MSI Launching Its First SSDs This Year

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MSI’s about to bring its signature intense styling to storage with its first SSDs, which it announced during CES today. Launch dates, pictures and pricing are still sparse, but storage is a first for the company, and it’s jumping in with two different options.

We don’t have names for the different models yet, nor do we know the differences between them. But we do know that they’ll have up to 4TB of storage, use TLC Flash and interface through PCIe Gen 4x4. MSI promises they’ll be fast, too, with 7,000 MBps read speeds and 6,900 MBps write speeds.

Speed like that also means they’ll probably be pricey, so it’s a good thing that the company is promising up to 1.6 million hours of life on either model.

We’ll have to test all of these claims for ourselves to be sure if these SSDs live up to these claims and can compete with the best SSDs. But what we can comment on right now is their elaborate look.

There’s two models here, both of which look more like high-end graphics cards than what we typically think of when we hear “SSD.” One’s all black, while the other has a silver shell surrounding what almost looks like a black handgrip.

Both SSDs have Dragon Shield logos on them and textured surfaces that aren’t too dissimilar to vents, though we don’t know yet if they’ll have built-in heatsinks.

Again, information is light right now, including detailed pictures. But it’s clear that MSI’s ready to branch out into new types of hardware, using its hardcore aesthetic to differentiate itself from the competition.