Even if they are slower than most other SSDs, they sell for less

Feb 21, 2012 10:17 GMT  ·  By

Mach Xtreme decided to launch a series of solid state drives that even people with moderate financial resources could buy, even if it did not actually mention the prices.

The company has created the MX-STARTER PREMIUM Series, composed of three members with capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, respectively.

All of them boast the 2.5-inch form factor and possess data preservation and protection features, like an ECC engine (error correcting code).

On that note, Mach Xtreme implemented StaticDataRefresh technology support and data shaping as well (better data reliability).

The performance is where the difference is, compared to most of the SSDs that made the news so far.

Other, high-end products work at over 500 MB/s, both when reading and writing, thanks to powerful controller chips, most notably from SandForce.

Compared to them, the MX-STARTER PREMIUM are sluggish: reading is accomplished at 150 MB/s, while data is written at 80 MB/s tops.

This is still faster than most regular hard drive units, though, so replacing the boot drive of a PC with either of these SSDs is still a good idea.

Not only will the operating system (OS) boot faster, but every application will load more quickly and run more smoothly, as long as the files are stored on the SSD and not an auxiliary HDD.

The spec sheet goes on with 64 MB of DDR2 SDRAM cache memory and a max I/O per second of 10,000 IOPS.

Finally, the series relies on MLC (multi-level call) NAND Flash memory chips and consumes little energy: 0.3W of power in standby and 2.3W when active. The MTBF (mean time between failures) is of 1.5 million hours.

Mach Xtreme sells, or will sell, the three drives with 1-year warranty and after-sales service. Prices will become known whenever online stores get around to listing their offers.