OCZ breaks into bargain market with 'sub-$100' 32GB Onyx SSD
By Darren Murph 
posted March 10th 2010 4:15PM
posted March 10th 2010 4:15PM
posted March 10th 2010 4:15PM
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As soon as 64 get down to that price level I'm there.
@BearCobra I jizzed
finally SSD's are very slowly getting closer to replacing hard drives, especially when it comes to price
@OCEAN CLAK
Not in capacity anytime soon...
@Firehazel why not, you can buy 512GB or 1TB SSD's today. They are just not affordable. OCZ Colossus Series is available in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB (1024GB) configurations.
@SSD
That makes the 1TB version show "1.024 TB" in Mac OS Snow Leopard, ha ha, Apple.
@microlomaniac
LOL! That snow leopard drive capacity thing is such a pain in the ass. Stupid Apple douche bags.
Want but still way too expensive
The only problem with that is that while the SSD is at a price comparable to HDD, it writes at the a similar speed, but has 1/32 the capacity (for 1 TB HDD = about $100).
@Dante of the Inferno
but the access time is so much lower for a SSD, that's why even with about the same sequential write and read as a HDD, a SSD is still faster
but yea, the capacity is still a turn off for me
@Dante of the Inferno I take it you don't own a decent SSD system yet. Random read can be a 30K percent improvement over traditional drives.
Your computer will feel much faster, noticeable right from bootup.
I sold my RAID0 array of raptors after going SSD. Platter drives are still king for storage. Make a little quick SSD your boot/frequent-application drive, store everything else on a pair of 1TB in RAID for a cheap/fast storage solution on desktops. =)
@Ducman69
That's pretty much my system: 2x64GB SSD RAID0 boot drive, 2x1TB RAID1 data drive.
Still, at the end of the day, a 7200rpm 32MB cache 1TB drive makes a pretty fast boot drive and I can't honestly say the increase in speed going to SSD was "worth it" given the expense. Real world it just went from "fast" to "a bit faster".
Perfect for my 1008ha netbook to replace the super slow 160gb drive, and as a boot drive on my desktop.
What kind of controller does it use Engadget? You ALWAYS leave that out! It's easily the most important part of any SSD, followed by whether it uses MLC or SLC, and then how much cache it has to allow TRIM to do its job.
@Prevacator It comes with new Indilinx Amigos SSD controller which supports 32GB and 64GB drives with 64MB of cache memory as well as TRIM support.
@Prevacator And the commenting system fails. Trying again...
Neither the press release nor the webpage for this SSD says anything about what controller it uses unfortunately.
The 30GB OCZ Solid 2 uses the Indilinx controller, and it can be found for $96 after rebate/shipping at newegg right now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227505
I hope that this SSD uses at least this controller. The stated read speed of 125MB/s is actually lower than the Solid 2's 170MB's, and stated write speeds are the same. However, it looks like real-world, non-sequential write speeds are fairly low on the 30GB Solid 2:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?69036-OCZ-Solid-2-30GB-benchmark&highlight=ocz+solid+2
Who knows how this will perform, but it's hard to think it could perform much worse than the Solid 2 given the similar price point.
MUCH MORE INTERESTINGLY:
60GB Agility series for $160 after rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227461
Or the 60GB Solid 2 is $130 after rebate.
@SSD -
Architecture MLC
64MB cache
Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
TRIM or Background Garbage Collection (GC)
Compatible with Windows XP 32/64, Vista 32/64, and Windows 7 32/64
Omg, my ceiling is not a hasty boot drive...
Liars.
Similar specs to the Patriot PS-100, so I'm guessing Phison.
Costs 105$ on the Egg, 95$ on sale.
Firmware was released last week to fix some issues, we are assured that a performance boosting firmware (TRIM/GC) will come next.
That being said, I get much better speeds on my PS-100.
[]CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (5 passes, 50mb, NTFS drive)
Sequential: 227.4MBps READ | 123.5MBps WRITE
512k: 201.1MBps READ | 59.17MBps WRITE
4k: 10.66MBps READ | 24.02MBps WRITE
Interested to see how these perform next to the Intels and other higher priced SSDs.
the price may be dropping but so does the capacity.... when will SSD replace HDD? I've been waiting for more than a decade now.
@darkmax
more than a decade? theyve only been in the "mainstream" (and barely) for a few years. can you not remember the first mass produced ssd?? what was it... 4 or 8gb for around $500? prices are getting there... just takes time.
@Microdot
yes but there has been talk about Solid State for many many more years!
@elmo61
infact when i first read about it, they made it sound like there would be no need to have RAM at all..... lol its like looking back and think what idiot thought the world was flat... but that idiot being me :(
@Microdot
As you yourself said, "commercially available". And by that you are right. However the technology has been around for a lot longer. Fortunately for me, I got to know about it from the people in the know, then.
Do understand, even our current HDD technology wasn't widely avaiable until the 70s-80s, but it had been around since post WWII.
@darkmax Well there's your answer then, if the HDD tech was available at WWII but took another 30-40 years to become the mainstay.
Controller is vitally important!
There is also the fact that a 30GB Vertex (235MBps/135MBps) is only $120-$130. Massive boost in performance for $30 more.
This SSD should be below $70 before long. Newegg sells the 30GB OCZ Vertex for $90 which is much faster than this "new" unit.
@Prevacator Neither the press release nor the webpage for this SSD says anything about what controller it uses unfortunately.
The 30GB OCZ Solid 2 uses the Indilinx controller, and it can be found for $96 after rebate/shipping at newegg right now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227505
I hope that this SSD uses at least this controller. The stated read speed of 125MB/s is actually lower than the Solid 2's 170MB's, and stated write speeds are the same. However, it looks like real-world, non-sequential write speeds are fairly low on the 30GB Solid 2:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?69036-OCZ-Solid-2-30GB-benchmark&highlight=ocz+solid+2
Who knows how this will perform, but it's hard to think it could perform much worse than the Solid 2 given the similar price point.
@mac404, It comes with a new Indilinx Amigos controller which performs below the Barefoot controller. I don't know why OCZ is releasing all these low performing units when you can pick up a 30GB Vertex for under $100 (after rebate). I just don't understand OCZ marketing it makes no sense. Now they offer 4 mainstream series SSD's, the Onyx, Solid, Agility and Vertex and all sell for around the same price.
Get 2 and Raid0 them? Good idea or not?
If your going to pay that much more per GB than an HDD you might as well pay a bit more and get something that has considerably quicker read right speeds as well.
About F-ing time!
I'm still waiting for $1 per gigabyte.
Cool! Now I can finally afford a SSD drive for Windows and use a 750GB - 1TB drive for my media. However, since I upgraded to a Vista computer (yes, vista :P) my boot time is about 7 seconds anyway. Why couldn't this have come out when I had XP and a 45+ second boot time?
I'd been looking forward to affordable SSDs for nearly 10 years now and now Windows and processor hardware made it unnecessary. I probably won't get one until they are exactly the same price per GB as a mechanical drive.
@zangetsu2
Your boot time isn't 7 seconds. Guarantee it. Maybe from the moment you see the Windows logo to the moment you see your desktop is 7 seconds. On a 60GB Agility SSD, I can boot into Windows, and about 5 seconds after the desktop appears, I'm in firefox surfing.
@zangetsu2 Power on to bios is like 3-5 secs on most machine already. 7 secs is pure bs.
@greenmonkey
You're right, it's like 45 seconds. Guess it just seemed really fast compared to my WinXP machine (which must've been like 2mins). Still, SSDs aren't worth it to me.
Power On to BIOS time doesn't matter because that won't change, regardless of OS.
probably a re-badged Samsung.
Supposedly Western Digital is getting into the SSD business.
@FlasH, this SSD has nothing to do with Samsung. It is using Toshiba memory and an Indilinx Amigos controller.
It's affordable, but this is pretty much the crappiest SSD you can get - MLC with 125MB/s read and 70MB/s write, cmon even cheaper MLC SSDs now have both figures over 200MB/s
You could get the OCZ Vertex Turbo for $119 after rebate with 240 read and up to 145sustained for a 30Gb... pretty sweet for this kind of speed... but I would still wait a bit for the new intel SSD of they ever come out...
@Garmac, the new Intel drives are not due until the fourth quarter of this year with an introduction around Aug-Sep.
For my netbook this is prefect. I don't store much on there and I want that thing to boot fast for when I bust it out for switch configuration. If I need the storage I will throw it on my 120 gig portable or the new 160 gig portable that this will be replacing.
Kinda crappy speed. I mean, if you go ssd, go with one with at least 200 mb/s read.
I want one with IDE for my old TC1100 tablet with Windows 7.
Um, that's "has...dived," not "has...dove."
Isn't the Kingston 32GB still a much better deal? Intel controller and lower price.
just about time to replace my 36GB Raptor...
Other than laptops, i do not see why people complain about the capacity of SSD's at this point. Who in their desktop does not have a boot drive & a separate data drive? It makes sense for so many reasons.
Yea... I don't get it. I paid under $100 for my Vertex and it has specs much much higher than this.