For better or worse, long gone are the days when memory kits were marketed based on frequency and timings alone. Now we have memory kits marketed for specific platforms and processors, a trend that's underscored by Patriot Memory's new "Gamer 2 (G2) Series, AMD Edition" aimed at -- *drum roll* -- gamers putting together an AMD-based system.

Most home servers and NAS boxes end up tucked away in the corner of a closet, both for convenience and to maintain your room's decor. But Patriot Memory's put together a storage hub you may not want to hide from view.

Patriot's new Javelin S4 Media Server ships with a curvaceous white exterior that's anything but an eyesore. On the inside you'll find four 3.5-inch drive bays with support for up to 12TB of storage capacity (four 3TB SATA or SAS drives). For redundancy (or performance), the Javelin supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 configurations, as well as a hot-spare drive.

"Media servers are gaining in popularity in households with multiple computers and streaming audio and video devices. With the popularity of digital music and video downloads, a central hub for all digital downloads is the perfect way to distribute media to multiple systems and devices over your home network and the Internet," says Patriot Memory Vice President of Engineering Les Henry.

Henry doesn't have to convince us on the merits of home servers, it's the feature-set and price that need pitching. The Javelin is Windows, Mac, and DLNA compatible and features an integrated iTunes server. Other goodies include UPnP compatibility, Internet sharing capabilities, a mobile phone app for Android and iOS devices, a BitTorrent client, automatic backups, and TimeMachine support.

Look for the Javelin S4 to ship in February 2011 for an as-yet unannounced price.

Since the USB 3.0 spec has already claimed the designation "SuperSpeed," Patriot opted to go with a slightly different nomenclature for its newest USB 3.0 flash drive family: Supersonic.

Patriot's new Supersonic series features a native single-chip USB 3.0 controller and Quad-Channel technology. Combine the two and Patriot says you're left with one helluva fast drive.

"Patriot is one of the first companies to integrate a native single-chip USB 3.0 flash memory controller. By pairing the controller with our Quad-Channel technology, we're able to maximize performance with the Supersonic series," says Les Henry, Patriot Memory's Vice President of Engineering. "We are able to shrink the physical size of the USB 3.0 flash drives for even greater portability."

Available in 32GB and 64GB capacities, Patriot says the Supersonic series is capable of hitting 100MB/s and 70MB/s sequential read and write speeds, respectively.

The Supersonic series will ship in early 2011 for an as yet undetermined price.

Until price-per-gigabyte ratios come down to pedestrian levels, the sweet spot in solid state drives (SSDs) might be 128GB and under. More and more manufacturers are concentrating on low capacity SSDs, pitching them as affordable boot drives to improve overall performance. Enter Patriot, which just announced the availability of its Torqx TRB series.

The Torqx TRB line comes in 32GB and 64GB flavors, enough to install Linux or Windows (Windows 7 requires a minimum of 16GB in 32-bit form, or 20GB for 64-bit) and a handful of programs. These drives are built around the once-dreaded JMicron controller, though Patriot says the latest generation (JMF616) doesn't suffer the same stuttering problem as previous versions. Towards that end, the drives also include 64MB of DDR2 cache memory.

"As solid-state drive technology advances, we are able to develop SSD solutions that provide the performance users want while reaching the affordable price points they demand. Patriot’s objective is to offer the latest technology while providing the best performance and price options," states Les Henry, Vice President of Engineering at Patriot. "Our Torqx TRB family of SSDs meet these goals. Users upgrading with a Torqx TRB SSD will benefit from improved transfer rates, quicker boot times and the reliability of solid-state storage in their boot drive option. Including a Torqx SSD in your desktop or notebook upgrade plans provides one of the best bang-for-the buck improvements you can make to your system."

Patriot rates the 32GB at up to 245MB/s read and up to 60MB/s write speeds, while the 64GB checks in with up to 260MB/s read and up to 115MB/s write speeds.

Despite the supposed "immediate availability" of these drives, we didn't spot any listed at the usual online hangouts (Newegg, Amazon, and the like). Suffice to say, no word yet on price, either MSRP or street.

Image Credit: Patriot