Apex Storage has announced its X16 AIC which offers up to 16 NVMe Gen 4 SSD slots in a single-slot design.
Apex Storage's X16 AIC Is A Toned-Down X21 With A Single-PCB, Single-Slot Design & Active-Cooling
You might remember the X21 AIC from Apex Storage Solutions which was revealed earlier this year. The dual-PCB add-in-card is designed to offer up to 21 Gen 4 NVMe SSD slots & up to 100 PCIe lane support for up to 168 TB capacities per card. The AIC came in over a 1-slot design and was entirely passive-cooled.
Now, Apex Storage has revealed its brand new X16 AIC which comes with a more tuned and refined single-slot design that still lets users configure up to 16 Gen 4 NVMe SSDs. The card offers 84 PCIe 4 lanes and 31 GB/s Read/Write speeds. It comes with support for up to 128 TB+ capacities per card. It is also mentioned that the board offers full UEFI and Secure Boot support.
In terms of design, the Apex Storage X16 AIC comes with 8 SSD slots on the front of the PCB and 8 on the back of the PCB. The front features an active-cooling solution in the form of a single fan that pushes air down towards a central heatsink assembly. This mainly cools the PLX controller under the massive heatsink but some air would also be provided to the SSDs running on the front.
The price of the X16 AIC is currently listed at $1799.99 US while the X21 is listed at $2799.99 US. It is also mentioned that volume discounts are available. We talked with Apex Storage on whether they have a Gen 5 AIC on their roadmap and the company stated that they indeed do but it won't come until the end of 2024 (at the earliest). It will be definitely interesting to see how Apex Storage makes a Gen 5 AIC since the newer SSDs tend to get very hot and running multiple of those would mean that you will require lots of cooling. Overall, these are super exciting products for enthusiasts who want loads of fast storage.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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