SSD Makers Battling for Entry-Level Market
SSD Makers Battling for Entry-Level Market
Posted 03/26/2010 at 6:58am
| by Paul Lilly
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We'd all love to deck out our rigs with high-capacity, high-performance SSDs, but for most, it just isn't practical. That doesn't mean the benefits of an SSD are lost on the mainstream market, and if you're willing to settle for a lower capacity drive, there are some compelling options finally starting to appear.
As a result, there's a rush among SSD makers to cater to entry-level and mainstream consumers, and Kingston thinks it has a leg up on the competition. Citing un-named industry sources, DigiTimes says Kingston has shipped about 30,000 low-priced SSDs, prompting other companies to release low-priced units of their own.
If you ask Kingston, its 30GB SSD is the better option over Intel's new 40GB X25-V, and if looking strictly at street pricing, they're right, even if just barely. Intel's 40GB X25-V streets for about $125, or about $3.12 per GB. Kingston's 30GB SSDNow V Series streets for $92, or about $3.07 per GB. Kingston's drive is also rated a little bit faster with up to 180MB/s read and 50MB/s write speeds, compared to 170MB/s and 35MB/s, respectively.
Of course, hard drives still trump SSDs in capacity and price per GB, which begs the question, is anyone interested in these so-called value oriented SSDs?
Image Credit: Kingston
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QUINTIX256
March 28, 2010 at 5:57pm
It's a 32gig crucial drive, and I bought it just for the sake of experiment. I had everything one one disk: program files, user directory, pagefile... everything. I really wanted a seperate disk for the OS; not just a seperate partation, if for no other reason then to prevent a drive arm from needing to oscillate back and forth from the page file to wherever the partion with data/execuable files are. Having a terabyte drive for the OS would have been overkill.
Currently it only has the OS and the user directory for the administator on it, along with a few mission critical apps like Office and some utilities. The default program files directory and the user directory are both on my "A:" drive.
I don't regret my decision at all. Recovery from hibernate, loading a browser or Office... it is all very responsive.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
dougau
March 27, 2010 at 8:35am
I would rather pay $70.00 for a 500GB HD in my
laptop and go pee while I boot (multitasking). SSD's are to small and expensive
to be much more that a toy right now.
Danthrax66
March 26, 2010 at 6:02pm
look on anandtech the reviews are more thorough and also provide charts for those of us too lazy to read (like myself :D).
violian
March 26, 2010 at 10:51am
I'm waiting until 60GB SSD's drop to $80 or so. I can't justify paying close to $100 for 30GB of storage.
Mike.P
March 26, 2010 at 10:31am
Has anybody put 2 or more SSDs in a RAID 0 array ?? If so, what was your experience like ?
gendoikari1
March 27, 2010 at 8:29am
Look at the video with a 24-SSD RAID. Thanks to the spam filter, just look it up on Youtube.
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rubalsharma
March 26, 2010 at 10:31am
For me it's hard to go back to a mechanical drive since i've been using SSDs for my two main computers (work laptop and a gaming desktop at home). I never have to see the spinning circle/hourglass in Win7 when on a SSD - everything just "pops". Bootup, reboots, shutdowns, loading apps/documents, etc take a lot of time away from the core computing experience (playing that game or working on that document). For me the time I save is worth the price. With that said I do have tons or mechanical drives for storage and can't do without those either.
Member2600
March 26, 2010 at 10:15am
I think that when the price drops from $60-100 for a 50-120gig ssd, then it will be considered, afterall how long before we have to install games from BlueRay disks. Im sure most of us that do play would like to have at least 2+ games installed
ogremustcrush
March 26, 2010 at 10:09am
I'm not going to jump on the SSD bandwagon until I can get over 100gb for less than $150. Otherwise, why not just buy a bunch of 1tb hdd's for $70 and put them in a raid array.
Danthrax66
March 26, 2010 at 6:01pm
Because that just increases seek time raw throughput isn't the only thing that is important, .1ms seek.
Danthrax66
March 26, 2010 at 9:16am
Until you use an ssd you have no idea how slow a standard hdd is I was skeptical until I was able to get an 80gb intel for $150. Despite the fact that it's a g1 intel it hasn't slowed down at all regardless of no trim. If you have the opportunity buy an intel ssd they do not suffer as much from being used as other ssd's.
Rocketpop
March 26, 2010 at 8:19am
Once SSDs become truly mainstream with comparable capacities and more reasonable prices, then I might consider one for the occasional times I could use faster read/write speeds. In the meantime, I see nothing wrong with my 1TB Seagate.
DBsantos77
March 26, 2010 at 7:43am
Meh, I'll start caring when it falls below $100. Till then, my raid0 barraducas are working me wonders, at half the price of a 30gig ssd.
Take that, capitalism. XD - I've always wanted to say that lol.
-Santos
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