The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2009 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Kingston Delivers the First Good Sub-$100 SSD (after Rebate)
I’m not sure what sort of sweetheart deal Intel inked with Kingston, but it’s paying off. Other than Hitachi, Kingston is the only company allowed to use Intel’s controllers in their SSDs. And today, it gets even more interesting. The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is a 34nm X25-M G2 with only 40GB of MLC NAND Flash on it.
You read that right, Kingston gets to make a 40GB X25-M G2 under its own brand.
Kingston wants this to be specifically used for your OS and applications, where the speedy launch performance of an SSD is most useful. You’d keep your games, data and other large files on a separate hard drive. Why 40GB? To keep costs down of course. The Kingston drive goes on sale starting November 9th. The MSRP of the drive will be $115 ($130 with a 2.5” to 3.5” drive adapter), Kingston is offering a rebate through Newegg that will apparently drop the price to $84.99.
Kingston’s goal was to hit the sub-$100 price point and they did it, sort of. I’m not a big fan of mail-in rebates, and it remains to be seen if Newegg can keep the drive in stock at those prices, but the intention is good.
Only 5 devices means the Intel controller works in 5-channel mode, instead of 10-channel like the X25-M G2
While the drive uses an Intel 34nm X25-M controller and 34nm flash, it doesn’t have the latest firmware from Intel, which means it doesn’t support TRIM. Since it’s technically not an Intel drive you can’t update it using the firmware I linked to earlier. The drive will most likely eventually get TRIM support, just not now. Unfortunately it doesn't even work with Intel's SSD Toolbox, again, because it's technically a Kingston drive.
With only half the NAND flash of an 80GB X25-M (only five NAND devices on board), its sequential write speeds are cut in half - Kingston rates the drive at 40MB/s. Random performance suffers a bit, but sequential write performance sees the biggest hit.
If you've already got a large hard drive for games/data and don't have that many apps installed, the Kingston 40GB SSD is a perfect way to move to an SSD affordably.
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chizow - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Ya they had them for about 4 hours in an AM Shell Shocker for $240, which is their MSRP. They also had them for that price for about 8 hours at launch and since then its been gouged as high as $400 for a G2. All the other retailers that are selling for around the $240 MSRP are drop-shipping directly from Intel so they typically don't have stock in-hand and are estimating anywhere from 2-8 weeks for delivery....crimson117 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Amazon has decent prices on these, but shipping time ranges from 2 weeks to 8 weeks.80GB G2 for $244: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-Solid-Retai...">http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-...-Retail-...
160GB G2 for $467: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-160GB-Mainstream-Retai...">http://www.amazon.com/Intel-160GB-Mains...-Retail-...
Xentropy - Sunday, November 1, 2009 - link
5 days later now, and Amazon's up to $599 for the 160GB, though they are in stock instead of shipping in several weeks.Exar3342 - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I bought a G2 80GB yesturday via Amazon from a 3rd party company; was $244.00 (OEM) version. Good times.strikeback03 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
With your recommendation to keep at least 20% of a drive as free space, should it be within a partition, or just leave some unpartitioned space on the drive?Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Either way works, just don't put data on it :)Take care,
Anand
Doormat - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Anand: great review.The 40GB 5-channel version has read speeds of 170MB/s. Does this mean that if the 10-channel G2 weren't inhibited by SATA 3Gb/s, it would probably get 340MB/s? Or is there diminishing returns on adding more channels.
Also, any price cuts on the horizon or just stagnating until drives start shipping with SATA 6Gb/s support.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
It's possible. All of the high end SSDs are bound by the interface for sequential read speed. I'm not sure how fast the controller could go if it weren't bound by the interface, but over 300MB/s sounds quite likely.Flash prices haven't really gone down lately from what I'm hearing. I don't know of any price cuts on the horizon unfortunately. Next year.
Take care,
Anand
semo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
i don't think you will see any price cuts since intel can't make enough G2s.I tend to agree with others regarding SATA 3. If intel is not rushing to enable SATA 3 on their ICH anytime soon, why would they be coming out with SATA 3 devices?
ekerazha - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Anand,it's strange to see your
"Is Intel still my overall recommendation? Of course. The random write performance is simply too good to give up and it's only in very specific cases that the 80MB/s sequential write speed hurts you."
of the last review, is now a
"The write speed improvement that the Intel firmware brings to 160GB drives is nice but ultimately highlights a bigger issue: Intel's write speed is unacceptable in today's market."