General external expansion discussion? *spawn*

Probably a business deal with Seagate. Including forcing Seagate to release the external drive cheaply.

Seriously. If I have high end camera that supports CF express card, I would buy the Xbox Seagate expansion card. Then format it.

Its way cheaper than other brands.
 
iroboto said:
yea unfortunately, I can't see that happening. Dodgy business deal, and I'm not sure how many are willing to drives for that size.
Click to expand...
I'm not buying an expansion card for my Series X at the price they are available.

What this means in real terms is when I see multiplatform games and PS5/Series X performance is effectively the same, I'll invariably buy games on PS5 because I have 825Gb internal space, and 4Tb on the NVMe, e.g. I just have tons more space free.
 
The price is only really an issue if you aren't happy juggling games across USB storage though. for the majority of XB owners, it's far better economy to forgo the Storage Expansion and use mass storage. Although there's not a great deal of space on the XBSS and as a family device, that one might be awkward.

Is there realistically any chance of a notable price drop for the XB storage given the NVMe format chosen?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
The price is only really an issue if you aren't happy juggling games across USB storage though. for the majority of XB owners, it's far better economy to forgo the Storage Expansion and use mass storage. Although there's not a great deal of space on the XBSS and as a family device, that one might be awkward.

Is there realistically any chance of a notable price drop for the XB storage given the NVMe format chosen?
Click to expand...
unlikely.
Here is my local best buy for the xbox 1tb expansion ($274)

Same drive non-Xbox 1Tb ($254)

So the actual premium is $30 more for a plug in adaptor.

I think the 2230 format is really what kills it for them. Everyone else uses the 2280 format, smaller chips and the thin but long format, WD SN Black uses . The 2230 format is a single chip.

By comparison this 2 TB WD_Black nvme drive I bought last week ($164)
 
Shifty Geezer said:
The price is only really an issue if you aren't happy juggling games across USB storage though. for the majority of XB owners, it's far better economy to forgo the Storage Expansion and use mass storage. Although there's not a great deal of space on the XBSS and as a family device, that one might be awkward.

Is there realistically any chance of a notable price drop for the XB storage given the NVMe format chosen?
Click to expand...
I don't want to juggle games, the whole point of having a standard format is for competition to result in a better deal with consumers. The situation with Seagate and Xbox Series is the worst of both words. And you know Microsoft want it this way as previously it was possible to use other drives in the Xbox Series X, but that was locked down with firmware updates.
 
There will always be that $30 premium for the connector, but hopefully they can get the memory chips down. It will forever be more expensive than the 2280 format though, if the 1TB chips come down in price that means the 256MB and 512MB chips have come down well before.

I think for those who see this as just proprietary costs; these are technical ones imo. You have to generate 4500MB/S transfer speed from 1 chip. Whereas with 2280 you can generate 4500MB/S from 4x256MB chips. The latter can use much slower silicon since you can store the data across.
 
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iroboto said:
There will always be that $30 premium for the connector, but hopefully they can get the memory chips down. It will forever be more expensive than the 2230 format though, if the 1TB chips come down in price that means the 256MB and 512MB chips have come down well before.

I think for those who see this as just proprietary costs; these are technical ones imo. You have to generate 4500MB/S transfer speed from 1 chip. Whereas with 2230 you can generate 4500MB/S from 4x256MB chips. The latter can use much slower silicon since you can store the data across.
Click to expand...
Yes. I think that's obscured without MS or anyone else talking about it. It was a revelation to me that the form-factor was price-limiting and justifies the premium. I don't think the consumer-facing convenience was the right choice this time, and a bigger caddy+2230 stick*, or PS5 type slot, would be way better.

* How about a vertical slot with a box to contain the SSD, heatsink exposed on the interior to the airflow? Slide out box, insert SSD, slide back in.
 
I'm unsure if it has to be be the 2230 configuration. But maybe due to wanting to keep physical dimensions to allow for the heat to be puiled into the console.
As it has guaranteed min performance, no throttling due to heat.

Wouldn't look as good but wonder if bigger dimension one with little heat spreader would be viable. Leave it to consumer if how it looks is acceptable or not.

It's a shame they never added it to all surface machines, and made it open free standard for oems.
I'm sure enough people who would like high capacity fast hot swappable portable storage is out there.
 
fehu said:
There's absolutely no option for an adapter where you can put your standard m2?
Click to expand...
Jay said:
I'm unsure if it has to be be the 2230 configuration. But maybe due to wanting to keep physical dimensions to allow for the heat to be puiled into the console.
As it has guaranteed min performance, no throttling due to heat.
Click to expand...

Just watching these videos again: look how the mobo is encased in heat shielding



Basically, nvme drives need to be angle loaded and pressed down and screwed in. With this type of heat shielding, I'm not sure that was ever an option for them, so they went this route.

I think in the grand scheme of a larger console ala PS5 or what they have today, I'm going to bet they wanted to go with what they had today OR expansion drive was an afterthought or secondary priority compared to building the smallest possible console.

It is entirely possible that over time, as more mobile devices allow for expansion slots, the price of 2230 format will drop significantly, and the market has been slow to this since it's only been Surface.
 
iroboto said:
Just watching these videos again: look how the mobo is encased in heat shielding



Basically, nvme drives need to be angle loaded and pressed down and screwed in. With this type of heat shielding, I'm not sure that was ever an option for them, so they went this route.

I think in the grand scheme of a larger console ala PS5 or what they have today, I'm going to bet they wanted to go with what they had today OR expansion drive was an afterthought or secondary priority compared to building the smallest possible console.

It is entirely possible that over time, as more mobile devices allow for expansion slots, the price of 2230 format will drop significantly, and the market has been slow to this since it's only been Surface.
Click to expand...
I think when/if refhresh happens it could be done and not use the 2230 format.
Especially on XSS as cheaper more memory would be easy net win.
Both consoles is made to be easily fixed but not user upgradable. So could have the heat sink from HSF directly cooling it.

As for external use. It's running the slowest NVME so if it wasn't using 2230 chips think they could get away with it. Just wouldn't look as nice.

I can see why they went 2230 route, but given where the environment is now, I think they could re-evaluate it, not sure would happen for external use though, even if possible. Can only hope for more partnered competition.
 
Does anybody see any reason they couldn't allow a CF-Express with 2242, 2260 or even 2280 form factor if you can deal with the length?
 
Nisaaru said:
Does anybody see any reason they couldn't allow a CF-Express with 2242, 2260 or even 2280 form factor if you can deal with the length?
Click to expand...

I don't, but I haven't dove into the technical specs to see if there are possible power limits or signal integrity issues.

I wonder if the third parties did any sort of market research to see how a larger product might sell in comparison.
 
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