This PCI-Express card solves many of my problems at once. The M.2 slots on this card are connected by a PLX8747 chip, a 48-lane, 5-port PCI Express Gen 3 switch chip used to expand and redistribute PCIe connectivity. This removes the need for a motherboard to support bifurcation (splitting a single physical PCIe slot into multiple smaller logical pathways), or the need to configure bifurcation on a motherboard that does support it. Four additional M.2 drives can be added to a motherboard that may not have otherwise supported them.

The drives are, of course, still restricted by the Gen 3 speeds the PLX8747 chip supports. I’m not convinced that’s an issue given how fast that is compared to SAS and SATA.

Most other cards I’ve found that fit this bill only support 2280 (80mm) M.2 drives, which are typically normal consumer drives. This card supports 22110 (110mm) cards, which are almost exclusively enterprise-grade drives, meaning they typically support significantly more read/write cycles and have Power Loss Protection (PLP), protecting your data if your computer loses power unexpectedly. PLP is missing from consumer drives.

Hopefully someone else enjoys this card as much as I am. Head over to Amazon to grab your own.

The post Quad-M.2 NVMe Adapter With Onboard PCIe Switch and Supporting 22110 Drives first appeared on BIOSLEVEL.

I hope I’m wrong, but I love a good conspiracy theory.

The RAM shortage isn’t going away anytime soon, and I need RAM for my projects, so I built a personal tracker that monitors pricing across a few online retailers. It was working fairly well, so I fleshed it out in to a full-blown website so everyone can benefit. Enter RAMList.com

RAMList.com scans the inventories of included marketplaces a few times a day or week depending on API restrictions and catalog updates, ensuring the prices are fresh. There are a number of filters available to narrow the product list, and we’re tracking overall prices across the market to help show when an ideal time to make a purchase may be.

I’m adding more marketplaces as I can, and may expand this beyond RAM if it catches on.

The post Introducing RAMList.com first appeared on BIOSLEVEL.