Intel planning price cuts across its consumer SSD lineups

Jos

Posts: 3,073   +97
Staff

A recent report based on data from price tracking engine Camelegg showed that overall prices for mainstream SSDs have been on a steady decline over the past year. But despite this trend Intel stood out as one of the few treating their SSDs quite differently than competitors, with prices dropping only slightly over the past year and remaining stagnant for long periods.

According to VR-Zone that’s about to change, though. The site claims reliable sources have informed them Intel is planning significant price reductions across its consumer SSD lineups. The SSD 320, SSD 330, and SSD 520 families are all on the chopping block, with prices going down by as much as 37 percent.

The lower-capacity models of the SSD 320 series will remain untouched, but the 300GB is expected to start at $464 instead of the previous $519, while the 600GB will fall almost $200 from $1,059 to $879.

The SandForce based SSD 520 series will see cuts nearly across the board: the 60GB model will go down 9% from $109 to $99, the 120GB unit goes down from $189 to $139, the 180GB variant from $279 to $199, the 240GB from $349 to $259, and finally the 480GB model gets a massive 37% cut from $809 to $594.

Meanwhile the SSD 330 series, launched just three months ago, is also bound for cuts across the board. The 60GB model goes down from $94 to $69 (26.5% cut), the 120GB unit from $149 to $104 (30.2% cut), and the 180GB variant from $234 to $154 (34.1% cut). That’s as low as $0.70-$0.85 per GB.

VR-Zone says the changes will likely take effect in August.

Permalink to story.

 
wow SSD's are expensive! but I guess that's just because I dont have much money sitting around.
 
240GB from $349 to $259

not bad...

Are these SSD's getting better???
I have yet to Buy one, because of there failure rate.. ....
Are they that good???
Are they Worth it??
Really???
 
Concerning the above poster's question to relability (failure rate), Intel is (becoming was) the most reliable SSD brand on the. That was one of the reasons that their SSDs were historically more expensive. Now that the technology is continuing to evolve and companies are a few generations down the controller line, they are across the board becoming more reliable and lowering their failure rate. I believe that this is one reason that Intel is giving up its premium cost.

Concerning whether or not the drives are improving, the answer is yes. Previous generations on 3GB/s capable motherboards (SATA II) were hitting read and write speeds ~250MB/s (there is variability between them, that's just an average ballpark). The newer SATA III capable motherboards are hitting 6GB/s with read and write speeds of ~500MB/s. So that's about a 100% performance increase, quite substantial. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, newer drives are becoming more reliable... but it would still behoove you to research before buying. :)
 
Really? A colon : and a close-paren ) get changed to an image link here? Really? I wonder what it will do with a semicolon and a close-paren winky ;)
 
Back