Among the world’s computer exhibitions, Computex ranks second, but in terms of the number of interesting expositions it sometimes even surpasses the German CeBIT. Many promising new products, which are announced in Hannover in March, come to Taipei in the summer as serial products. This year I was lucky to visit Computex at Taipei World Trade Center and see it all with my own eyes.
Today I will talk about the stand of the Taiwanese brand ADATA. Once upon a time they produced – I’m not afraid of this word – the best gaming and overclocking memory, which all my friends were literally chasing after. Today, their range is not limited to memory alone; there are also SSDs, flash drives, power banks and many other accessories. And at their stand the guys managed to set several world records for overclocking.
Just a few days before the exhibition, the manufacturer announced a new “ceiling” of DDR4 frequencies: 4 GB XPG Z2 DDR4-3400 modules paired with the MSI X99A XPower AC motherboard were overclocked to a frequency of 4034 MHz. And it’s air cooled! At the stand, this system was exhibited with a slightly less impressive frequency – 3938 MHz, but in this mode the memory worked stably throughout the exhibition.
A little information for those who are planning an upgrade in the near future. XPG Z2 Series – the second generation of ADATA DDR4 overclocking memory. The line includes modules with frequencies from 2133 to 3400 MHz and capacities of 4 or 8 GB. All of them support the XMP 2 standard.0 and are sold not only as individual sticks, but also in sets of 8, 16 and 32 GB. In my opinion, these are good candidates to live in a modern gaming computer.
DDR4 is not yet relevant for everyone, chatmagbingocasino.uk so ADATA continues to improve DDR3 overclocking modules of the XPG V1, V2 and V3 series. The assortment is large, the quality is high, and the most interesting feature is the replaceable radiator of the XPG V3.
I must admit, ADATA managed to attract attention to the XPG series of gaming hardware. Not only was the range of products impressive, but the guys also organized a championship in the online shooter S.K.I.L.L. Special Force 2 – as if confirming the slogan “Born to Battle”. For winning they were given devices, guess what brand.
Let’s move on. As I already said, ADATA is not only RAM. At Computex, the brand brought a gaming-grade SX930 solid-state drive with SLC cache and MLC flash memory. This combination was chosen for a reason: with it the drive works faster and more stable, but the price will remain within reason (even with a maximum capacity of 480 GB).
A few words about industrial-grade SSDs. Of all the exhibitors, only ADATA showed a really working solid-state drive with a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface: a device based on a Marvell Eldora controller with 16-nanometer MLC chips showed read speeds of up to 3000 MB/s (yes, THREE GIGABYTES per second, that is, six times more than an SSD with a SATA connector!). For now this is only a prototype, but it could go into production by the end of the year if the company’s engineers don’t come up with a more advanced model.
Of course, such products will not reach ordinary home PCs soon, as well as ADATA server SSDs with a capacity of 2 TB (they were also shown at the stand). You can dream about the unattainable, or you can ask the price of the more affordable ADATA SP550 and SP560 models. They will start selling at the end of July. Both drives are built on TLC chips, but due to the cache memory on SLC they should be faster than typical SSDs.
Another new product from the brand is the HD720 protected external hard drive, which even managed to “catch” the Computex Best Choice Award. The decision of the panel of judges is quite fair: the HD720 is not only protected from moisture and dust (according to the IP68 standard), but also passed the harsh military MIL-STD-810G test for shock resistance – it can be dropped from a height of 1.22 meters without losing data. By the way, on the stand the drive was lying in an aquarium – this was an opaque hint at its functionality under water. Eh, it’s a pity they didn’t allow visitors to do a crash test!
The guys from ADATA also pleased Apple users. A whole line of products for Apple was brought to Computex: a waterproof and shockproof UE710 flash drive with OTG support and a Lightning connector; HD710A external hard drive for Mac; card readers for iPad and iPhone Lightning standard with hardware media player and much more. Well, I’ll bore you with the details, probably all these products will be announced separately. As they say, stay tuned.
But I can’t help but talk separately about devices with a USB Type-C connector. If anyone ruled the roost at Computex 2015, it was definitely the USB-C interface! Devices with a new type of port will be of interest to owners of the latest Macbooks and Chromebook Pixels, but will clearly become more popular in the future, when the interface is supported by most computers. ADATA showed a UV16 flash drive, a UC350 drive with OTG support and a cool external SSD SE730. The latter deserves special attention. In addition to the Type-C connector, it uses a USB 3 type connection.1 SuperSpeed+ for incredible speeds of up to 520 MB/s read and 480 MB/s sequential write. The guys from ADATA proudly demonstrated these results in screenshots of the CrystalDiskMark 3 test.01 x64.
Finally, another interesting new product – an external battery PE700 with a capacity of 10,000 mAh. It uses Qualcomm Quick Charge 2 technology.0 and can charge a typical smartphone by 60% in just half an hour – three times faster than conventional power banks!
There was no revolution at Computex this year; all the new products were quite modest and predictable. Compared to most other brands, ADATA was able to pleasantly surprise: with record overclocked memory and high-speed SSDs, including a two-terabyte server (this is my big dream!). Now we will wait to see what the September IFA will bring us.