On another site someone made the usual comment about how they won't buy an SSD until they get to $1/GB. I've seen this statement with many numbers attached on many sites, by many various authors.
Today I decided to make my comparison and see how the $/GB numbers look for drives that are on my short list for comparing prices when I build PCs. Some of these drives I don't consider as honestly I am not willing to pay >$200 for a boot drive and I'm happy to get a high performing SSD with little regard to total capacity. I say this so you won't have to wast time wondering why I have a $600 drive on my short list. It's there just so I'll know when it becomes a cheap drive if it ever does.
I can buy a WD Blue 7200 RPM drive for $50 and still get rather good performance. I don't care about capacity as a 500GB drive or a 1TB drive I'm still going to format it to something like a 25-50GB partition and leave the rest unformatted. This is purely a consideration for performance and cost with no consideration for the noise difference.
If you want to talk about what controller is reliable please see the
SSD reliability thread. If you want to talk performance please find the thread relating to a specific drives release and/or start a new thread. I'll be happy to discuss specifics of each drive in the proper thread.
This thread is about pricing/availability and while I'm doing it with a US dollar US delivery attitude you are more than welcome to copy my code section grab your favorite text editor or spreadsheet program and whip up a comparison for the country/currency combo of your choice and add it to this thread. All of my price quotes and math based on $/GB are based on price after tax, shipping, and any other charge it might take to get it in my hands in the Southeast United States.
here is a quick quote of part of my reply I made on the other site:
Please if you can give me Intel 80GB G2 speed/reliability I'm willing to pay $2/GB. Right now that drive is still ~$2.70/GB In fact here is a run down of drives I'd like to buy at $2/GB and their current price rounded to make typing the list easier:
Code:
Corsair Nova 32GB - ~$3.1/GB
Intel X25-V 40GB - ~$3/GB
Corsair Nova 64GB - ~$2.7/GB
Crucial M225 64GB - ~$2.8/GB
Intel X25-M 80GB - ~$2.75/GB
Corsair Nova 128GB - ~$2.6/GB
Crucial M225 128GB - ~$2.7/GB
Crucial C300 128GB - ~$2.9/GB
Intel X25-M 160GB - ~$2.6/GB
Crucial C300 256GB - ~$2.6/GB
Try and find any of those drives anywhere near $2 x the GB on the label.
As to other drives not listed I don't care if a Toshiba/Jmicron or Samsung controller based drive gets down to $1/GB I won't use drives with a crappy controller.
I'm assuming the sandforce drives will always be as expensive or have a premium over the Intel/Marvell based drives and until they get price competitive with the indilinx barefoot based drives I'll ignore them. For the purpose of keeping this thread updated I'll probably add some sandforce based drives in soon I'm just not in the mood to do it today.
As you can see $1/GB is far from reality in 2010 and even $2/GB would be extremely cheap vs today's prices. The math/daydreaming below are just a thought exercise and not a prediction or me expressing what I think these drives are worth.
Just to give you an idea I think there should be a discount for the 40GB and below drives as they have lower write speeds. Indilinx drives at 64GB are the baseline, Intel 80GB deserves ever so slight a premium, 160GB Intel a slight premium, and Marvell/Sandforce drives deserve a slightly bigger premium. I'm not sure how to mathematically model the premium but playing with $2.5/GB delivered to my door I'm looking at prices like this for the group with the premiums I'm thinking:
Code:
Drive Proposed
price
Corsair Nova 32GB $ 78
Intel X25-V 40GB $ 98
Corsair Nova 64GB $160
Crucial M225 64GB $160
Intel X25-M 80GB $204
Corsair Nova 128GB $326
Crucial M225 128GB $326
Crucial C300 128GB $339
Intel X25-M 160GB $416
Crucial C300 256GB $678
with the thought that even fairly priced around the $2.5/GB line none of the drives over 80GB would even catch my attention.
at the $2/Gb pricing with my premiums thrown in we are looking at:
Code:
Drive Proposed
price
Corsair Nova 32GB $ 62
Intel X25-V 40GB $ 78
Corsair Nova 64GB $128
Crucial M225 64GB $128
Intel X25-M 80GB $164
Corsair Nova 128GB $262
Crucial M225 128GB $262
Crucial C300 128GB $275
Intel X25-M 160GB $336
Crucial C300 256GB $550
again nothing above 80GB gets my consideration but at this price level I stop buying hard drives for anything other than a file server.
at $1.5/GB and premiums we get:
Code:
Drive Proposed
price
Corsair Nova 32GB $ 46
Intel X25-V 40GB $ 58
Corsair Nova 64GB $ 96
Crucial M225 64GB $ 96
Intel X25-M 80GB $124
Corsair Nova 128GB $198
Crucial M225 128GB $198
Crucial C300 128GB $211
Intel X25-M 160GB $256
Crucial C300 256GB $422
where finally I can consider not only the indilinx 128GB drives but even the top end quality of the C300 128GB drive.
now lets look at the world of the $1/GB insanity some posters suggest
Code:
Drive Proposed
price
Corsair Nova 32GB $ 30
Intel X25-V 40GB $ 38
Corsair Nova 64GB $ 64
Crucial M225 64GB $ 64
Intel X25-M 80GB $ 84
Corsair Nova 128GB $135
Crucial M225 128GB $135
Crucial C300 128GB $147
Intel X25-M 160GB $176
Crucial C300 256GB $294
in this dream world I can buy 64GB or 80GB drives for slower PCs and 128GB C300 drives for fast PCs and servers with little regard to cost.
again I don't think these drive should be this cheap in 2010 I'm just doing some math and putting the numbers out there so you can laugh if you like or so we can track prices as they drop.
I'd like to flesh the list out at some point and update as prices change I think if this thread works out I'll start a new version at the start of 2011 to continue the theme but allow me to clean up the content and start fresh.
Feel free to make suggestions, comments, or ask questions regarding drives to add to the list or about the concept of the currency/GB criteria that drives this comparison.