For continuity/brevity* I'm starting this thread for 2011 pricing. If you want to see the origin of the thread please see the first posts from 2010 SSD pricing thread

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. All prices are before rebates (rebates change too often and some people never receive payment).

*I'm also making a jump in performance from the 2010 criteria. In the old thread I considered drives that could do >10MB/s in random writes at low queue with small write sizes. In 2011 I'm bumping that up to about the level of the X25-V 40GB (I'll include new or old drives that are above this level and may fudge the limit down slightly if a new drive comes in close to that level). For now lets say the cut off is >30MB/s in random writes at low queue depth and small write sizes. What drives get excluded from the 2011 list that made the cut in 2010 or got noticeable press in 2010?

The cut drives:
Kingston SSDNow V/V+/V100/V+100 all of which score in the 5MB/s to 20MB/s range.
WD SilconEdge Blue which finally in late 2010 became affordable just as new drives make it a non contender.
Indilinx Barefoot drives like the Corsair Nova, Crucial M225, OCZ Vertex, etcetera which were sometimes a star in the 2010 price thread.

Samsung 470 drives joined the list late in 2010 and look to be Tier 1 or Tier 2 quality. They are easy to track and will definitely be on the 2011 list. It'll be interesting to see if they hold up or slide down as faster drives are released.

OCZ Vertex Plus is a late 2010 newcomer as well. It's based on the Indilinx Maritini (a refresh/new revision of Indilinx Barefoot) It'll start 2011 in Tier 2 and slide into Tier 3 as faster drives are released.

Sandforce drives with a 1200 or 1500 controller have been problematic. They may show on the 2011 list but only in the 2nd or 3rd tier. See the reliability thread or the 2010 pricing thread or google sandforce ssd failed if you need more on that. I haven't decided which sandforce drives I'll cover, I'm hesitant to waste the effort. With any luck the Sandforce 2000 controller will make an appearance in 2011 and will be less troublesome or maybe newer revisions of sandforce 1200 based drives will step up and improve.

Right now the Tiers by controller are

Tier 1
Intel Gen 2
Samsung 470
Marvell/Crucial C300

Tier 2
Sandforce 1x00
Indilinx Martini

Tier 3 is empty (mostly because I'm not listing controllers that don't meet the 2011 cutoff)


I expect Intel Gen 3, Marvel/Crucial C400, and Sandforce 2x00 controllers at the least in 2011 to shake things up.

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. I especially would like to see someone take up the torch and do monthly pricing in Euros if you think you live in an area where pricing would be reasonable/stable and availability isn't an issue.

C400 was announced at CES. Sampling now. Here's the product page to compare vs the C300.

http://cache.micron.com/Protected/expir ... _brief.pdf

C400V = 64GB there are several part numbers but I'll be tracking the 2.5" version 7mm or 9mm whichever is cheaper
MTFDDAC064MAM-1J1 or MTFDDAK064MAM-1J1

C400 again several part numbers but I'll be tracking prices on the 2.5" 7mm or 9mm whichever is cheaper:
128GB MTFDDAC128MAM-1J1 or MTFDDAK128MAM-1J1
256GB MTFDDAC256MAM-1K1 or MTFDDAK256MAM-1K1
512GB MTFDDAC512MAM-1K1 or MTFDDAK512MAM-1K1

fwiw J = 32Gb, MLC, x8, 3.3V, (25nm) and K = 64Gb, MLC, x8, 3.3V, (25nm) flash chips. The 64GB and 128GB drives use the same flash, then the 256 and 512 GB drives use the higher capacity flash.

still no prices on Google Products search though.

comment about the drive selection criteria - moved to another thread

HFAT I'll not be discussing this with you in this thread so if you feel the need to talk performance in depth please take it to another thread. I'll tell you what I'll create one. Lets discuss this in viewtopic.php?f=7&t=61126

This thread is primarily where I'll be posting pricing data. I'll reference performance and reliability in passing but I plan to keep all such discussions on topic in a thread dedicated to that topic.

In 2010 the Marvell controller in the C300 was only in the C300, now the same or very similar controller will also be in the C400 and others:

C300
C400 aka M4 (C400 is retail and M4 is OEM)
Corsair Performance 3
Plextor PX-M2
Intel 510

I'll probably just edit this post every time I find a new one until I see pricing settle and see which are worth tracking on a monthly basis.

Intel 510 part numbers
120GB = SSDSC2MH120A2K5
250GB = SSDSC2MH250A2??


Plextor PX-M2 part numbers
64GB = PX-64M1S
128GB = PX-128M1S


Corsair Performance 3 part numbers
64GB = CSSD-P364GB2-BRKT
128GB = CSSD-P3128GB2-BRKT
256GB = CSSD-P3256GB2-BRKT

480MB/s read, 320MB/s write for 256GB model
410MB/s read, 210MB/s write for 128GB model
365MB/s read, 110MB/s write for 64GB model

C400 Performance to compare vs above
415MB/s read, 260MB/s write for 512GB model
415MB/s read, 260MB/s write for 256GB model
415MB/s read, 175MB/s write for 128GB model
415MB/s read, 95MB/s write for 64GB model


edit: added Intel to the Marvell controller crowd. Who would of thought?

Indilinx Martini drives:

We know the Vertex Plus has it

SuperTalent has one now called the UltraDrive MT

FTM60MT25H = 60GB
FTM12MT25H = 120GB
FTM24MT25H = 240GB

I'm not sure if it'll be cheap enough to consider vs the wave of competition coming this spring but I'm putting the model numbers here so I can check pricing later.

Do you want to fix the title of this thread? It is called a "SSD pricing" but there were 7 (now 8 ) posts with nothing about pricing. Very discouraging for anyone who believed this thread might help in a buying decision...

Prices are accurate if present but I'm not sure were to put unreleased drives on the Tiers and I'm not sure how that will affect the relative standing of the currently available drives.

Other threads on SPCR and reviews on other sites have shown that Sandforce drives are slow to act on TRIM commands and Samsung 470 is even slower to act on TRIM than Sandforce.

Sandforce drives have been prone to failures (see the reliability thread mentioned in the first post in this thread) but the Samsung 470 has a spotless record so far (though there are less than 60 reviews on newegg to this point).

Intel Gen 3 drives will likely be the standard to beat on reliability, Intel G2 drives are still the most reliable and XP friendly but aren't the cheapest option.

Crucial C400 and the Corsair, Plextor, etc equivalents will be the 6Gb/s champion but I'm guessing still won't be XP friendly


January 2011 price update



It's nice to see some downward price movement again. For those on Win7 the C300 64GB is a good value. For those with enough money the 120GB Intel is still a solid choice.

If you've got money to burn and want a 256GB or larger drive you should wait until the C400 and other new drives come out soon.

Heh, funny you should post that when you did. I had the window up with my first pricing post ready to submit when my dad showed up needing help fixing his truck.

As to the thread I started it for 2011 as a placeholder and was either waiting until the middle of the month or the pricing release of one of the new SSDs announced at CES 2011 whichever came first. Unfortunately I still haven't found a new drive for sale such that I can buy one so I've punted and did a price list as of today without getting prices for the C400 and friends.

If that was frustrating I apologize, but it's only been 11 days since my last price update in the 2010 thread. And that price list differs very little from today's price list (no more than $25 for any one drive). Not enough to shift a purchasing decision (other than if you use Win7, 6Gbs SATA, and were waffling between the 120GB Intel and 128GB C300), and you'd still need to figure out what it'd cost in your state.

Make no mistake Prices will shift more noticeably when new drives are released soon. I just don't know what week that will occur.

Price Change since Jan 4th 2011


Barring major price shifts or new product releases I only do one price post per month and the majority of the posts in the thread are about the effects of pricing or the drives that need to be added or removed from the list.

FWIW 16/115 posts in the 2010 thread had a price list (about 14% or about 1 in 8 posts). I spent a little more time at the beginning of Jan in the 2010 thread but that'll even out when I do the same come Jan 2012 and I spend time in the 2011 pricing thread.

The Corsair Performance 3s are now listed on Amazon (still showing out of stock, but pricing is there):
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Performan ... 750&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Performan ... 750&sr=8-2

$300 for 128GB and $170 for 64GB

So... around a 14% premium over the C300 at the moment.

Welcome to SPCR

I'm literally waiting for the next round of price drops. And hoping they won't drop the low capacity models any time in 2011 to create a artificial price floor. It'd be really nice to see 40/64GB drives hit price parity with 500GB hard drives well below $100.

If they stopped making them and 80GB/120GB drives became the new minimums it'd keep the price up. Good news is new performance increases will do that instead so maybe we will get to see the price drops I'm hoping for.

fwiw here are the specs for the new Intel drive to compare vs above

Intel 510 SSD
450MB/s read, 300MB/s write for 250GB model
450MB/s read, 300MB/s write for 120GB model

Will it be the classic Wendy's menu? For those of you that don't know the story I don't have a URL to point to but from memory it went something like this

Wendys had a 1/4 pound single, 1/2 double, and 3/4 triple and the triple didn't sell much at all so they took it off the menu. When they did the sales of the double dropped and sales of the single increased an equivalent amount. After several months of this they put the Triple back on the menu and it still didn't sell well but the sales of the double went back up.

The moral to the marketers was offer something way more than what is needed and it will make something else that may be more than is needed look normal. It's psychology but a person that might be fully satisfied by a 1/4 pound burger will ask for the middle choice even if the choices are 1/4, 1/2, 3/4.

So will Intel do the same and have

Intel 510 SSD series - for enthusiasts with lots of money (supporting 6Gb/s SATA)
Intel X-25M - for mainstream users (3Gb/s SATA)
Intel X-25V - for the low end (3Gb/s SATA)

Unfortunately tech isn't like hamburgers (it isn't nearly as cheap) and we have insatiable appetites for tech. I want the fastest highest capacity SSD even if I'm really going to buy the under $100 version.

Fudzilla on Intel -> Feb launch.

That's where I got my info before I started digging around the Intel website. Unfortunately the FUD rumor leaves more questions than it answers.

Note also fudzilla has 3 articles on that SSD line and you linked to the one with the least amount of comments.

Meh - I was just following a Tech Report link.

Well then where do these fit in?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Emcres ... 12089.html

It is sort of hard to talk price without talking performance, isn't it?

Are you joking? You literally linked to an article about the Intel 510 SSD series and asked me where it fits into a list that includes the Intel 510 SSD series.

Or are you referring to the less discussed G3 drives that haven't been released and we don't have solid specs for? I'm totally guessing as the G3 drives have been discussed several ways

1. G3 drives won't have 6Gb/s and will have lower read write speeds than other drives?
2. G3 drives would have higher capacities and people hope that means they'll be cheaper per GB?
3. G3 drives don't have any branding announced yet so they could be called X-25M and X-25V still with new SKUs?

HFAT and I had in depth discussions in two separate threads before he posted here so I suggested we keep that level of discussion elsewhere. He was polite enough to honor that request. But it is only my request. Within reason I will put up with posts that don't exactly fit my world view.

I think performance talk is welcomed in this thread as it relates to price and introduction of new products and should be kept on topic (how it relates to pricing).

In depth discussion of performance, reliability, installation, configuration anything that will fill up pages and pages should be in a separate thread discussing a specific issue so this thread isn't overwhelmed and taken off track.

It's perfectly fine to create a post in this thread specifically to link to a discussion in another thread. It's perfectly fine to express dissenting opinions and alternate lists of recommendations. This is a community and other opinions are encouraged.

Right now we are all waiting with baited breath for new SSDs to hit the streets and this thread isn't very focused on pricing. Unfortunately an on topic thread has to sit idle occasionally.

While there may be some pretenders, you appear to be the most knowledgeable poster on this board with respect to this subject. Perhaps while we wait, you would be kind enough to express you opinion on the question I pose in the 5th posting on this thread:
New Generation Intel 510 "Emcrest" SSD - 450 MB/sec Read
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=61377

http://www.storagereview.com/plextor_m2 ... w_shipping

Supposedly they are shipping but google searches for the part numbers show the 64GB at amazon (out of stock) at $139 and the 128GB doesn't even show up as out of stock.

There is a large uproar surrounding reduced performance of drives that have switched from 34nm flash to 25nm flash without changing the product name, model number, performance claims, etcetera. Be sure to google the drive name plus the term 25nm to see if that problem occurs with the drive you are considering.

You may also note the trend of drives from numerous manufacturers settling on the same price/GB. Notice all the $1.88 entries in the list below. If you find a drive significantly cheaper than that do your research and find out how much slower or less reliable it may be than the pack.

February 2011 SSD pricing update:

The list sorted by Gross Price is:

For what it's worth the Corsair Performance 3 drives are on Newegg and Amazon now and have apparently been there long enough to have some purchases and reviews. If you like playing on the cutting edge it is the fastest drive on the market, at least until Intel or Micron releases something faster. Too early to say how reliable it is though so as always Caveat Emptor.

How long after they become available will it take for you to have enough info to move them to your tier 2 category?

The short answer is "I don't know".

If they are good enough they'll be in the Tier 1 category. Right now they are in the unknown tier. You could call that tier the unproven, bleeding edge, newly listed. I'm sure if you thought about it you could come up with dozens or even hundreds of labels for that tier.

I won't move them until I see at least one high quality review. Not saying the review has to say the drive is high quality, I'm saying the review process has to be high quality. A proper review could drop them quite a bit or it could confirm they need to stay high on the list.

I also won't move them until they are available for sale in quantity and I have real world pricing information. If every reviewer on the planet had one last month but Newegg, Amazon, SuperBiiz, NextWarehouse, CostCentral, etcetera didn't even have a listing I'd have no price to put next to the drive no matter what tier it belongs in performance or reliability wise.

Reliability will move a drive up more than mediocre performance will pull it down. Bad reliabiltiy will pull a drive down more than high performance will move it up. If its too slow it just doesn't make my list. I may be wrong but I doubt new drives coming out this year will be too slow to make the list. I'm assuming the last drives that slow were released in 2010.

As to moving a new drive into a Tier I'll give it the benefit of the doubt if no reliability info is out and assume it is reliable and choose the Tier based on Performance, OS Support (Intel Toolbox is a big plus), and price/performance. Price/Performance is why Indilinx drives are down so low. They are fast enough to be used in an average PC just not as fast as other drives that have the same price per GB.

I may get it wrong on the first classification and if so I'll adjust the tiers as more information comes out.

since I'm here I think I'll do a $1.88 wrap up


That's your value choices right now. 3 different drive manufacturers, 3 capacities.

XP/Vista users would do well to stick with the Intel G2 120GB right now but they could pay a little extra for the Samsung 470 and still have a utitily to handle the OSes lack of TRIM support.

If you are adventurous and don't need much space you could do the C300 without TRIM support and do all the tweaking to reduce unnecessary writes (especially by putting all your application and temp directories on a storage drive). Worst case scenario a quarterly or semiannual secure erase would pep things up though you'd have to be the type that doesn't mind reinstalling your OS for the fun of it to really go that route.

I have no idea what the average Mac user would think. I'd be tempted to do the Intel and occasionally dual boot into windows to run the intel toolbox. Of course I'd use Time Machine to back up all the data before trying it. And I'd probably test it as a secondary drive so I could benchmark it and see if the toolbox make much of a difference when used in this fashion.

Assuming you are using a new enough version of linux to have TRIM support the C300 64GB seems like a value winner.

Win 7 goes the same way, C300 64GB is a cheap option in this crowd.

Of course one new drive from Intel or Micron/Crucial/Marvel (C400) and you could be in for a massive case of buyers remorse. If you are buying drives for work PCs you take the bird in hand and stay with Intel as the most reliable drive. If you are buying for home use or have extreme needs at work you probably should wait and see what comes next.

I have sort of made up my mind that I want the Intel 510 once a few people like you have given their thumbs up on it. I will want to see some longer term experiences with those new 22nm chips before I jump on that horse though. They can brag all they want about error correcting, I want something that is less likely to make errors that need correcting in the first place.

I was expecting a whole new design with an untested controller and 25nm flash but instead they took a Marvell (C300/C400 style controller) and paired it with 34nm flash that they've been using for years so. Sure go ahead and buy one. I have no fears about it at this point.

Of course if you are buying it for XP or Vista use this is the way to go as the Intel 510 will be supported by the Intel SSD Toolbox.

If however you are buying it for Win 7 use you should shop based on price between:

C300
C400 aka M4 (C400 is retail and M4 is OEM)
Corsair Performance 3
Plextor PX-M2
Intel 510

As they are all very very similar drives.

FWIW http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/sho ... d=!ORDERID! has the 120GB version at $313 (free shipping). They had 20 in stock this morning and are at 19 in stock as I write this. With another 350 coming into the TN warehouse in 6 days.



But it's only the 1st of March so prices are sure to fluctuate wildly as these things show up in larger quantities. If you buy now you are making a bet as to whether the price will go up, down, or stay the same in the coming weeks.

If the price is staying the same why not buy a C300 which is cheaper?

If the price is going to drop on the Intel 510 and Corsair Performance 3 why not wait?

There must be some differences? Does this mean not to expect traditional Intel SSD reliability from the 510?

Marvell/Micron/Crucial C300 has been just as reliable as Intel G2 SSDs. They use the same flash memory chips because Intel and Micron share ownership of the same factory that makes the flash chips. The controllers are different but that didn't affect reliability. It affected performance but C300 came out on top in that comparison on newer PCs with Windows 7.

Intel will make the 510 SSD with the same quality flash they made the Gen2 SSDs with. They'll just use a different controller. No change in reliability there.

The biggest differences in the listed drives:

1. The C400 will have twice the cache as the other drives and thus will have slightly better performance in some usage scenarios. (C400 uses 128MB cache in the 64GB version but 256MB cache in the higher capacities. C300 used 256MB cache even at 64GB. Intel 510, Corsair, Plextor all use 128MB cache)

2. The 510 will have the Intel Toolbox an thus will be better for Windows XP users. With any luck Vista users will move to another OS but if they stay they get the benefit as well.

Other than those two differences I would expect all the drives with the Marvell controller to be roughly the same in reliability and performance.

Each player will use a different firmware and possibly different flash so there will be measurable differences in benchmarks. But lets face it, every single one of these drives is faster than any drive I own, so I'm going to be impressed and I'm not going to quibble about a few percent here and there.

And if you want Intel G3 drives it looks like you just have to wait a couple of months (middle of April + time for prices to settle). And of course they'll be slower than the 510 with the name 320 giving you a clue.

I expect the 320 will perform better actually.


According to the numbers is Anandtech's latest piece, that's not the case. I don't think these numbers are the last word (there's the one you collected to consider as well for instance) but they shouldn't be dismissed unless you have better data (I doubt anyone has).
It's too early to assume any of these new drives will be as reliable as the C300 anyway.

The random write performance of the Intel 510 is lackluster. And without TRIM it's downright poor. Not a big deal in my opinion (its random read performance is more of a concern if you ask me) but you made a big deal of poor random write performance when another brand was affected...
The random performance of the 510 in general is at the X25-V level in spite of the huge capacity difference. It's a good bit worse than the C300's. It seems that are better choices even for XP and Vista. By your own performance criteria (which I won't argue as per your request) the 510 doesn't compete with the C300 and the Sandforce drives. At best (if the smaller models perform as well as the largest) it competes with the old Intels which have a proven track record while the reliability of the 510 is unproven.

If you care about reliability, I'd say "tier 1" is currently Intel G1/2 and possibly C300 (if you're willing to trade some reliability for perforamance and if you run Windows 7 or a free operating system). But if you're going to accept drives with questionable reliability, then it seems to me that Sandforce and C300 share "tier 1". Other drives like the most recent Samsung may also belong there (I don't know). Intel's TRIM tool for XP and Vista will not bring the 510's random performance to the level of the Sandforce drives which apparently perform OK without TRIM.

Well, we are way off topic here but there is much to discuss.

The numbers in question are at http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the- ... 0-review/3 for anyone trying to follow along. They are at odds with the numbers at viewtopic.php?p=527124#p527124

I'm not concerned about the difference in absolute scale i.e. 0.6% versus 2% for intel. As I am the relative scale as in Intel vs OCZ in the french data versus the US Newegg data. The thing is all my data is sorted by controller not brand so OCZ selling drives using Indilinx, Sandforce, JMicron/Toshiba, Samsung controllers confuses the issue. At least in the past Intel only used one controller, now we will have Intel drives with Marvell controllers to consider.

I don't mind discussing this I just prefer we have these in depth discussions in a thread dedicated to that topic. I see no reason to have an in depth discussion of reliability derailed by pricing or performance or installation or any other facet.

And so long as you pick a thread other than this one I'm fine and dandy with you challenging my criteria or explanations on any of the topics other than price. I'm even fine with you mentioning them in passing in this thread as you discuss price and I'm fine with you presenting alternate lists with prices as you see fit in this thread. Contribute with new content or tear apart my old content, just don't do both in this thread.

As to the Tiers, oofta. I'd never put Intel G1 in the same Tier as Intel G2 as the lack of trim/ssd toolbox support is too much of a negative for me.

As to the Intel 510, I don't know what to think about the random read performance. Is the firmware immature with a newer firmware in the wings that will fix the performance? What explains this drive performing worse than the C300 it is derived from? Did Intel make the mistake made by OCZ way back in the JMicron days and optimize for sequential speeds at the expense of worse random access performance?

Whatever the story is Tier 1 is totally up in the air. I'm still waiting for more drives to be released and enough time to pass to be sure how it all relates to say what Tier 1 is or should be. That's why I used the phrase "Tier 1 or 2? Buy at your own risk."