14 DAY TRIAL // Even though Intel has mostly focused on the research and development of chipsets and central processing units, it seems the company is ready to expand its business by making a foray into the storage market. Intel has been working on its own line of solid state drives, a line, which seems to have just increased by one member now that the X25-V Value SATA SSD has been brought out. Aimed to complement its X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD family, the new 40GB SSD is designed for use in netbooks and dual-drive/boot drive desktop set-ups.
Solid state drives can perform remarkably well as boot drives, because they have read and write speeds significantly higher than those of hard drives, with the X25-V being about four times faster than 7,200RPM HDDs. The recommended configuration is one that uses the new SSD as a platform for the OS while a hard drive plays the part of a container for all the other data that users may have. As for actual specs, the 2.5-inch SSD is built with MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, operates on the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and has read and write speeds of 170MB/s and 35MB/s, respectively. The device also has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours and supports the Windows 7 TRIM command.
"Adding the Intel X25-V to our existing family of high-performance SSDs gives our resellers a full range of high-performing, quality SSDs for notebook upgrades, dual-drive desktop set ups or embedded applications," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing for the Intel NAND Solutions Group. "SSD adoption continues to be one of the more exciting trends in personal computing, and this entry-level product enables users to enjoy the productivity and performance benefits of Intel SSDs at a new price point."
The 40GB X25-V Value SSD has price tags of $130 in the US and 100 Euro in Europe and is accompanied by a three-year warranty.
"The Intel solid-state drive is our top-selling SSD," stated Stephen Yang, product manager for solid-state drives at e-tailer Newegg.com. "This new value entry from Intel means more customers will have the chance to experience the benefits of SSDs, not just in notebooks or high-end PCs, but in mainstream desktops as a boot drive. This is the right price point to help convert more users to SSD computing."