Want an SSD for a snip just over $120? That’s what you’ll have to stump up at Amazon to get your mits on Intel’s latest SSD offering, the 40GB X25-V SSD. Now 40 GB may not sound like a lot of zeroes and ones but the cunning plan would be to have your OS installed on your super-fast SSD and all your data on the old HDD. This means, in theory that your OS would fly along to free up time for you to actually ‘do stuff’ with your data on the machine. We’ve heard the plan before and we think it is a good idea and with small SSDs priced keenly it even becomes an affordable plan. Anyway should you choose Intel as your SSD provider here are the bits and pieces on their X25-V 40 GB SSD.

* Sustained Read/Write: 170/35 MB/s
* Power: 150mW active, 75mW idle
* 1.2 million hour MTBF
* Read Latency: 65 microseconds, write Latency: 110 microseconds
* 4.3 x 0.8 x 6.1 inches
* 4 ounces
* Model number: SSDSA2MP040G2R5
* Random 4 KB reads up to 25 K IOPS
* Random 4 KB writes up to 2.5 K IOPS

The X25-V is certainly one of the cheapest SSDs around but isn’t the fastest available. However for giving your machine’s OS a helping hand $120 is not a lot to pay. If you’re still keen check out Intel’s 40GB SSD over at Amazon where it also gained 4.5 stars out of 5.

Featured tags: intel SSD

Sphere this entry»

If you envious desktop owners have been eyeing up neat little laptop SSDs for a while now, OCZ have produced an answer to your dreams, the Colossus 3.5 inch SATA II SSD specifically for your machine. Unfortunately the Colossus range comes with a series of hefty price tags, but the specs may just sway you to ignore those large figures after the dollar sign

* Maximum Read Speed 260 MBps
* Sustained Write Speed 230 MBps
* Maximum Write Speed 260 MBps
* 128MB Cache
* 3.5-Inch Aluminum Casing
* Operating Temperature 0-70C
* Shock Resistance 1500G
* 4 x 1 x 5.8 inches
* 8 ounces

Still interested? Then check out these suckers over at Amazon in their various capacities

120 GB Colossus $609
250 GB Colossus $1123
500 GB Colossus $1770

Featured tags: OCZ SSD

Sphere this entry»

Looking to unleash the speed of SSD drives without upgrading your motherboard and you have a PCI-Express slot available? Well Highpoint have a couple of PCI Express cards just for you, namely the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622. Both offer SATA 6 Gb/s connectivity to enable you to take advantage of SSDs with transfer speeds of 600 MB/s. The Rockets are also backward compatible with SATA I and II devices allowing you to hook up older, slower drives. Here’s the full list of features and specs on the Highpoint Rocket 620 and 622 SATA III PCI Express cards

* Interfaces SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s
* Connector Types SATA (620) and eSATA (622)
* Bus Types PCI-Express 2.0 x1
* 600MB/s per (SATA and eSATA) port
* AHCI Compliant
* Supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
* Out-of-the-Box Ready for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X 10.6 and above
* Compatible with SATA (III, II, I) Hard Drives and SSD
* Support up to 2TB Hard Drives

According to Electronista these units will be priced at $70 for the 620 and $80 for the 622. Not bad upgrade prices to enable your system to utilise those blistering SSD speeds.

Featured tags: highpoint pci express SSD

Sphere this entry»

OCZ have brought out some addtions to their Vertex Turbo SSD series ranging in capacity from 30 GB up to 250 GB. The new SATA II 2.5 inch units can reach read speeds of 270 MB/s and write speeds of 210 MB/s on the 250 GB version. It’s interesting to compare the speeds of the Vertex Turbos against the Corsair and SuperTalent SSDs we have looked at recently. Here’s a breakdown of how the models and capacities match up, for clarity’s sake we have allowed a lee-way on the capacities, for example we’ve assumed that a 30 GB OCZ unit is comparable to a 32 GB unit from the other manufacturers

Model	OCZ Vertex Turbo				SuperTalent UltraDrive LE				Corsair
	30 GB	60 GB	120 GB	250 GB	32 GB	64 GB	128 GB	256 GB	128 GB
Max Read Speed (MB/s)	240	240	270	270	230	230	260	260	220
Max Write Speed (MB/s)	145	145	200	210	160	180	195	200	200
Price	$140	$250	$409	$775	$119	$196	$359	$620	$360

Intriguingly not much benefit, if any, at the smaller capacity end of the scale and even on the 250 GB unit an extra 10 MB/s on both read/write for an extra $155? Please. Of course these figures don’t take into consideration reliability of the units but even so, it would take a lot to persuade us to fork out for an OCZ Vertex Turbo based on these stats. Let us know if you have any of these SSD units and how well they perform.

Source: EnGadget, NewEgg and Amazon

Featured tags: OCZ SSD

Sphere this entry»

It’s been a bit quiet on the SSD front recently, mainly because those price tags haven’t dropped as much as expected. However the manufacturers plug away with new units and Corsair are no exception launching the P128 SSD. Here are the specs on the unit

* 128 GB capacity
* 2.5 inch form factor
* Maximum sequential read speed 220MB/s
* Maximum sequential write speed 200MB/s
* SATA II 3.0 Gb/s interface
* Samsung controller and MLC NAND flash
* No moving parts for increased durability
* Decreased power usage for cool and quiet operation and increased laptop battery life
* DRAM Cache Memory 128 MB
* 80g

Yeah the usual advantanges of SSD but unfortuantely still a largish price tag with Amazon offering the P128 for US$355. Still not impressed? We aren’t either.

Source: Corsair

Featured tags: corsair SSD

Sphere this entry»

SuperTalent have just brought out two new ranges of SSDs, the UltraDrive ME and LE. Both ranges come in a 2.5 inch form factor and with a SATA-II inter ideal for laptops. Here’s some more information about the units

* UltraDrive LE capacity range from 32 to 128 GB
* UltraDrive ME capacity range from 32 to 256 GB
* 69.85 x 100.20 x 9.50 mm
* LE sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec max and write speed of 170 MB/sec max
* ME sequential read speed of 200 MB/sec max and write speed of 160 MB/sec max
* 10 year data integrity

The LE series is primarily aimed at servers, video solutions and telecommunications, whilst the ME is aimed at the laptop and gaming markets. Of course both ranges offer the usual power, reliability and noise benefits of the humble SSD. NewEgg.com are already offering the UltraDrive ME starting at US$128 for the 32GB version and going up to US$645 for the 256GB big boy.

Featured tags: SSD supertalent

Sphere this entry»

More accustomed to manufacturing memory, Corsair have now delved into the more permanent storage arena in the way of an SSD drive, namely the S128. The unit needless to say has a 128 GB capacity and apparently is the first of many SSD from Corsair. The read and write speeds of the S128 are quoted as 90 and 70 MB/sec respectively. Whilst these speeds are pretty run of the mill the unit does boast a Samsung controller which according to Custom PC, is almost twice as fast as the more often used JMicron 602 controller.

Unfortunately the Samsung controller’s are more expensive than the JMicron counterparts and consequently the Corsair S128 is sporting a price tag of GBP326 (US$450) over at Scan. Yet again the old adage of you get what you pay for springs to mind.

Source: Custom PC

Featured tags: corsair SSD

Sphere this entry»