Consumers may be awed by the sight of an 8 GB and even some 4 GB memory modules, but there is a certain segment of IT where such capacities are seen as mild at best.

Basically, the server market is a place where 16 GB and even 32 GB modules have every chance of being encountered.

Samsung is one of the companies that have a significant stake in this field, having recently even completed a new 32 GB module.

In fact, the official announcement was made just a short time ago and describes an item based on three dimensional (3D) through silicon via (TSV) package technology.

The goal was to allow the memory to draw on significantly less energy compared to other product of this variety.

Goal achieved, the 32 GB RDIMM (registered dual Inline memory module) consumes 4.5W per hour and is said to be the lowest among anything used in the enterprise sector at present.

In other words, through use of 3D TSV, the newcomer saves 30% power compared to regular 32 GB LRDIMMs (load-reduced, dual-inline memory modules) based on the same manufacturing process (30nm).

“These 32GB RDIMMs fully support the high-density and high-performance requirements of next-generation high-capacity servers,” said Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics.

“We will keep providing memory solutions with higher performance and density, while enhancing shared value in the design of ever-greener server systems,” he added.

Prices aren’t mentioned, but this final bit of info will emerge whenever the mass production stage is reached. Right now, only sample shipments are being sent out.

Samsung, over the past week or two, has mostly made the news because of the (now questionable) courtroom action Apple started against it, over the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.

Fortunately, in this case, the company is not speaking of some new injunction or ban lift, but of something that is more of a cause for joy than anything else (not that the preliminary lifting of the sales restriction was not a good omen of course).

The outfit created the 830 Series of solid state drives, announced last week and now given an exact availability time frame (for the consumer version).

It will arrive in October, at which point prospective buyers will get to experience data transfers about double compared to previous-generation SSDs.

With capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB, all of them have support for the SATA 6.0 Gbps connectivity technology.

“Solid state drives have long been the preferred choice for those seeking the very best in performance,” said UnSoo Kim, vice president of memory brand product marketing, Samsung Electronics.

“With the Samsung SSD 830 Series, we are raising that performance to even higher levels, while also delivering unparalleled Samsung design and convenience in the package.”

The previous formal release did say that the drives were already available, but that only applied to OEMs.

With this newer development, those who like to scout hardware and create their configurations on their own need no longer worry over not having the possibility to try one or more of these items out. The company even threw in the Samsung Magician software, which ensures performance doesn’t deteriorate.

Finally, design-wise, the SSDs have brushed metal casings colored in a deep black tone.

Synology already has quite the NAS portfolio, but it definitely doesn’t seem eager to let things go for long without some update or other.

As such, there was little shock associated with the revelation that Synology had completed a new member for the DiskStation product series.

The item in question measures 184 x 168 x 230 mm and has enough room on the inside to holds up to four hard disk drives. Said HDDs can be compact 2.5-inch units or standard models of the 3.5-inch variety.

Depending on how many drives one chooses and of what sort, the product can consume as little as 29.7W of power and can attain transfer speeds of 105 MB/s when reading and 47 MB/s when writing.

Its primary roles are such things as Media, iTunes, FTP, mail or web server, or as a surveillance station, though general backup tasks are definitely part of its potential prerogatives.

As for software, the DiskStation Manager 3.1 operating system is tasked with getting all the parts to work together smoothly.

“When you factor in the included software options and the versatility, this will really be a boon for serious users,” said Jason Bonoan, Product Marketing Manager at Synology America Corp.

“Businesses will love the ease of use and management. Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) makes it a snap to create redundant storage, even using drives of differing sizes.”

For those that want more specifics, the Synology DS411+ uses a 1.6 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 (2 ports) and 256-bit AES hardware encryption.

Orders (for workgroup users and small businesses, primarily) will start soon, if they haven’t already, for under $500 (no disks included).

By now, at least part of the worldwide consumer base would have learned that Apple and Samsung got into a fairly heated scuffle over supposed IP violation.

It started off with the former claiming that the latter copied the iPad when it developed the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

It continued with a ban in Australia and, not much time later, a similar block issued by a German court which, being in the EU, meant that the slate was no longer allowed to be sold in any European country save the Netherlands.

Samsung vowed to fight, however, and as it waited to file an appeal, another interesting tidbit was uncovered.

As spread to the masses via the Internet, the photos included by Apple’s lawyers in the suit appear to have been modified to make the Galaxy Tab look more like the iPad than it is in reality.

More specifically, the photos had the Galaxy Tab changed to boast an aspect ratio of 1.46 instead of 1.36, leading to a width larger by about 8 percent.

The response of the legal system in Germany (though it was not precisely advertised as such) was swift and, as announced now by a certain report, a regional court in Dusseldorf has partially lifted the preliminary injunction.

Samsung is, now, allowed to again sell the Tab in Europe, at least until Samsung’s Appeal, scheduled for August 25 (this month), comes around.

Ironically, there is one area where the Tab may still not sell, Germany itself, despite this newest ruling originating in that very country.

What remains is to wait and see how this whole fight over tablet design ideas concludes and if Samsung starts any class action of its own should it become victorious.

There are many things that a PC can be used for nowadays, as opposed to it being a primarily programming tool, back when it was first invented.

Even the least sophisticated of today’s desktops have all it takes to perform document editing, programming of all sorts (though the CPU may be strained in some case), multimedia playback, gaming, web browsing, etc.

Depending on their hardware layout, each machine is best suited for something or other, except upper mainstream and high-end beasts, which can do anything and everything easily.

The two new cases that Lian Li created are aimed at those small, compact configurations that are intended as multimedia solutions.

Dubbed home-theater personal computers, those desktops are the namesake of one case, from the the HTPC series, while the other stays close enough, with its mini-tower frame..

More specifically, the company’s portfolio welcomed the PC-Q25 mini-tower and the HTPC PC-V353.

The former can hold mini-ITX and mini-DTX platforms, has seven 3.5-inch HDD bays (five are hot-swappable), up to three 2.5-inch ones and two fans, all inside a frame measuring 199 (W) x 280 (H) x 366 (D) mm.

Meanwhile, the PC-V353 measures 288 (W) x 286 (H) x 397 (D) mm and has two 2.5-inch bays, just as many 3.5-inch bays, one exposed 5.25-inch bay and several I/O options (I/O, USB 3.0, eSATA, audio).

The PC-Q25 has a price of $149 and weighs 3.1 kilograms, while the other one sells for $199, has a wight of 4.1 kilograms and can house graphics cards of up to 300mm in length. More information can be found on their respective product pages (PC-Q25 and PC-V353).

It has been about two months since the news came that Intel was preparing so-called upgradeable CPUs, and users now have something concrete to base their speculations on.

According to CPU World, three chips are known to possess locked features that can be set loose through a software update.

The products are the Pentrium G622 (a desktop chip), the Core i3-2102 SKUs (also for desktops) and the notebook-aimed Core i3-2312M.

They can gain such things as faster clock frequency, better cache and support for Hyper Threading, although the latter benefit only applies to the Core i3-2312M.

The Pentium G622, a dual-core normally clocked at 2.6 GHz, can transform into the 3.2 GHz Pentium G693.

Meanwhile, the Core i3-2102 unlocks into the Core i3-2153, jumping, in terms of clock speed, from 3.1 GHz to 3.6 GHz.

As for the Core i3-2312M, it evolves into i3-2393M, gaining an extra MB of cache memory in the process (from 3 MB to 4 MB), plus 0.3-0.4 GHz (from 2.1 GHz to 2.4-2.5 GHz).

One should keep in mind the fact that these specs were compiled using, as guidelines, the maximum performance boosts cited in published benchmark results.

The assumption was made that the best-performing benchmarks scale well with CPU frequency, so it may very well be that the specs are incorrect, the same way the increased processor frequency may not be a modification to stock numbers but just owed to Turbo Boost.

It will be only when Intel comes out and reveals everything that prospective users can decide whether the nominal fee demanded by the update is worth the benefits.