COMPUTEX Taipei 2010 - Gigabyte has two products that they will not be showing on the show floor but will have on hand for private eyes. Since my focus has been on the storage market for the last couple of years now I spotted these gems right away and thought about the possibilities all day.

With 24 memory slots this unnamed workstation / server board has a lot of potential for many things but what is interesting here is the 4x SAS connector in the back that would allow connection to an AIC MiniBOD right out of the box without the need for an additional HBA add in controller.

With SAS expanders the only real limitation is the amount of funds in your bank account. We would like to see Gigabyte move forward with this feature.

The GA-7TESM also has twelve memory slots and once again that isn't where the fun starts for storage buffs.

With load balanced Ethernet trunking (802.3ad) switches hitting ridiculously low prices (the TRENDnet TEG-240WS 24-port gigabit with 802.3ad now costs less than 230 at Amazon) enthusiasts are now able to bring the tech into their homes with these small business switches.

We have the TRENDnet TEG-240WS on the way for our new NAS testing procedures but it will be a little while longer before we can get a Gigabyte board with 5 full duplex Ethernet ports.