HighPoint has unveiled the Rocket 7608A, a PCIe Gen5 RAID card that caters to storage enthusiasts who demand top-notch performance. This full-length, single-width card boasts eight onboard NVMe M.2 ports, supporting 2242, 2260, and 2280 form factors. It features a substantial aluminum heatsink with a cooling fan and utilizes a 2×3 external power connector. The Rocket 7608A is compatible with Windows and Linux and supports hardware secure boot. Its rear-mounted early warning LED indicators provide instant visual feedback on the operational status and health of each drive and the array. The card offers a range of RAID configurations, including RAID 0 (striped for speed), RAID 1 (mirrored for redundancy), and RAID 10 (a combination of mirroring and striping for both redundancy and speed). HighPoint has engineered the card’s PCB to optimize signal integrity, and by leveraging Broadcom’s latest PCIe switching technology, it ensures maximum performance even when installed in the slot furthest from the CPU. According to HighPoint, the Rocket 7608A can deliver an impressive 64 GB/s of transfer bandwidth and up to 56 GB/s of real world data throughput. For comparison, the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs on the market, such as the Crucial T705, max out around 14.0 GB/s in testing. While higher-end solutions, like GPU-based RAID cards from Graid Technology, exist, they are primarily suited for cloud and enterprise applications. For the average enthusiast, the speeds offered by the HighPoint Rocket 7608A are more than sufficient. The card is available for pre-order now at a price of $1,999. It is expected to ship in the third quarter of 2024, but it’s important to note that this cost does not include any drives, so they must be factored into the overall budget.