Corsair Shatters SSD Affordability Barrier

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Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced a new milestone in the affordability of Corsair Solid State Drives. For a limited time, Corsair’s award-winning Nova Series SSDs are available for as little as $69.99 after mail-in rebate.

“The 32GB Nova Series SSD is great for streamlined boot drives, netbook upgrades, and even RAID configurations,” stated Jim Carlton, VP of Marketing at Corsair. “The aggressive pricing of these drives makes the benefits of SSDs accessible to everyone.”
 
Now if we can get the 64 in this price range and I can raid 'em together.

I bet it will happen by the holidays.
 
Its progress in the right direction. Almost down to $2/GB.

Still a ways to go though. Tiger had a 1TB Seagate for $40/AR which comes to 25GB per dollar. I don't expect anything near price parity per GB, but over 50x the cost per GB is a steep premium to pay.
 
Ultima99 said:
Its progress in the right direction. Almost down to $2/GB.

Still a ways to go though. Tiger had a 1TB Seagate for $40/AR which comes to 25GB per dollar. I don't expect anything near price parity per GB, but over 50x the cost per GB is a steep premium to pay.
Click to expand...

Bein' [H] ain't easy.
 
Ultima99 said:
Its progress in the right direction. Almost down to $2/GB.

Still a ways to go though. Tiger had a 1TB Seagate for $40/AR which comes to 25GB per dollar. I don't expect anything near price parity per GB, but over 50x the cost per GB is a steep premium to pay.
Click to expand...
While it may not be as fast as an SSD, that's why I got a 600GB Velociraptor instead.

Cheaper than a 256GB (and a number of 128GB) SSDs with more storage. Faster than any other mechanical HDD on the market.

SSDs are cool, but I'll be waiting, probably a year or two. I'm waiting for 256GB-512GB drives to become reasonable, and I can be patient.
 
Getting closer to normal consumer price but I just don't see SSD taking over until they hit $1/GB or better without being a gimped slow drive.
 
Shattered? 32GB? Mail In Rebate? I don't think so.
I don't think any modern OS with all of it's programs and a page file wll be too happy with 32 gigs.
I also HATE mail in rabates that often come with two stipulations: 1. No warrenty, 2. No rebate.
I think $1 a gig is not asking for much from consumers. What consumers need to do is stop buying them until they hit 1 gig per $1.
 
because if consumers stop buying them the developers will get back their overhead costs faster and the demand will make other developers will also look to get in the market?
 
250 gb ssd for 150 bucks would be a start... wtf is 32gb, jack shit
 
Only on one model drive? Sure, it is a deal after MIR but failure to include other models within the line makes the deal overall less attractive.
 
griff30 said:
Shattered? 32GB? Mail In Rebate? I don't think so.
I don't think any modern OS with all of it's programs and a page file wll be too happy with 32 gigs.
I also HATE mail in rabates that often come with two stipulations: 1. No warrenty, 2. No rebate.
I think $1 a gig is not asking for much from consumers. What consumers need to do is stop buying them until they hit 1 gig per $1.
Click to expand...

Except you dont page file with an SSD.
 
I'm waiting for either a 64-80GB SSD for under $100 for my touchsmart convertible laptop...or a bigger 120-160GB type drive for it at like $150 or something.

I heart my 80GB Agility in my desktop. That's reasonable for the OS, some apps, and a couple of big fat games. 32GB is a bit too tight for me. I'd probably go for a good $70 64GB SSD.
 
Xaijin said:
Except you dont page file with an SSD.
Click to expand...

Yes you do. It's the perfect paging drive.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Microsoft said:
Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
Click to expand...
 
jiminator said:
because if consumers stop buying them the developers will get back their overhead costs faster and the demand will make other developers will also look to get in the market?
Click to expand...

No its the consumer that sets the price. If the demand is strong and there are many people who are willing to shell out $90 for a 32 gig hard drive, the price stays the same.
If consumers do not buy them, the developers can't "get back thier overhead cost faster" as there is no money to get that back.
Developers will get thier money back one way or another.
 
griff30 said:
No its the consumer that sets the price. If the demand is strong and there are many people who are willing to shell out $90 for a 32 gig hard drive, the price stays the same.
If consumers do not buy them, the developers can't "get back thier overhead cost faster" as there is no money to get that back.
Developers will get thier money back one way or another.
Click to expand...
Supply not Demand. The New Economy.
 
I'm not going SSD until they get closer to $1 to $1.50 per gig for a drive that'll max out sata2. Cheaper would be better, because I'm not spending more than 200 on a hard drive and require a 120-128 GB widows/programs drive minimum.
 
Last fall I bought a Patriot Torqx 256M SSD for about $750. Which is pretty much the price it's going for right now. A Corsair P56 is $669 at Egghead this morning, so I suppose that represents some progress (although I don't know what that drive was selling for last fall).

But the upshot is that SSD prices on a space/performance basis haven't really come down at all in the last 8-10 months. Introducing almost uselessly small drives at sub-$100 prices isn't progress; rather, it merely emphasizes that no progress has been made.
 
127 GB is a very good size for a SSD to be. Its the WinXP (original) limitation on harddrive size.

2+TB is fine for an "extra" spinning harddrive for about $100 on which to store your media, and infrequently used data and maybe a few programs (which definitely does not need to be fast)

However, if its a choice between a twice as fast 64 GB SSD, and a 128GB SSD - I would always take the faster SSD and live with a little more file shuffling.
 
dramsey said:
But the upshot is that SSD prices on a space/performance basis haven't really come down at all in the last 8-10 months. Introducing almost uselessly small drives at sub-$100 prices isn't progress; rather, it merely emphasizes that no progress has been made.
Click to expand...

a system running only Windows 7 64bit with 8 gigs ram would eat 32 gigs up.

ZenOps said:
127 GB is a very good size for a SSD to be. Its the WinXP (original) limitation on harddrive size.

However, if its a choice between a twice as fast 64 GB SSD, and a 128GB SSD - I would always take the faster SSD and live with a little more file shuffling.
Click to expand...

128 would be the minimum for 7 and all programs, not games or videos. you wont notice if an SSD is twice as fast as another SSD.
 
SSD prices need to drop through the floor before they become mainstream. $400+ for 160GB is extremely cost prohibited for folks looking to go SSD. Sure you can get 32GB for $69, but if your primary PC is a laptop, which is more and more common today, That's not going to cut it. Netbooks could, if they are a secondary machine, but that's about it.

OK, desktops as a boot drive, but I don't see anyone but enthusiasts going that route until prices and capacities get more appealing.

If prices dropped to $1 per GB, I think you would see SSDs fly off the shelves. I'd never buy a mechanical hard drive again except for mass storage for my home server at that price.
 
still too expensive.

Lets see a 1TB drive cost 100 or less now.

so 1TB ssd will cost like 2,000 dollars which is overkill.
 
GreenMonkey said:
Yes you do. It's the perfect paging drive.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Microsoft said:
Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
Click to expand...

MS says that. SSD companies, and thousands of people who've used them, say you don't need page file
Click to expand...
 
300k write cycles. Not sure what that means, especially with trim. This is still a technology in its infancy.
 
Wound not the amount of installed memory (and a lesser extent how well the OS utilized it) on a machine be more of the determining factor as to page file placement than generalizations ? XP with 2 GB a page file on an SSD would to me make sense, on an 4GB machine not so much. On a 64bit OS kinda the same. My real point is that it is not productive to debate it in general. Unique to the machine circumstances would make for a to the point discussion. But carry on.
 
masamune said:
How long would an SSD last as a pagefile? Doesn't it have limited writes?
Click to expand...

With TRIM and wear leveling algorithms in new SSDs, they'll likely be well obsolete before they die on you. At least at a rate more than current disc based drives (which RMA every few years it seems).
 
hmm what is the news in this. If you look around the net you can find good deals, I mean frys had a 40gb intel for 79 bucks once. 32gb can be found for this shattering price already. A real break through would be when 128gb's are less then 200 and 32gb ssd's are obsolete, and 64gb is around a 100 bucks. That is when corsair should come back and call it shattering.
 
I tried with a 32gb and it didn't work out too well, I could never be comfortable with 8gb of space left on my drive.
 
I have an Intel 40GB drive as my windows drive. 28.6GB FREE of 37.2GB. All you people that say you need more are full of it. That is a full Win7x64 install with other programs thrown in for good measure. Less than 10GB. This is obviously not a storage drive. You put windows on it and leave it. For $70 it is totally worth it. I will never use a traditional disk for an OS drive again.
 
What good is it to have a super fast OS drive when it takes forever to access your games and other data. Sure it will reduce boot up times but after that your back to the normal speeds of your standard hard drive. They really need to start working on disk size and put out an afordable SSD thats bigger than a thumb drive.
32gigs is a joke, even if you do set them up in a raid.
 
BallerX said:
I have an Intel 40GB drive as my windows drive. 28.6GB FREE of 37.2GB. All you people that say you need more are full of it. That is a full Win7x64 install with other programs thrown in for good measure. Less than 10GB. This is obviously not a storage drive. You put windows on it and leave it. For $70 it is totally worth it. I will never use a traditional disk for an OS drive again.
Click to expand...

So did you delete your page file or are you somehow using 16mb of ram on windows 7?
I run 8 gigs of ram in 64 so my pagefile alone is 12 gig.

What is even funnier in the pricing of flash drives
A 64 gig USB 2 flash drive will set you back: $135. + shipping
A 64 gig USB 3 flash drive will set you back: $240 + shipping
Same type memory in each just different controller
 
griff30 said:
So did you delete your page file or are you somehow using 16mb of ram on windows 7?
I run 8 gigs of ram in 64 so my pagefile alone is 12 gig.

What is even funnier in the pricing of flash drives
A 64 gig USB 2 flash drive will set you back: $135. + shipping
A 64 gig USB 3 flash drive will set you back: $240 + shipping
Same type memory in each just different controller
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I can qualify what you just said as statement or a question.
You can make your pagefile any size you like you know. The more ram you have, the less pagefile you need. Not more. My pagefile is located on a separate disk and is currently set to a fixed size of 4GB. More than I will ever need. My machine is in my sig. Allowing windows to manage your pagefile is asking for it to be large and fragmented.

And yes they want tons of money for a USB3 stick right now. I don't use flash as a storage medium for anything really large so I can wait on USB3 memory sticks. Just like any new tech, they are going to milk it for a while.
 
Griff, take control of your page file. I have mine set to 2GB and I never need it. The old idea that it should be half again the size of your RAM is no longer relevant.

Some apps need a page file, so you can't disable it completely. Monitor your RAM usage and set your page file accordingly.
 
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