OCZ announces sub-$100 Onyx SSD series

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Jos

Jos

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OCZ has definitely been active on the flash storage front, releasing not only some of the best performing solid-state drives on the market but also a few value-oriented options. Currently standing as their most affordable offering is the 30GB Agility drive, which is selling for around $119 at several online retailers, but now the company is looking to break the sub-$100 price barrier with the introduction of its new Onyx series.


The new series uses an Indilinx controller and will debut with a single model featuring 32GB capacity and 64MB onboard cache. The drive is unlikely to leave anyone impressed with read and write speeds of 125MB/s and 70MB/s, respectively, though it should still provide a nice performance upgrade over traditional HDDs.

Like other recent consumer-grade SSDs, the Onyx is based on MLC NAND flash and features TRIM support to help it keep running at optimal speeds over time. Specific pricing was not announced, other than saying it was a sub-$100 boot drive aimed at budget conscious users. But considering the faster Agility series is already pretty close to the hundred buck mark, we are really hoping OCZ goes a fair bit lower than $99 with this one.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/38187-ocz-announces-sub-100-onyx-ssd-series.html

 
That is a nice piece of HW, but i'm still going to wait a bit longer for the price and the size to increase a bit.
 
Mmm I know they are extremely fast and amazing as main hard drives to host the OS and everyday programs but... who needs that kind of speed on a hard disk? Is the regular user going to die because he couldn't load excel on prime time?

SSDs are expensive, and there are new ones comming almost a week apart, I cant see myself buying one.
 
As someone who has just gone from XP to Win7 and a SSD......it's worth the money!

I agree with 99% of the people who get a SSD, it's the best upgrade you can make and it's worth it!

My suggestion to the companies would be, forget the small 30GB size.

I think 60-64GB is a realistic minimum size and you can get decent drives in that size now with Trim and without needing a loan. :)
 
i'd rather buy the Agility series. the speed differences is significant and the price is almost the same, unless OCZ sell the Onyx under $90.
 
If OCZ wants to compete and gain market share, then it needs to offer good performance at a lower price and not an inferior product. The actual formatted capacity of 60GB is good for a desktop with additional mechanical hard drives. I would not go below 80GB capacity for a single hard drive configuration.

I am using an Intel 80GB SSDG1 on my desktop computer. I recently purchased 2 more Intel 160GB SSDG2. (One was defective and being returned under a warranty repair.) I am using my unemployment benefit and welfare money to help stimulate the economy. I am putting USA first as always.
 
Kibaruk said:
Mmm I know they are extremely fast and amazing as main hard drives to host the OS and everyday programs but... who needs that kind of speed on a hard disk? Is the regular user going to die because he couldn't load excel on prime time?
Click to expand...

You do realise that an SSD offers a few other significant advantages over a standard HDD? I know most people here are more interested in the speed advantages, but there are others which may be more important to some, such as its durability, power usage and heat production which would appeal to laptop users.

It is probably these markets which the Onyx would be marketed towards, especially since the speed is quite significantly reduced....
 
Just curious..what's the consensus on using an SSD for swap files? Would the rapid read/write wear it out quickly? Does it have Write speeds capable of this sort of operation?
 
Assign your Virtual Memory / Page Files / Swap on this SSD. Let your OS run on the traditional HDD. That should do the trick...
 
OCZ want to be the leader of SSD market at the moment. Great performance and great price, what else do they need to offer?
 
And the technology trend keeps going....make something new, price it high, price it mid, price it low, people buy it, make a better one, start over. Considering the trend, I'll just wait until I can get a decent priced 500G Solid State Drive. It might take a while, but I have no doubt that it will happen.
 
CMH said:
You do realise that an SSD offers a few other significant advantages over a standard HDD? I know most people here are more interested in the speed advantages, but there are others which may be more important to some, such as its durability, power usage and heat production which would appeal to laptop users.

It is probably these markets which the Onyx would be marketed towards, especially since the speed is quite significantly reduced....
Click to expand...

Maybe heat-energy might be a way to decide, durability not so much, I've never had a HDD die on me and I've had old ones with constant usage. The main disadvantage is the high price v/s low storage.

Also I have one doubt, such as pendrives and flash storage, doesn't it have an ammount of writes and then they are gone?
 
Cheap, yes, but 32GB is not nearly enough. Well, maybe if you use the drive as a boot drive in a desktop PC, but for a laptop where you're limited to one hard drive, this just doesn't cut it. I'll wait a bit more for prices to go down on larger models.
 
Moving in the right direction

It appears the SSD's are moving in the right direction though I'm not quite ready to buy one yet. As others mentioned if they can just get the size up to 64GB as an entry point and get the price around $120 for it, thinks will take off. Regardless in a couple of years SSD's will be the norm.
 
I think this is great. Particularly for lowering the barrier to entry. This would be a great addition to a netbook or some other device that you have minimal storage requirements on.
 
i will wait till size is like 120 GB and price under 100$ then we can say this is the real deal.Hope no more than year away this will hapend
 
Kibaruk said:
Also I have one doubt, such as pendrives and flash storage, doesn't it have an ammount of writes and then they are gone?
Click to expand...

Yes, they have an amount of writes, but unlike USB drives, SSDs have built in redundancy for "dead" spaces. So do HDDs really.

Together with error correction (which also comes standard with HDDs), this shouldn't be a worry, and should last at least as long as HDDs.

As far as your priorities go, remember that they are your priorities, and others, particularly those who use their laptops/computers for business uses will find that peace of mind about the durability of SSDs would be important, and sacrificing the extra storage (which doesn't get used up since PDFs, Word and emails don't really take up one terrabyte) is a small price to pay.

Personally, I also have old HDDs, which I still use for unimportant files (or unimportant computer users :D). On my main computer, I replace the HDDs every 3-5 years, which is roughly how often I change computers anyway
 
zyodei said:
Just curious..what's the consensus on using an SSD for swap files? Would the rapid read/write wear it out quickly? Does it have Write speeds capable of this sort of operation?
Click to expand...

Even with using it for swap files it should last you a good 4-7 years. Even in 4 years you should be able to replace it for 1/10th the cost (or at least i hope :) ).
 
Good deal, but I'll still wait a year or so until the better drives with better technology come out cheaper.
 
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