The fledgling firm is planning a $2,800 add-on card that can hold up to 21 PCIe 4.0, 168TB SSDs. 

For high-capacity data storage, the average consumer turns to hard disk drives (HDDs). They are generally not as fast or reliable as SSDs, but they are much cheaper. However, the Apex Storage X21 Expansion Card (AIC) that is currently circulating online is not designed to use the most cost-effective storage. Instead, the expansion card, which looks like a debut product from a yet unknown storage company, is aimed at people or companies willing to spend whatever it takes to get a card with 21 8TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs.

Tom’s Hardware first discovered the X21 website on Sunday, and Henry Hill, engineering and sales manager for the company, confirmed the product to Ars Technica via email. He said the product would be priced at $2,800 with volume discounts and would ship by the second quarter. Samples are already available to large buyers, he said, and consumer shipments will begin “before the end of 2023.”

Mike Spicer, listed as the founder and CEO of Apex Storage, launched Kickstarter in 2021 with a concept similar to X21. Instead of 21 M.2 SSDs, Apex Storage Scaler said it supports a modest 16 SSDs. It is not clear how many of these cards, if any, have reached supporters. However, Spicer hinted at the product’s “V2″on Twitter in July.

The X21 product page says the AIC runs in a standard PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. The images show 10 slots and a heatsink inside a pair of circuit boards.

There are also 11 slots on the outside of the PCB. The card is reported to be full height and full length and supports QLC, TLC, MLC, and Intel Optane drives. In terms of operating systems, there is support for Windows 10, 11 and Server as well as Linux.

“The card has a PCIe fanout, so RAID support will be provided through a software or third-party hardware solution such as Graid,” Hill told Ars Technica.

Apex Storage also hopes AIC can support up to 336TB if 16TB M.2 2280 SSDs hit the market.

Speaking of the future, this component is not technically future proof as it does not support PCIe 5.0 (it is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0). But while the X21 isn’t aimed at budget-priority users who would opt for hard drives, using PCIe 5.0 SSDs would be even more prohibitively expensive. AIC cooling requirements will also increase. The X21 currently requires 400 LFM (linear feet per minute) airflow.

In terms of performance, Apex Storage claims sequential read and write speeds of up to 30.5Gbps and 26.5Gbps, respectively, and 107Gbps and 70Gbps, respectively, in a multi-card configuration. The Apex Storage website also lists 7.5M random reads per second and 6.2M random writes per second with a single card, with those numbers rising to 20 million and 10 million respectively in a multi-card configuration.

Apex Storage sees the X21 being used for a NAS or SAN array, 8K video editing, AI and machine learning training, and other use cases, including clearly enterprise ones. Considering the high price of 21 PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the company may make a more realistic call to companies than to individuals. Filling out an AIC can cost over $21,000 for the average consumer, plus the price of the card itself. Alternative products like the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Destroyer 2, which reportedly retailed for $1,500 last year, could be more economical, but since the Sabrent AIC is aimed at high-end desktop workstations and servers, it’s hard to find.

Without any previous products, it’s hard to know if this Utah-based self-proclaimed “PCIe AIC design firm”can deliver on its promises. But it will be interesting to know.