Report: Intel SSD Price Cut on April 26

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Cheaper, but will be they cheap enough?

We asked you yesterday in our question of the day whether or not you’ve upgraded your systems yet to incorporate a solid state drive.

With no mechanical moving parts, no spinning platters, and just really fast flash memory, a SSD is likely the best upgrade that you can perform on your rig due to the storage subsystem being the slowest part of the typical computer system.

The majority of your responses pointed squarely at the high price of SSDs as being the main reason why most of you have yet to take the plunge. It’s certainly understandable, with 1 TB HDDs priced at sub-$100 points, who would want to pay hundreds more for just a fraction of the capacity?

Thankfully, prices are falling, though probably not fast enough for it to be the way we’d like it. Undoubtedly, our pick of the SSD litter are the Intel X-25 line as they are the fastest both for the enthusiast and the enterprise user. Sadly, their premium performance also comes at a premium price, being the most expensive SSD solution out right now.

Hopefully VR-Zone is correct, then, as it reports that Intel will next week be cutting the prices of its SSDs. According to the website: “Intel 80GB X18-M and X25-M will see their prices dropped from $385 to $335 while 160GB versions will be lowered from $760 to $660. However, the prices of the SLC models remain unchanged at $410 for 32GB and $790 for the 64GB.”

Still not even remotely cheap, but at least it’s headed in the right direction.

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mlopinto2k1
    NOW I can afford one! Awesome! NOT!
    Reply
  • fonzy
    I give it another year and they will be.... almost affordable.
    Reply
  • ckthecerealkiller
    OCZ's offerings are almost 1/2 that price and still offer close to the same performance. But has FAR less latency on write speed.
    Reply
  • Greatwalrus
    Another day, another non-enough SSD price cut. :\
    Reply
  • Cache
    Maybe if I lied to the federal government and said my computer needed a bailout...
    Reply
  • enyceckk101
    80gb for $335 ? not at this economic ..

    if 80gb for 100$, then I might think about it
    Reply
  • fuser
    I would spend $1.50 / GB for a high quality SSD.
    Reply
  • don't buy into SSDs quite yet people...

    intel is supposedly releasing not only a new line of SSDs late 09... but also a new controller with it... (larger capacity and cheaper to manufacture)


    I'm getting these assuming they don't flop and aren't the same $/GB
    Reply
  • jwl3
    It's not so much the pricing anymore - for me, it's the seemingly endless confusion of how fast it really is. There's a lot of misinformation out there. I'm concerned that I have to jump through hoops to get it to work well with XP and Vista. (e.g. can't use it on the system drive, can use it on the system drive, never defrag, use it only for reads, not writes, bad for games, good for apps, continuous writes are slow, random writes are slow, etc.)

    Reading all the SSD reviews on Newegg, each model and brand seems to be unique and some seem to get horrid reviews mixed with fantastic reviews. It's not a mature technology yet. I consider myself on the cutting edge of technology (most of us on THG are) but I'm going to wait until Microsoft updates their OS to take advantage of SSD's strong suits.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    $50! Is that a joke? Sound more like a sale price, and less like a price drop. I expected at least $100.
    Reply