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OCZ announces 128GB SSD for under £250
OCZ’s new range of Core solid state disks start from just £85 for a 32GB drive
Solid state disks have just come one step closer to being a genuinely affordable alternative to hard drives, as OCZ has just announced a new range of high-capacity SSDs that start from just £85 for a 32GB NAND flash drive.
The imaginatively titled Core series of drives have a seek time of less than 0.35ms, and OCZ claims that they have read speeds of between 120MB and 143MB/sec, and write speeds of between 80MB and 93MB/sec. Comparatively, Samsung’s recently announced 256GB SSD has a claimed sequential read speed of 200MB/sec, and a write speed of 160MB/sec.
However, while Samsung may be boasting higher quicker read and write speeds, the drives have yet to appear in the shops, and even the 64GB version (with respective read and write speeds of 120MB/sec and 100MB/sec) currently costs £451.14 from Scan. Comparatively, OCZ claims that its new 128GB drive will cost just $479 US (£241.21). Meanwhile, a 64GB version of the drive will cost $259 US (£130.43) and a 32GB drive will cost $169 (£85.10).
OCZ’s CEO, Ryan Petersen, said that cost cutting was going to be an important part of the success of SSDs in the future. ’SSDs offer higher performance, reliability, and energy efficiency than conventional HDDs but the cost variance has limited adoption of vastly superior SSD technology, until now,’ said Petersen. He added that ‘It is our mission to deliver the highest performance products to consumers at reasonable prices, and with the release of the Core Series SSDs we have done exactly that.’
OCZ claims that the new drives offer ‘the performance and reliability of the latest SSDs at a 50 per cent less price per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. For the first time, OCZ is putting SSD technology within reach of the average consumer.’
The drives are available in a 2.5in lightweight alloy case, making them ideal for laptops, and they will also come with a two year warranty.
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For a 32GB isnt bad pricing. Considering 2 years ago, my 36GB raptor costed roughly the same price at £82. With the techonology of such an advanced hard drive within two years. £85 is about right. However the higher capacity models i wouldnt know in terms of price per gb vs performance.
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 11:29am 4th July 2008
The trouble with the pricing info. is that the figures have been given by OCZ in $ for sale in the US, CPC have just converted these to their respective value in £, except, we tend to pay more for our kit in the UK, so unless you are buying from the US you aren't likely to get a drive for £250 until the prices start dropping in general, by which time the US sale price will be even lower. Its a long running complaint about hardware in the UK
Comment by NewParadigm at 12:34am 4th July 2008
This is awesome, I was going to get an SSD for my new computer and this range offers twice the capacity for half the price. @EdArch That will happen with any top-end component, but you get it 6-9 months earlier.
Comment by aceizace at 10:59pm 3rd July 2008
What? Who posted under my name? James.... Anyhoo, yes these drives are flash-based. RAM drives are fairly rare as RAM memory is much more expensive than flash and it's also volatile - unplug the power to a RAM drive and it'll switch to a back-up battery and once this has discharged, the RAM drive will lose all its data. Flash drives will remember the data stored on it forever, even if it doesn't have any power. RAM drives do tend to be awesomely fast though, hence why they exist at all.
Comment by Claave at 2:01pm 3rd July 2008
I think the prices of these are a huge step forward, although the samsung ones are better performing, hence the price, same reaon SCSI drives cost alot more than SATA drives. The 32GB SSD is about the same price as Corsair's 32Gb Flash Voyager so that isn't bad at all. I would like to know what the write limit is on these though, as i haven't heard any exact figures for this it does concern me a little. But tbh I agree with Niko. For now I'll stick with Raptor's and F1's as I'd feel a bit of a cock paying £250 for it, then seeing it drop to half that in six-nine months.
Comment by EdArch at 11:04am 3rd July 2008
These ones (as well as Samsung's etc) are all flash based right?
Comment by l3v1ck at 11:50pm 2nd July 2008
No I'm not sure, but nobody's confirm it isn't an issue. Until they do, I'm still worried abut it.
Comment by l3v1ck at 11:47pm 2nd July 2008
i cannot see one for under 319.99 and thats way to expensive for 128gb i mean can it rely take on 2 300gb velocyraptors and claim to be good value. The wright speed wont be that good and you could be 600gb of the most expensive spindle type disk. I think 2pound a gig is the magic number to shoot for and 250 in the article were ever to actual start to turn up these could be big.
Comment by Cool_CR at 7:18pm 2nd July 2008
Just to clarrify what some people have been asking/suggesting. Not all SSDs have a write limit, only those based on FLASH technology. i.e. SSDs that use RAM have an unlimited number of read/write cycles.
Comment by Claave at 6:56pm 2nd July 2008
with 64 bit computing there will be no benefit to having 4GB set aside for a ramdisk... windows will only use the page file when it needs to, you may as well set all 8GB to ram, 64 bit can cope with it, and there's no point sending data to the page file and back when you can just let it go straight to ram. With 32 bit I could see the point though...
Comment by NewParadigm at 4:50pm 2nd July 2008
Actually thinking about it, I dont think I have ever had a main hdd older than 2 years. Anyway, I wonder with 64 bit computing and with DDR2 being as cheap as it is if we will see a reappearance of ye ol Ramdisk. 8 Gb or Ram, with 4 gb set up as ramdisk to be used with Windows for the swap file
Comment by jonisaksson at 4:29pm 2nd July 2008
This is fantastic news. As i understand it is there a limit write life span on all SSD. But in all honesty, I dont know about you guys but I swap my harddrives at least every 4-5 years, as the speed/size has then made such a difference they are not worth keeping. So the write lifespan doesnt worry me. One of these as the main disk then a couple of 750 GB F1's for storage and you will be laughing :)
Comment by jonisaksson at 3:56pm 2nd July 2008
Haven’t heard anything mentioned about raid with these??
Comment by PB94941 at 3:10pm 2nd July 2008
OCZ are gods for this, with Super Talent's SSD's also much cheaper than Samsungs and Intel not far away from breaking into the market this should kick of a nice price war :D
Comment by D_Cypher at 2:25pm 2nd July 2008
64GB SSD from Samsung is currently priced at £500 odd. This kicks that right in the nutz.
Comment by C7ouD at 2:05pm 2nd July 2008
l3v1ck - are you sure that is still an issue with these HDD intended SSDs. I know its a problem for SUB keys etc. but I would be worried if any manufacturer were to release a drive with heavily limited read-write.
Comment by reashlin at 1:58pm 2nd July 2008
with 3D rendering taking a lot of my time, mostly due to the slow HDD compared to the RAM, this looks great, if only they cost even less...
Comment by DudQuitter at 1:57pm 2nd July 2008
I couldn't see myself buying one of these until you can get a 512GB model for roughly £95 (of course it would have to perform well too!)
Comment by NikoBellic at 1:40pm 2nd July 2008
They're on Play.com right now. 32GB - £118, 64GB - £180, 128GB - £320 Getting there, getting there
Comment by IanYates at 1:37pm 2nd July 2008
I love the price of these new SSDs. Get two 64gb ones, raid them, build file server for data storage and you have super quiet pc. HDDs are loudest parts of my pc right now. I can't wait...
Comment by marekkolesar at 12:32pm 2nd July 2008
The thing that concerns me about SSD's is the fact they can only be written to a limited number of times. Knowing how much Windows hammers the pagefile I'd be reluctant to spend that much money on one.
Comment by l3v1ck at 12:33pm 2nd July 2008
oh come, for the speed these drives give you, considering you need to install games before you can play them they are gonna be amazing! sure it might take a few mins longer to install then a conventional drive but for the performance gain once its in its surely worth it! As for price - a 128gb drive is far more than enough for a selection of games on it, unless your a game wh@re, And remember what we paid for raptor drives when they first came out! so 250 aint to bad at all. As a final note, with gpu,s ,ram & Cpus getting faster and faster, it wont be long before the hard drive becomes a bottleneck.
Comment by garrynicol69 at 12:09pm 2nd July 2008
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