For large storage needs, the average consumer uses a hard disk drive (HDD). They are generally not as fast or reliable as SSDs, but they are much cheaper. However, the Apex Storage X21 add-in card (AIC) currently on the internet isn’t for the most cost-effective storage usage. Instead, the expansion card, which looks like a debut product from a still-unknown storage company, is willing to spend the money it takes to stock the card with up to 21 8TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs. For individuals or businesses. .
Tom’s Hardware first spotted X21’s website on Sunday, and the company’s engineering and sales rep Henry Hill confirmed the product to Ars Technica via email. He said the product is priced at $2,800, with discounts for bulk purchases, and is expected to ship by the second quarter. Samples have already been made available to a large number of customers, and consumer shipments will begin “by the end of 2023,” he said.
Listed as the founder and CEO of Apex Storage, Mike Spicer launched a Kickstarter in 2021 with a concept similar to the X21. Instead of 21 he M.2 SSDs, the Apex Storage Scaler claimed to support 16 he SSDs in moderation. It is unknown how many of these cards have reached backers.However, in July Spicer hinted at a “V2” for the product. twitter.
According to the X21 product page, the AIC will work in a standard PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. The image shows 10 slots and heatsinks in a pair of printed circuit boards (PCBs).
There are also 11 slots on the outside of the PCB. The card is reported to support QLC, TLC, MLC and Intel Optane drives in full height and full length. In terms of operating systems, Windows 10, 11, Server and Linux are supported.
“Since this card is a PCIe fanout, RAID support is provided via software or third-party hardware solutions such as Graid,” Hill told Ars Technica.
Apex Storage is also looking forward to the AIC being able to support up to 336TB when 16TB M.2 2280 SSDs hit the market.
Looking ahead, this component is technically not future-proofed as it does not support PCIe 5.0 (it is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0). But the X21 isn’t aimed at budget-conscious users who opt for HDDs, but with PCIe 5.0 SSDs it’s even more prohibitive. It also increases the AIC’s cooling requirements. Currently, the X21 requires 400 LFM (linear feet per minute) airflow.
As for performance, Apex Storage claims sequential read and write speeds of up to 30.5 and 26.5GBps respectively, while the multi-card setup claims 107GBps and 70GBps respectively. Apex Storage’s website also points to 7.5 million IOPS random read and 6.2 million IOPS random write on a single card, and in a multi-card configuration those numbers grow to 20 million and 10 million respectively. .
Apex Storage sees X21 being used for other use cases, including NAS or SAN arrays, 8K video editing, artificial intelligence and machine learning training, and significantly more enterprise-oriented. Given the high price of 21 PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the company can make a more realistic appeal to businesses than individuals. Filling an AIC can cost him over $21,000 for a typical consumer, on top of the price of the card itself. Alternatives such as the HighPoint SSD7540 can run for around $1,099, but have lower maximum capacities (64 TB for the SSD7540).
Without previous products, it’s hard to know if this Utah-based self-proclaimed “PCIe AIC design firm” can live up to its promises.
