An interesting SSD (Solid-State Drive) Price War has begun in the last few weeks which will hugely benefit technology addicts like ourselves. SSD’s are super-fast hard drives for your PC and their prices have dropped dramactically in the last few weeks. The price war was sparked because of dropping Flash Memory prices and some of the bigger players in the SSD market such as OCZ & Crucial etc have decided to slug it out in an all-out price war in order to become the dominant supplier of these drives. The fact that SSD’s have now broken the €1 per gigabyte mark is fantastic news for consumers and now means that SSDs are almost half the price they were just a short time ago.
What is a Solid State Drive?
An SSD, or Solid-State Drive, is a small 2.5″ hard drive that uses NAND Flash Memory similar to the popular USB sticks that almost everyone uses today and they do not have any moving mechanical parts in them, unlike the traditional spinning-platter Hard Disk Drive (HDD) found in almost every PC today. The traditonal HDDs have a lot of disadvantages when compared to SSDs;
- HDDs have mechanical parts that are prone to wear and tear
- HDD performance varies depending on where the data is stored on the platter
- Dropping a HDD accidentally usually means instant death of the drive
SSDs are superior because they use NAND flash memory so that data access is almost instant no matter where the data is on the drive, this also means never having to defragment your SSD. And with no moving parts they don’t suffer from the wear and tear a normal drive would.
The only slight downside of the SSDs at the moment is their relative storage size when compared to the usual hard drives found in PC’s at the moment. SSDs normally come in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB sizes upward etc. This might sound like a backward step to some people (who download a lot of stuff) but for everyday normal PC users, having a super-fast SSD installed would give your PC a major boost in speed. Imagine Windows and programs loading in seconds, not minutes!
Top 5 SSDs For Your PC or Playstation
I’ve compiled a list of the Top 5 SSDs on Amazon that have, or are currently, dropping rapidly in price. It’ll be well worth checking out how these prices vary over the next few weeks.
#1 Crucial M4 64GB SSD – The Crucial M4 64GB is a great value SSD. Although it’s only 64GB, it is a fast drive with up to 415Mbps read speed. It would be an ideal intro to the world of SSD. The price has dropped to €80 at the moment but that may drop even further.
#2 Crucial M4 128GB SSD – Similar to the one above, except bigger, the Crucial M4 128GB is probably the best deal out there at the moment. Pricewise it’s less than €1/Gigabyte which is great value for this fast SSD. The price has dropped by half and is now approximately €115 at the moment for this M4 128GB but stock is selling fast and prices are likely to vary as they become more scarce.
#3 OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD – OCZ drives are reliable and fast SSD. At 120GB it is a decent size with fast performance to match. The price is also approximately €115 at the moment.
#4 Corsair Force 120GB SSD – This Corsair Force SSD offers sequential read speeds of up to 550 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 510 MB/s. The price is also approximately €115 for this drive and also likely to vary over the coming days and weeks.
#5 OCZ Vertex 4 128GB – This Vertex 4 is one of the latest ones released by OCZ, which is why it is more expensive than the other ones mentioned here, but it does offer up to 535 Mb/sec sequential read speeds. The price is approximately €150 which is a lot more expensive than the others, but it is one to watch over the next few weeks as it’s likely to drop down in price soon, fingers crossed.
Remember, if you do happen to order one of these SSDs from Amazon, remember to select the FREE Super Saver Delivery option at the checkout for the free shipping.
Prices have dropped again, by about 15% which is great. The Crucial M4 64GB is down to €63, the M4 128GB is now approx €100, nice.