Computex Taipei 2013 - Supermicro had a beast of a SuperStorage Server on display at Computex 2013, with support for up to 24 x 2.5" drives, which could either be the latest and greatest 10 and 15K HDDs, or SSDs, including the new breed of 12Gb/s SSDs on the market.

From the top, we can see the three 12Gb/s controllers for the HDD bays. We typically expect rebranded HBA's and RAID controllers for large OEM suppliers, but the origin of these controllers is unclear.

Supermicro was not forthcoming with many details, including the ROC utilized in these builds. These controllers look to be a custom design with large capacitors to the end of the board.

Computex Taipei 2013 - At Computex 2013, Supermicro displayed their newest line of Haswell servers, with the SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display.

The power efficiency of the new Haswell architecture provides the possibility for enhanced density in server solutions. Here we can observe a 1U rack with a single processor server.

Here we see the 12-node version of the Supermicro SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display. These hotpluggable racks pull out for easy service and each hold 2 drives for storage.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Once you go black....you never go back to blue? Western Digital's performance line for consumers is the Black Series. With flash increasing performance the company decided it was time to add a little flash magic to their proven mechanical products.

The result is Western Digital's first SSHD. SSHD, the industry term for hybrid drive is part SSD and part spinner. In this case, the marriage of a special SanDisk iSSD that is between 8GB and 24GB depending on the OEM customer, and a 5mm slim Western Digital hard drive.

We finished testing Western Digital's 5mm Blue drive right before walking out of the door for Computex.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We know it's coming and coming sometime soon but that isn't good enough when OCZ Technology teases it at CES and Computex in 2013.

With two Indilinx Barefoot 3 controllers and up to 1TB of NAND flash, we know you want it too. If the PCIe version of Vector includes SCSI unmap, a form of TRIM, then we'll do back flips followed by cartwheels. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?

As far as I know, this is the first back side picture of the card. All together there are 32 NAND flash chips, four DRAM buffers and two Barefoot 3 controllers. Bridging the two controllers to the PCIe 4 lane is an OCZ VCA II. This is a full height card for desktop use. When they finally come out I want six for RAID 5 in a prosumer SAN.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Noctua had their maybe upcoming active noise cancellation (ANC) cooler back out at Comptuex this year. We say again because we had a taste of the technology last year at Computex but this year's version is much more refined. I would say it is pretty damn close to production ready actually but that's not to say anyone can afford it.

The first thing everyone is thinking has to be why Noctua would even make a product like this to begin with. The company makes silent coolers, I've hand nearly all of them and can honestly say I don't use anything else and the reason why is because they are quiet and work better than advertised.

What ANC gives the company is the ability to run its fans at higher RPMs and retain the silent operation that Noctua is known for. With more airflow, the coolers can dissipate more heat from the CPU, increasing the thermal capacity of the cooler. With overclocking making a comeback on Haswell even us old guys are ready to get back in the game.

Computex Taipei 2013 - MemoRight had a sizable booth this year at Computex and inside we found a product we're ready to try. To date, only Samsung has shipped consumer grade SSDs with triple-level cell (TLC) flash but that's about to change now that Toshiba has their 1Xnm TLC in production.

The MemoRight XT3 Series will use a Marvell controller with MemoRight's own firmware and pair it with Toshiba's new TLC NAND.

There aren't a lot of details yet but MemoRight expects performance in the 540 MB/s sequential read and 300 MB/s sequential write area. Wear-leveling will be very important with TLC NAND and MemoRight even mentions Global Wear-Leveling on the spec card. This will be an interesting one for sure.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We have a few stories from QNAP in the works, but this one will affect the largest number of new buyers. Until now, the 10GbE Ethernet option was available only on larger NAS systems, platforms with eight or more drives.

In a bold and exciting move, QNAP has brought 10GbE to six-bay and four-bay models. The TS-670 Pro uses six drive bays and has the processing power to go with it.

We're starting to see 10GbE ship on workstation and server boards, mainly from on-board Intel X540 parts. Intel X540 add-in cards are available for less than $300 if you look around for good deals. The add-in cards allow you to add 10GbE capability to any system, including desktop computers.

Kaspersky Labs has announced the discovery of what it is calling the "most sophisticated" Android trojan yet. Kaspersky identifies the trojan as "Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a" and notes that the trojan is capable of many different functions with the added ability to be extremely hard to remove.

Obad.a is capable of sending SMS to premium-rate numbers, downloading other malware, sending malware over Bluetooth, and remote console commands. Obad.a makes use of code obfuscation and several previously undiscovered security holes in Android to make itself hard to remove or analyze.

Once it gains Device Administrator privileges, it's nearly impossible to remove:

This morning, Verizon posted two new LG Optimus smartphones to its pre-paid device catalog. The LG Optimus Zone is a rebranded version of the Optimus L3, while the Optimus Exceed appears to be a rebranded Lucid. Oddly enough, the devices have disappeared shortly after the posting.

The Optimus Zone is quite the low-end Android phone, featuring Android 2.3, a single-core 800MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage. The device also features a 3.2-inch QVGA display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a 1540mAh battery.

The Optimus Exceed is nothing more than a rebranded Lucid that we saw last year. It features Android 4.0, a 4-inch WVGA display, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and 1 GB of RAM. On the rear, a five-megapixel camera handles the photo taking duties and internal storage is set at what appears to be 8GB. The Zone will sell for $80 off-contract, while the Exceed will retail for $130.

Computex Taipei 2013 - ASUS were showing off their TUF motherboards at Computex 2013, with four boards in the range. The first of which is the Mecha TUF, which uses the TUF Sabertooth Z87 motherboard with a striking design that is very robotic.

Moving on, we have the Thermal Universe Finder, which again uses the TUF Sabertooth Z87 motherboard and was designed by Tod's Factory Custom Studio and has loads of gears, rocket exhausts and all sorts of tank-themed goodies. The next board is the MATX Ranger, which uses the TUF Gryphon Z87 motherboard, Gryphon Armor kit and was designed by Lee Han-Sheng and Han-Sheng Environmental Art.

The final board in the range showed off at the show was the Winger Charger, which uses the TUF Gryphon Z87 motherboard with the Armor Kit and was designed by Tod's Factory Custom Studio.