This AIC (add-in card) is a BEAST! It uses up to 100 PCIE 4.0 lanes and can support up to 21 x M.2 Gen4 SSDs with a toal capacity of up to 168 TB, and offers Read/Write speeds of up to 31Gbps!
Features
- Host 21 x M.2 Gen 4 NVME SSD’s
- 168TB+Storage Per Card**
- 31GBps Read/Write Speeds
- Industry Leading IOPS
- 100 PCIe 4.0 Lanes
- Full UEFI/Secure Boot Support
Apex Storage has its headquarters in Utah and focuses on AIC products. Mike Spicer and Henry Hill appear to be the team behind Apex Storage. You may have heard of Spicer as he kickstarted the Storage Scaler(opens in new tab) expansion card in 2021 that houses up to 16 M.2 SATA drives. The X21, the only listed product on Apex Storage’s website, seems to be the jacked-up version of the original Storage Scaler. But, strangely, Apex Storage opted for PCIe 4.0 on the X21 since PCIe 5.0 SSDs are already available on the retail market.
The X21 sticks to a double-width full-height full-length (FHFL) form factor with a single-slot PCI design. The AIC, which measures 274.2mm long, communicates through a standard PCIe 4.0 x16 expansion slot. It’s backward compatible with PCIe 3.0, but performance will take a significant hit. Apex Storage essentially bonded two PCBs in a sandwich with the X21, which is why the AIC can handle up to 21 M.2 SSDs putting rival options like the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Destroyer 2 to shame. The concept takes us on a trip down memory lane, for sure. If you’re old enough, it’s the same concept Nvidia used for the prehistoric GeForce 7900 GX2.
Source: Tomshardware, Apex Storage
