Saturday, June 19th 2010
Corsair Shatters SSD Affordability Barrier
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."
Nova Series of SSDs have been well reviewed the world over for their excellent combination of performance and price. ZDnet said of the 128GB Nova Series, "...among its peers, the 128GB Corsair Nova hits the right capacity/price/performance point and so is our overall choice." And Computerbase in Germany stated, "The Corsair Nova was able to convince in all tests and did not show any weaknesses.... it is one of the most interesting SSDs on the market and has thus earned our recommendation."
Corsair's Nova Series 32GB SSD delivers read speeds up to 195 MB/s and write speeds up to 70 MB/s for outstanding system performance, fast system start-ups, quicker game and application loads for your daily needs. The built-in 64MB cache ensures smooth stutter-free operation for reliable performance. It is supplied with a three year warranty, and is backed up by Corsair's highly regarded customer service and technical support.
"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."
Corsair's Nova Series 32GB SSD delivers read speeds up to 195 MB/s and write speeds up to 70 MB/s for outstanding system performance, fast system start-ups, quicker game and application loads for your daily needs. The built-in 64MB cache ensures smooth stutter-free operation for reliable performance. It is supplied with a three year warranty, and is backed up by Corsair's highly regarded customer service and technical support.
89 Comments on Corsair Shatters SSD Affordability Barrier
Really, someone tell me why and how the economics of mail-in rebates. :pimp:
Unless you use it for browsing and mail only. And some music. But then again, for not that much more you can get Seagate Momentus (and XT) drives that are really fast and offer capacity of 500GB.
Personally I think 32GB is a tad small for everything you'd want to store on an OS drive (my Windows 7 and basic programs weigh in at around 34GB), but RAID0 two of them together and you'll probably be fine. Also, what people tend to forget is that the strong point of SSD's is they have excellent small file transfer rates (and latencies). This is what speeds up the OS - which tends to write thousands of smaller files instead of huge chunks of data. ;)
Also, I've never understood the whole "mail-in rebate" system? Why? I'm pretty sure America is the only place where they dreamed up this thing. Ok, we'll give you a discount, not immediately so you can avoid having to pay the entire amount, but you can send us some form by post and we'll give it back in a week or something...? Now THAT'S convenient. :wtf:
EDIT:I missed your post, but have the exact same sentiment! :wtf:
I do see a number of uses (a cheap car pc with linux immediately came to mind), but I stand by my statement that you'll probably be better off with something like 64GB - or in this case 2 of them in RAID0. ;)
A) Don't bother to send in the rebate.
B) Forget to send in the rebate.
C) Fail to follow the rules of the rebate (sometimes quite obnoxious) and are denied the rebate.
Meaning they are selling more product at the normal price, and only taking the rebate hit on about 20% of the rebated items sold. Not to mention that they can take however long they want to send the rebate, so they are making interest on your money until the send the rebate check and you actually cash it.
Pretty lucrative actually.
One for your pagefile, one for your save files, etc. Where performance is important but space is not.
I've been trying to get a small HDD for just my pagefile, with maximum performance, low cost and small size. The best I've found is the WDC Black 640GB SATA3 6GB/s (about £55). 640GB is TOO big for just a pagefile.
This Corsair Drive's looking like a good choice for some people...
Seagate Momentus 500GB is just as fast. I'll use SSD for sure when they make 512GB version for 200 EUR. Until then, not for sure.Ever thought of going the "more RAM" bandwagon instead of buying dedicated HDD/SSD's for slow and useless pagefile? You can have the fastest array of SSD drives in RAID and they'll never be as fast as the slowest DDR1 RAM from 5 years ago. Remember that.
me want 32Gb for 80€>....
Just a few of these (not in RAID) would be perfect in certain situations (like mine - budget!), where AFAIK enough RAM to avoid a pagefile is not an option.
But, I'm not an expert. Correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't know you could avoid using a pagefile when editng HD videos (whether or not using RAID)?
Like I said, only perfect in CERTAIN stuations, not for everyone :)
This way you'd have:
a) loads of working memory
b) still quick access to HDD's
c) 4TB of working soace to store massive HD videos
d) all this to be relatively affordable compared to just buying super expensive SSD
I can't deny it, it's a step into the right direction, but it's still just not the time for mass usage of SSD's. When we'll be able to buy 256GB SSD for around 200 EUR, i think it will become more logical. They will still be expensive but would make more sense. The space is semi acceptable, the price is acceptable as well and the speed would be over 200MB/s for sure. At the moment, we are like half way there really. If everything goes well, one more year. I wanted to say 6 months, but if the current trend continues, 1 year makes more sense.
Can you edit HD videos without a pagefile? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can't? And 12 - 16 GB of RAM for me is too expensive anyway!
I know RAID is best, but I don't need it, even with HD video editing. I've got everything running perfect without it.
I only work on 2 videos at a time max (only a hobby) so don't need 4TB for anything. 3 of these would be cheaper than 12GB of DDR3 (what I'm running, in sig).
Don't want to hijack this thread, just stating reasons why these SSD's would be great for some people.
As for prices - RAM is ~500.000 times faster than SSD, so you can do the maths to figure how much SSD should be lower in price to compete :nutkick:
At the end, no matter what you buy for a pagefile it is a total waste. Always.
That goes for most small businesses and SOHO too were the laptop is the SECOND machine; with a desktop or NAS holding key data.
IMO it's fine for netbooks too. They are supposed to be "cheap" and also semi-disposable. Keep your important data on a NAS or keystick.