14 DAY TRIAL // AVADirect, a well renowned custom computer boutique builder, just announced that it has started selling the recently released Intel 710 series of enterprise SSDs, which are now also available as storage upgrades in a large series of systems built by the company.
Intel announced the launch of the 710 series SSDs during the recently concluded IDF 2011 conference and is destined to take the place of the current X25-E series drives, which has been introduced in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Intel's new solid state drives are based on the same 3Gbps controller as the one found in the consumer oriented 320 SSDs, paired with a newer firmware optimized for enterprise storage and with a special version of IMFT's 25nm MLC NAND.
This is called High Endurance Technology, HET for short, which basically means that we are dealing with a custom MLC memory that sacrifices long term data retention for write cycles.
Three models of Intel Lyndonville solid state drives are available at this moment offering storage capacities of 100GB, 200GB and 300GB.
These will be able to achieve sequential read/write speeds of 270MB/s and 210MB/s respectively, while their 4K random read/write performance is rated at 36K/2.4K IOPS (input/output operations per second).
Just like the consumer version, Intel's latest enterprise SSDs feature a power safe write-cache, redundant NAND arrays to protect against NAND failures and AES-128 encryption, but also get a temperature sensor and an in-rush current limiter.
AVADirect is offering the Intel 710 series enterprise solid state drives both as standalone parts as well as an upgrade for its custom built systems, including gaming desktops, workstations and notebook computers.
Upgrade prices vary depending on the standard storage options available. When bough standalone however, the 100GB, 200GB and 300GB models are priced at $702.25, $1398.18 and $2093.76, respectively (519 ,1034 ,1548 Euro).