In brief: Acer is perhaps best known for its laptops and monitors, but now the company is seeking to spread its influence into the realm of consumer-grade PC storage products as well. Through a partnership with Chinese flash storage maker Biwin, Acer will soon sell branded SSDs and RAM to consumers in the US and China.
We should make one thing clear here: Acer is not the one producing the devices. The tech firm’s announcement post suggests this is a joint effort of sorts, but in reality, Biwin will be the one handling all of the manufacturing. Acer’s contribution seems to solely involve product branding and sales — we’ll be reaching out to the company for clarification on its role in this partnership.
As noted before, Biwin will produce both RAM sticks and SSDs, offering up a wide range of size, form factors, and capacity options to consumers. Their cheapest SSD will be the entry-level SA100: a 2.5″ drive with capacity options starting at 128GB and capping out at 2 TB. That should be ample performance for most users, but true PC enthusiasts (or just data hogs) will likely want to consider the higher-speed FA100.
The FA100 is an M.2, PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive with capacities of up to 2TB. Acer promises read and write speeds of up to 3,300 MB/s and 2,700 MB/s, respectively. There’s also the RE100, which comes in either 2.5″ or M.2 SATA form factors, with a maximum capacity of 4TB or 1TB, depending on which type you get, and read/write speeds of up to 560 MB/s and 520 MB/s.
As for Biwin’s upcoming Acer-branded DRAM products, they’ll all be DDR4 and will possess speeds between 2666 MHz and 3200 MHz, with capacities of up to 32GB per module.
Acer’s new RAM kits and SSDs don’t appear to be available for purchase yet, and the company hasn’t mentioned any pricing information. When those details become available, we’ll let you know.