Adata had two interesting items at CES, a case and a new type of high end DDR5. Of the two, SemiAccurate was more impressed with a new memory tech but the case seems really useful too.
Lets start off with the new DDR5 spec, a quad-ranked 128GB CUDIMM running at 6400MT/s on a production MSI Z890 board. If you are not up on DRAM minutia let us explain why this is important, there are a number of rather eye-popping things in that last sentence. First of all this was shown off on a production MSI board, sure it probably had custom firmware but the Intel Arrow Lake 285K and the rest were out in volume, this wasn’t a science project, it is really close. If Panther desktops don’t support this tech out of the box I will be fairly surprised.
Then comes the really interesting bits. CUDIMMs or Clock Unbuffered DIMMs basically have a clock for every DRAM rather than a single one for the DIMM. This allows for higher speeds at a pretty minimal cost coupled to backwards compatibility. CUDIMMs are just starting to become more common, expect them to be the way forward from here. Any high speed DDR5 DIMM will be a CUDIMM, the ‘old way’ is out of steam.
Quad-Rank DDR5 CUDIMMs aren’t much to look at
Now for the surprising bit, the quad-ranked part. Adata said that no one else at CES had 4-rank CUDDR5 and SemiAccurate looked but didn’t find any others. Why should you care? Oh, 128GB of high speed DDR5 for one, not per system but per stick. Quad rank means they will follow the cost curve of low end DDR5 sticks rather than using exotic high density and/or high stack count parts. The current DRAM AI based supply shortage means they will still cost closer to a car than a nice lunch but that is better than the high end car pricing of the other way.
If you couple these sticks to a system like the Intel Xeon 600 workstation which may or may not support quad-ranked CUDIMMs, you could in theory get 2TB of DDR5 at high speeds in a system. At a ‘reasonable’ price, with the word reasonable doing a lot of heavy lifting in this instance. That said it will probably cost a fraction of doing it with normal 128GB DIMMs. Basically this quad-ranked CUDIMM is a game changer for the industry, and ADATA showed it first. Keep an eye on this tech.
Try making a mod before you mock
That brings us to the case that impressed us. No not the one above, we put that in as a joke even if it is a serious case mod that took a lot of work to make. The one we are talking about is the one below called the Dock. It is an open frame case so perfect for people who like to tinker and break, I mean experiment, on PCs. Adata claims it is modular and customizable, something that is often claimed but rarely true. This one is true.
Adata Dock case with headphone holder
You might notice the triangular nature of the Dock, an unusual but not unique feature among modern cases. This was done because Dock can sit on almost every side and still be useful. Flip it down onto the headphone holder and it is a very different case. Flip it fan down and again, different layout. This may sound pedantic but if you have ever built a PC, or like me, half-built a PC, this capability can make life easier. Then again that pesky headphone holder, or the screen on the other side will make balancing it a bit tricky, not to mention hard to use those features if they are pressed against the desk on the bottom of the case.
Adata Dock case with screen and fan software
Enter the unexplainable power of magnets. (Note: That is a joke, I am not one of ‘them’.) Dock is modular in the sense that nearly everything is stuck on with magnets, and since the frame is steel, you can stick things just about anywhere. That headphone holder and screen are just stuck on. Pull them off, and place them anywhere at any angle. The magnets were strong enough so we don’t see slipping to twisting being an issue, Dock really is customizable.
Then there is that wood-like triangle ‘side’. Again customizable because it is stuck on with magnets. Want it to be attached another way, or to the other side? Yank, turn, press, done. Want another design? If Dock takes off, Adata will probably sell you some or if their usual ethos holds, there will be specs online to make your own. In any case, the design seems simple enough so any entry level modder should be able to knock them out with ease.
Last up is the fans. Adata calls their fan management ‘dynamic breathing’. You can set up the fans to cool something and they will adjust speeds to keep a set temp, hardly unique. It gets interesting when one fan fails, the others will pick up the slack where possible, again not unique. Adata fans are reversible and if needed, they will turn around automatically, individually or as a group, to meet airflow and temp targets. That is new, at least to SemiAccurate, and could have real world benefits for cooling.
So in the end, the star of CES for Adata was the makeup case, err, the quad-ranked DDR5 CUDIMM. 128GB on a low cost die pricing curve running at high speeds in production parts is a killer feature. The Dock was nice too, useful if you play with PCs a lot, and seems to live up to the promises of customizability. Not a bad showing overall.S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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