OCZ Introduces New Value SSDs
OCZ has silently launched its new Solid Series of solid state drives, offering value-conscious consumers a quality upgrade choice for their modern notebooks.
The new OCZ Solid Series of SSDs are available in capacities of 30 GB, 60 GB and 120 GB, with read and write speeds hitting up to 155 MB/s and 90 MB/s, respectively. Designed and optimized for modern notebooks, the Solid Series of SSDs are available in a 2.5-inch form factor and are not recommended for use in laptops purchased prior to 2007. It is a curious recommendation for OCZ to make, but it may be partially due to the SATA II interface that these new SSDs use, which older notebooks may not have.
The new Solid Series drives also have a mini-USB port on them, which apparently can be used “to update the Solid Series’ firmware should new versions become available, to further enhance compatibility or performance with future platforms.”
Seek times on the new drives are less than 0.35 ms, with operating temperatures ranging from -10 C to +70 C and power consumption ranging from 4.5 V to 5.5 V. The Solid Series supports RAID, has a mean time before failure of 1.5 million hours, are shock resistant and are backed by a two year warranty. OCZ claims these new drives use 50-percent less power than the best performing 2.5-inch HDDs on the market and offer seek times that are 10-times as fast. While likely not among the fastest SSDs currently available, the Solid Series’ rated speeds indicate that performance levels should still be quite good.
Part numbers for the new drives are OCZSSD2-1SLD30G, OCZSSD2-1SLD60G and OCZSSD2-1SLD120G, for the 30 GB, 60 GB and 120 GB models, respectively. According to early pricing found at online retailers, the 30 GB model is selling for $89, the 60 GB model is selling for $159 and the 120 GB model is selling for $299. Although the offered capacities are rather small, the Solid Series would seem to offer great value. For notebook users tempted by the benefits of a solid state drive, upgrading to a new 60 GB OCZ Solid Series SSD from an old 80 GB 5400 RPM hard drive could be well worth it.
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eklipz330 so this makes... the core1, core2, & value series?Reply
i dunno, the sub-par reviews i've read of ocz ssd's doesn't make this any more attractive.... -
ryanaxiom Replypower consumption ranging from 4.5 V to 5.5 V
Although this is interesting, numbers in Watts might be a better measure of power consumption.
I personally won't switch to SSDs until they are reasonably priced with more than 160GB. -
Dekasav I wouldn't mind having a small 60GB SSD in my desktop, for OS and a few high performance games with long loads.Reply -
enewmen I'm finding LOTS of problems with MLC SSDs.Reply
AHCI and the drivers, bad multi-tasking, slow write-speeds, long pauses, etc.
I hope this all gets fixed. -
eklipz330 i agree with ryan, i do want a small ssd to dual boot xp 32-bit and vista 64-bit...and maybe a wd 640 slave drive for all the media...thing is, i want an ssd that can prove its performance, and right now, they're about $700Reply -
KITH I suspect these are really the core v2 drives relabeled. So they would still be using the jmicron controllers and potentially have the stuttering issues. That said, they are attractively priced and still have their uses in low write situations.Reply
The core v3 should be coming soon with a new controller and higher performance. Who knows how much they will cost though. -
zenmaster Yeah, I don't see how you create a value series when your current low end series has serious performance problems in real world use.Reply
I guess it's for those who only read benchmarks.
aka........sucker buy.