OCZ Technology, one of the world's leading vendors of high-performance memory and Flash-based storage solutions, has just announced the launch of its new Z-Drive m84, a PCI-Express Solid State Drive that has been designed to deliver the performance of the company's high-end Z-Drive product to mainstream users. According to the San Jose, California-based company, the new drive has been designed as an affordable alternative to its Z-Drive line of high-performance SSDs for computer enthusiasts.

 

“The OCZ m84 Z-Drive is the newest addition to our line of PCI-E solid state drives and is designed to offer consumers a high performance yet aggressively priced solid state solution,” said Eugene Chang, vice president of product management at the OCZ Technology Group. “While the previously released p84 and e84 Z-Drives were intended specifically for enterprise applications, the m84 delivers much of the same performance but at a price point that is competitive with standard SSD drives. This is the first time that such a high performance PCI-E based SSD that is optimized for media editing, gaming, and workstation productivity, has been so within the reach of power users.”

 

The drive has been designed to be installed on the computer system's PCI-Express slot, boasting a PCI-Express x8 interface that has been coupled with 256MB of local cache, on-board RAID controller and a choice for a range of storage capacities, including 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. The drive can be used as a primary boot drive or a secondary drive for storage, offering a greater performance when compared to traditional drives or even some high-end SSDs.

 

According to OCZ, the new Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express SSD is capable of delivering a sustained write speed of up to 600MB/s, while for the 512GB and 1TB models read and write speeds can reach up to 870MB/s and 780MB/s, respectively. Unfortunately, the pricing and availability details are yet to be announced.