![]() ![]() But that is in a larger form-factor PCIe 3.0 NVME. SK Hynix is selling a 1TB NVME SSD with read/writes of 3,500/3,200 MB per second for $135 that uses its 128-layer NAND. ![]() Just tell me when it’s going to go down in priceĪfter this teardown, the price of the 1TB Seagate Expansion Card seems fair. But 4GB per second would give enough room for the Phison E19T controller, which maxes out at about 3.75GB per second for read/write speeds. Standard CFexpress can transfer data at up to 4GB per second, but it’s possible that Microsoft’s custom implementation is faster. See how that matches up with a typical CFexpress card: This is how Seagate was able to get 1TB of storage space onto a single chip inside such a tiny form factor.Īnd all of this sits on a printed circuit board that uses the CFexpress connection standard. I’m not an expert on NAND, but I believe this is SK Hynix’s new 4D NAND, which stacks its memory cells in 128 layers. The memory itself is an SK Hynix 1TB chip. This is its E19T PCIe Gen 4 controller, which is an early industry leader in reliable and speedy performance. By getting hot, the metal is helping to vent the heat from the chips into the Xbox, and the Xbox can then push that heat up through its vent.Īs for the chips themselves, the Phison controller is a welcome sight. Expect this part of the card to get pretty hot - that’s normal. ![]() So yes, the metal is definitely acting as part of the cooling for the Seagate Expansion Card. Each of those components has a dab of thermal paste to create a strong connection to the surrounding metal. That is a cluster of SK Hynix NAND Flash memory alongside a Phison PCIe 4.0 controller. This revealed the PCB screwed into one of the slabs.Īfter removing those screws, I found the heart of the Xbox Series X expansion storage. I then was able to pry apart the two pieces of the metal casing. I started by removing the plastic sheath, which clips around the metal. ![]() Shoutout to Jon over at Spawn Wave for giving me some pointers about this process. And since I’m a grown man with an iFixit kit, I took charge of the situation and opened up the Expansion Card. Opening the Seagate Expansion CardĪs one of the first people in the world with an Xbox Series X, I felt a responsibility to share as much info as possible about the device and its add-ons. Let’s take a look inside to see exactly how that works. Microsoft’s engineers designed this to shift heat out of those components and into the Xbox for dissipation. The superfast NAND storage in modern SSDs can run hot, and so can a PCIe 4.0 controller chip. That exists for spreading and routing heat out of the storage device. But Microsoft and Seagate didn’t use the metal for show. And while the metal starts off looking attractive, it has a tendency to look somewhat greasy or lubricated. The card has a plastic sheath that wraps around a metal chassis. But it does have a few notable and telling differences. And the tiny add-on is reminiscent of memory cards that you might have used on your PlayStation or Nintendo 64. Microsoft sent me a Seagate Expansion Card with the preview version of the Xbox Series X hardware. The Xbox Series X Seagate Expansion Card teardown Thanks to AMD’s support for the fast PCIe 4 interface, the Xbox Series X uses a drive that is much faster than even the SSD you might have in your PC or Mac.īut we don’t have to take Microsoft’s word for it. I’m not gonna give anyone a hard time for conflating the terms, but it’s a bit like calling a Blu-ray disc a “floppy.”Įven an SSD doesn’t cost 22 cents per gigabyte these days, but again, Microsoft isn’t using a basic SSD. That is an obsolete technology for gaming, and we’ve moved onto SSDs. The new consoles do not use hard drives at all. Well, let’s get into all of that starting with this: The Seagate Expansion Card isn’t a hard drive. ![]()
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