Mushkin's 480GB mSATA SSD Now Available

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Mushkin revealed its 480GB Atlas mSATA SSD a while ago, but it has now officially gone on sale in the US.

The 480GB Atlas mSATA SSD is aimed at consumers who want a high-performance low form factor SSD, and therefore it also has a user-upgradeable firmware. Specifications include a SandForce SF-2281 controller with unthrottled IOPS, a SATA3 (6Gb/s) interface, Security Set and NCQ, TRIM support (OS or driver support required), S.M.A.R.T. support, built-in BCH ECC (up to 55 bits correctable per 512 Byte sector), support for ATA APM, high speed MLC NAND, mSATA form factor (50.80 x 29.85 x 4.85mm), and a mini PCIe interface.

The max read speed is 540MBps, and the max write speed is 425MBps. With 78K random read IOPS and 28K random write IOPS the little SSD shouldn't disappoint for performance either.

Mushkin aims for the drive to be available worldwide by the end of January.

The mSATA 480GB Atlas SSD is covered by a respectable 3 year warranty.

The suggested retail price is $499.99, however, the unit has already seen a street price of $449.99 at Newegg.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jaber2
    over $1/GB not worth it, call me when its below $0.5/GB
    Reply
  • g00fysmiley
    jaber2over $1/GB not worth it, call me when its below $0.5/GB
    i remember a year ago we were all aiming for the $1 a gig point, they are coing down quite fast, give ti another year i am sure they will drop another 25-30% at least. if you look for a good sale you can get them in the $0.60ish per gig.

    as for this type of drive the idea of a pci dribve like this with that density and speed ... if i had the money to drop on something like an ssd i would love one... just to ahrd to justify for my gaming computer... still want though
    Reply
  • Estix
    jaber2over $1/GB not worth it, call me when its below $0.5/GB
    I'm not sure how "a street price of $449.99" for a 480GB drive is over $1/GB...
    Reply
  • rebel1280
    Probably wont go down to far seeing as its mSATA and not SATA. The client systems this can be used it in far smaller than your standard port.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    I was looking at the Chronos Enhanced line actually.

    jaber2over $1/GB not worth it, call me when its below $0.5/GBI think you'll be getting that call sometime next year.
    Reply
  • didgetmaster
    Since SSDs have broken the $1/GB barrier, they make perfect sense to purchase in certain conditions. They work very well on systems that have very little (comparatively) data on them. They work great at accelerating massive numbers of queries to a common backend data set, when used as a fast cache.

    But they have to continue to fall to about $.25/GB before they become widely adopted and are affordable for the average user to buy one bigger than 128GB.

    In my opinion, a more expensive form of storage will only gain real traction when it reaches the 10% level. That means that you can buy an SSD which has 1/10 as much capacity as a hard drive at the same price (e.g. if 2 TB HDD == $100 then 200 GB SSD == $100).

    The other barrier to adoption is a lack of good data management systems that automatically put the right data on the right device without a lot of complicated user setup and continued vigilance to keep everything in the right place.
    Reply
  • firemachine69
    didgetmasterThe other barrier to adoption is a lack of good data management systems that automatically put the right data on the right device without a lot of complicated user setup and continued vigilance to keep everything in the right place.

    You mean if Microsoft and Apple spent their billions sitting in offshore accounts, to actually offer a decent OS interface that would do that automatically?
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    jaber2over $1/GB not worth it, call me when its below $0.5/GB
    I don't think you have much of a choice for many laptops. Most of them only have one 2.5" drive and a DVD drive space.
    Reply
  • alidan
    here is what it is for me

    1$ a gb for an os drive
    i love that drive
    .50$ for a game drive
    cant wait for that point because my brother has one with games on it... got to love next to no load times.
    .25$ for general small thing storage
    images, saved files, and so forth. i have a folder with over 40k images in it, and another with about 20k rars, on a hdd, those folders and files are a nightmare to deal with, but on a ssd... just cant wait.
    Reply
  • sna
    didgetmasterSince SSDs have broken the $1/GB barrier, they make perfect sense to purchase in certain conditions. They work very well on systems that have very little (comparatively) data on them. They work great at accelerating massive numbers of queries to a common backend data set, when used as a fast cache.But they have to continue to fall to about $.25/GB before they become widely adopted and are affordable for the average user to buy one bigger than 128GB.In my opinion, a more expensive form of storage will only gain real traction when it reaches the 10% level. That means that you can buy an SSD which has 1/10 as much capacity as a hard drive at the same price (e.g. if 2 TB HDD == $100 then 200 GB SSD == $100).The other barrier to adoption is a lack of good data management systems that automatically put the right data on the right device without a lot of complicated user setup and continued vigilance to keep everything in the right place.
    I come from an era where we used to pay 1000$ for 2G harddisks..

    and the home users paid 300$ for 500MB harddisks ...

    and the one US dollar that time is worth 4 US $ today (in gold price for example)

    today people are Complaining about 440$ for 480G harddisk that is light speed...

    lol , stop being greedy and open your wallet ...

    all my Storage is SSD in my system and it is STILL cheaper than my game box price I used to pay for 20 years ago ... with 16MB ram and 2G harddisk ...

    people need to wake up ... IT IS CHEAP to have it .. but you dont want to pay for it.

    true PCs became cheaper you can have a full gaming PC for 1000$ today ... but in the PAST this was a dream and Gaming PC were over 2000$ and STILL People bought them and didnt consider them expensive , given ALSO that that time a new CAR price was 1/4 of today that is that 2000$ is worth 8000$ today ..

    wake up people , open your wallet and enjoy it...
    Reply