Intel SSD Prices Drop by Up to $100

News
By Marcus Yam
published

Intel SSDs now a little cheaper, but still not cheap.

As we heard last week, Intel has cut prices for its solid state drives.

The consumer enthusiast line of X25-M can now be had for a little cheaper, though by no means cheap. The X25-M 80 GB model falls $50 now and can be found on Newegg for $325. The 100 GB model gets a $100 cut and is now $630 from the e-tailer.

According to ComputerWorld, Intel said the price of the enterprise SLC NAND SSD X25-E drive will remain the same. The X25-E 32 GB sells for $410 and the 64 GB model sells for $790.

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.

It might be expensive, especially in relative terms compared to the capacity you could get with just $100, but with a fast SSD you’re getting more than just storage.

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.
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24 Comments Comment from the forums
  • slickuser
    this news is atleast 2 days old...
    Reply
  • hellwig
    "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."

    Uh, what? Unless your only task on the computer is loading software (and not actually using said software), an SSD does not buy you very much. If you game, that extra $200-$400 would be better spent on a GPU or CPU. If you create content (videos, whatever) you need more storage than an SSD even has. If you don't do anything very intensive, just save yourself the money.
    Reply
  • kyeana
    hellwig"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."Uh, what? Unless your only task on the computer is loading software (and not actually using said software), an SSD does not buy you very much. If you game, that extra $200-$400 would be better spent on a GPU or CPU. If you create content (videos, whatever) you need more storage than an SSD even has. If you don't do anything very intensive, just save yourself the money.
    QFT!

    Although i admit i wouldn't mind having a few of these...
    Reply
  • crom
    OCZ makes a 120 gig SSD, 2.5" interface for $279. Now I just don't understand why they're so expensive to make in general. You'd think manufacturing something with moving parts would cost significantly more.
    Reply
  • Hellwig,

    Most people (read: not corporations) are using SSD Hard Drives as their OS HDD, or a scratch drive for photo and video editing. This speeds up things tremendously. Whether or not it's worth the time to you is one thing...to some it is. Personally I'm fine with my 5400rpm WD Blue drive that has a really dense platter and gives me the performance of a 7200rpm drive. If/when SSD drops in price, I'll think about it.
    Reply
  • The Schnoz
    Great, now they drop the price. I just bought two of these! J/k, they're still to fucking expensive. This is the one price drop where you won't see that comment.
    Reply
  • grieve
    Didn't i read this exact article 2 or 3 weeks ago?

    Or was that "price's are GOING to drop?"

    Anyway... to much $$ still :(
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Ugh, I seriously would like a SSD to replace my hard drive in my laptop, but the damn price...still at $630. And that's not even CAD!
    Reply
  • B-Unit
    cromOCZ makes a 120 gig SSD, 2.5" interface for $279. Now I just don't understand why they're so expensive to make in general. You'd think manufacturing something with moving parts would cost significantly more.
    The problem is the fast SLC flash is expensive to produce, therefore to get any significant size, they have to be expensive.
    Reply
  • Blessedman
    Crom you are right, the fixed price of a HDD is a good portion of the drive. As flash scales, the only fixed price in an SSD is the interface which is vastly cheaper. It will still be another 5 years before Flash scales to the kind of prices to compete with HDD.
    Reply