Articles by Roshan Ashraf Shaikh

Users will now have fewer SATA-based SSDs since Crucial is no longer manufacturing its popular seven-year-old MX500. Users also noticed that Crucial mentioned the same when claiming a warranty and providing alternatives like the Crucial P3 NVMe drive or any remaining MX500 that can be shipped. You can still purchase Crucial MX500 via Amazon and other retailers while stocks last.”The Crucial MX500 was certainly a great drive. We are making room in the line for new products and are looking forward to sharing what’s next with you soon,” a Crucial representative told German news outlet Computerbase.It is hardly surprising that since motherboard manufacturers now provide multiple M.2 slots and with larger capacity M.2 drives available, many consumers are opting for NVMe SSDs. Nonetheless, since they’re cheaper, SATA SSDs are still prevalent for secondary storage.One of the reasons why the Crucial MX500 was favored and purchased by many users over the years is because it uses faster and more reliable TLC NAND chips over QLC, like the ones used in the Crucial BX500 DRAM-less drives. Compared to other options, its pricing was what it made to be preferred more, especially during seasonal deals. Users were also assured of a five-year warranty, providing that ease of mind. The MX500 had a good seven-year run with no complaints or flaws, except for a Buffer Overflow Attack issue reported on its M3CR046 firmware a few months ago.Of course, phasing out its production also means getting a replacement would be tricky. So, suppose you’ve bought the drive recently or still have some time left in the warranty period. In that case, it’s best to keep a realistic expectation that you may not get the exact replacement- storage capacity, model, or interface.It is unclear if Crucial will stop manufacturing SATA SSDs or if it would be keen to introduce new TLC-based SATA SSDs. The manufacturer’s statement only hints at new products but lacks specifics. The market for 2.5-inch SATA drives will still exist for a while, catering to a particular budget and application.Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. […]

We’ve seen some incredible deals on hard drives during the Black Friday sale—and it’s no different than Cyber Monday. Newegg is selling a very large NAS HDD for an attractive price—the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB. For this Cyber Monday deal, the hard drive enjoys a 34% discount, bringing its original price from $500 to $329.99. As this will be a one-day sale event, this is your last chance to get a massive storage drive for a great price.While the Seagate Ironwolf Pro is marketed as a NAS drive, it is also designed to offer top-tier performance in desktop PCs, so you can confidently use it on your PC. Having 20TB of space in a hard drive is handy for primary storage and backup. NAS drives are made to be operated in a NAS environment, either for single or multiple-bay units. This hard drive uses CMR technology, adding reliability and consistency to performance. It is rated with a 550TB per year workload rating and 2.5 million hours MTBF- all backed with a complimentary three-year Rescue Data Services it provides in-house and a 5-year warranty to give that piece of mind you’d want when you need to stack your NAS with 20TB per bay.We reviewed the earlier model of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro TB—ST20000NT000—and compared it with the Seagate Exos with SATA III interface. Both performed the same, though Ironwolf Pro is marketed toward NAS owners for small and medium-sized businesses—those involved in video and photo production, workstations, and rendering—while Exos is for data centers and large-scale operations.Having a very large storage capacity per bay enables users to store unedited and edited content, including RAW files of many projects. Of course, buying one or more of these isn’t cheap. Now that you can get one at the lowest price, it is unlikely you’ll get a good deal with this capacity during this year—and you will have to wait until next year’s deals.Ironwolf Pro has an advantage over non-Pro variants, particularly with warranty and in-house data recovery support. Seagate advertises it has an over 95% success rate, which is an added benefit as standard Ironwolf has a two-year coverage. Since this is an investment for many enterprises, having such an option for your data is invaluable, and you are getting a complete package. Should the three-year data recovery plan expire, you’ll always have the 5-year warranty on the hardware.We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Cyber Monday. If you’re looking for other products, check out our Cyber Monday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages. […]

For those who are hunting for a great monitor deal, it is hard to ignore the discount on the Cooler Master Tempest GP27U monitor, which now you can buy for US$199. This exact model originally cost $799.99. Given the functions and features this monitor has, many who are on the lookout for a 4K monitor – either for single or multi-display setups – will love this deal. And if you want an expert, unbiased, third-party opinion on this monitor – we reviewed it last year.The Cooler Master Tempest GP27U is a mini LED monitor providing a 4K resolution monitor with a 160 Hz refresh rate, plus Adaptive Sync (48 to 144 Hz). At the time of review, this monitor was selling for $800 and we thought that whatever few flaws it had could be excused. At a sub-$200 price, it is going to be difficult to ignore.The GP27U has a Quantum Dot film for high color gamut and 1,200 nits brightness when we tested it. It supports both AMD Freesync and Nvidia G-Sync. The monitor has a KVM switch function and a USB-C which allows video input and a 3.5mm audio jack. Aesthetically, the monitor has a thin flush bezel with an 8mm frame at the top on the side.You get two HDM 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort, and multiple USB ports – one USB Type-C, one USB Type-B for the KVM function, and two USB 3.2 Type-A. Should you wish to have it mounted on a stand, it supports VESA 100 X 100mm brackets. But its stand allows a wide range of movements between tilt, swivel, height, and pivot on a solid stand with excellent build quality.Woot! is offering the GP27U at a jaw-dropping price of a cent under $200, when retailers like Amazon are currently selling it for $100 more than this deal. It is likely these will sell quickly with this attractive pricing on both sites – but a further $100 savings over the Amazon listing is incredible for something that would otherwise get you a 27-inch 1440p monitor of lesser caliber.We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Cyber Monday. If you’re looking for other products, check out our Cyber Monday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages. […]

If you’re looking for the most affordable mechanical hard drive with large storage capacity, Amazon sells a Seagate BarraCuda 8TB for a meager price of $109.99. This would be perfect for those who want an internal hard drive for cold storage- given that games, files, and media take up a lot of space, and hence, keeping a backup is useful. This drive is offered at 19% off its price, and Amazon mentions that it is its #1 best seller.Expectations must be set as this is the least expensive 8TB you can get. It has a two-year warranty and a low workload rate limit of 55TB per year. The tradeoffs are expected for such a large capacity drive at a low cost—the Seagate BarraCuda uses SMR technology and a 5400-RPM spindle. As our review of this hard drive mentioned, the BarraCuda is best for writing large files and reading the data. The drive is made for large storage capacity and lower pricing above performance, which you’ll be looking at a different series like the 7200-RPM-based FireCuda series for better performance.But you want something cheap and can hold a large amount of data. As long as the performance expectations are grounded, this will likely be one of the choices. Despite being a Black Friday deal, the BarraCuda 8TB has been at this price point multiple times, with one exception last year, when it briefly sold for under $100. If you compare this with the competing WD Blue 8TB drive, it is cheaper, even with the $5 coupon that’s included with it. Many who have purchased this drive have mentioned that they are satisfied with the Seagate BarraCuda 8TB because it is lighter on the wallet and has a large capacity. Not everyone requires a secondary drive to have much quicker performance, either sequential or random read or write speeds with lower access time—and that’s something the user’s reviews on Amazon reflect.We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Black Friday. If you’re looking for other products, check out our Black Friday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages. […]

Cyber Monday deals are the best way to get storage drives for cheap—be it internal or external drives. Hard Drives for Network-Attached Storage are no different. While the WD Red Pro is marketed as a NAS drive, it is also designed to offer top-tier performance in desktop PCs so that you can use this drive confidently on your PC. Newegg has an incredible deal on the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 12TB. The deal gives you 44% off the original price of $359.99, bringing it as cheap as $199.99—that’s about $16.67 per TB.The model that’s on retail is the ST12000VN0008. We did review the 007 model version of the Ironwolf 12TB. Both models are helium-filled hard drives rated for NAS between 1 and 8 bays. At least on the spec sheet, the two models have minuscule differences in power consumption and operating/ non-operating shock. It’s also likely they’re using different firmware, but apart from that, Seagate does not provide any additional information. All the more reason to buy the drives of the same model in bulk should you require it for your NAS.NAS hard drives like these are perfect for home/ office NAS, personal cloud, workstations, and even a home media server. This specific storage drive offers a much better deal, as the 10TB version is available for $207. All Ironwolf NAS HDDs have a three-year warranty and a 180TB/ Year workload rating.Also, Seagate has included three years of Rescue Data Recovery Services, which ensures in-house data recovery with a 95% success rate. This is important for many as data recovery is costly if or when the situation requires it. While having your private cloud has certain benefits, data recovery in unforeseen situations is crucial.So, if you’re looking for an array of hard drives for your personal or work NAS but need a good deal, it is unlikely to get something better than this during the Black Friday sale. There are options available from other hard drive makers, but if you’re reading this, you need something reliable enough for a good deal. The offer stands for a limited time- or depending on stocks while it lasts- whichever comes first.We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Black Friday. If you’re looking for other products, check out our Black Friday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages. […]

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is now just $186.97 on Amazon for Black Friday. We compared this Zen 4-based CPU a few months ago to the Intel Core i5-14400, and found it provided a substantial performance while being $100 more expensive. But now it’s just $186.97, which is 37% off its retail price.The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a six-core, 12-thread 5nm CPU with a clock speed of 4.7 GHz, which can be upped to 5.3 GHz with max boost enabled. It supports up to 128GB DDR5-5200 memory over two channels, features PCIe 5.0 interfaces, and has integrated graphics with clock speeds of up to 2,200 MHz. The Ryzen 7000 series has hardware acceleration for AVX-512 workloads, which is important for heavy-duty tasks. This is an unlocked CPU, which means you can overclock with AMD’s own Ryzen Master utility.The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is on the lower end of our CPU hierarchy. But it is a cost-effective option to consider, especially for gamers who are putting more money in graphics cards and power supplies.The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a better option than the Intel Core i5-14400. The latter exchanged blows with the Intel Core i5-13600K, which supports DDR4-3200 and DDR5-5600 and is currently on sale for $210 for Black Friday. You’ll need to keep in mind the motherboard and RAM you’re pairing with your CPU — AMD allows overclocking on its motherboard chipsets (aside from the A-series chipsets). If you choose to overclock, you’ll also need to factor in the cost of the CPU cooler, but if you’re upgrading your CPU, motherboard, and RAM, you’ve may already have a compatible CPU cooler. The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X might be a great deal for you, especially at 37% off.  […]

If you’re looking for a great deal on a PC case to accommodate XL-ATX and E-ATX motherboards, Newegg has 22% off Fractal’s North XL PC case, bringing the regular price of $179.99 down to $139.97. Newegg mentions that this case is now priced at its lowest price, all thanks to the Black Friday deal.We reviewed this case a few months ago, emphasizing it as an upsized, prettiest PC case made of wood, glass, and brass. We had little to complain about the PC case, but the design choice and the combination of the materials resulted in a good-looking case.The North XL, true to its suffix, is 36% larger than its North version, allowing you to mount a pair of 180mm Fractal Torrent fans should you decide to purchase it separately. The case also has a hub to power up four 4-pin fans, while three 140mm fans are included. The clearance of the case allows the graphics card to be up to 14 inches and the CPU cooler to be up to 6.6 inches. On the top, the North XL lets you install up to 360mm radiators and 420mm towards its front. The front panel I/O has two USB 3.0 Type-A and one USB Type-C port with the headphone/ mic jack.(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)Regarding thermal performance, It is surprising to see the North XL performing just like the standard North PC case. One can’t help but appreciate such case designs at a time when many manufacturers are engrossed in cases that are equivalent to a fish tank. Of course, everyone has preferences, but cases like the North and North XL cater to those who want something more good-looking and not glass fitted together on all three sides. Using wood at the front panel with brass case feet accentuates the PC case design.The deal is only on the variant with a walnut front and the tinted toughened glass side panel, with other variants selling for US$179.99. Since you are saving $40 on it, it gives you that legroom to buy a good set of fans should you choose to replace the three 140mm fans included with the case.This case was available as a deal through other retailers but has run out of stock due to the Black Friday deal. But Newegg still has the deal while stock lasts. So, if you’re in the market for a case, this would fit your requirements.We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Black Friday. If you’re looking for other products, check out our Black Friday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages. […]