of the final season of the show on Blu-ray to give away to readers, thanks to our friends at Warner Home Entertainment.

No one goes quietly. Concluding a powerful and groundbreaking five-season run, 'Boardwalk Empire' is an Emmy-winning HBO drama series from Academy Award nominee/Emmy Award winner Terence Winter. Season 5 begins in 1931, a full six years after the end of Season 4. In stark contrast with the Roaring '20s, the country is in the throes of the Great Depression and with the end of Prohibition in sight, Nucky (Steve Buscemi) is looking to legitimize himself by forging alliances with liquor producers.

To go into the running to take a Blu-ray home, simply answer the following question:

CES 2015 - Oculus VR had a gigantic setup at CES 2015 this year, but they were hosting private meetings for people to go in and check things out, so we set one up quite sometime ago to ensure we could get our hands, and eyes on the latest Rift prototype.

We stopped in and had a chat with Oculus VR's VP of Product, Nate Mitchell, who is one of the best guys in the industry. He walked us over the new Rift prototype known as "Crescent Bay", something that was shown off at Oculus Connect a few months ago. This is the first time the new Rift headset has been open to the public to test out, which is why we wanted to get down there and check things out.

The current DK2 unit has a 1920x1080 resolution, thanks to the Galaxy Note 3 panel it features inside of it. Oculus isn't stating what resolution the new Crescent Bay prototype is running at, but from my short time with it, I suspect we're seeing a 1440p panel, with some form of resolution scaling. Similar to NVIDIA's Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) technology, where it renders a larger picture, and then scales it down to the resolution of the monitor, or in this case, the VR headset.

If you're really looking to confuse the console lover in your family, you really need to wrap up this device and present it to them on their birthday.

A modder by the name of Draelren has reached out to us, explaining the process behind his crazy Xbox 360/PC build set to confuse console lovers and haters alike.

Featuring an AMD A10-7850K CPU and a 128GB SSD, Draelren uses this system as one of his dedicated LAN rigs, however it's not quite finished - yet. "There are some things that still need to be done to it - but it's mostly there," he explains. "I'm needing to do some custom wiring to get the Xbox's power button to turn the computer on, and then the eject button for the optical drive to reset the computer."

CES 2015 - Fully optioned with dual NVIDIA GTX 980m video cards and up to 32GB of RAM supporting a 1080p 18" display, MSI's newest addition to the gaming world is the GT80 Titan laptop and it even comes with a full Cherry MX Brown keyboard - by SteelSeries.

Weighing in at 10 pounds, this beast has upgradeability in mind. With the ability to swap out your dual video cards for NVIDIA MXM mobile graphics, the laptop has a panel on top allowing you access to M.2 SSD slots, RAM bays and a 2.5-inch drive bay. According to MSI, their 350-watt power brick and dual-GTX 980 combo can provide almost the same performance as a single desktop GTX 980 card - further mentioning that the GT80 can support three screens, providing users with one HDMI and two DisplayPort connections.

The system MSI has on display at CES will set back users a whopping $3,700 due to its Intel Extreme 4980HQ CPU, 24GB of RAM, 1TB HDD and two 128GB M.2 SSDs running in RAID. However if the base model is more your flavor, you can expect to pony up $3,300 for your very own model.