OCZ Z-Drive arrives

Robert Hallock 16 Sep, 2009 at 12:54pm ET Article published in Tech

It costs as much as your entire desktop.

After a redesign and six months on the burner, OCZ has finally released its PCI Express SSD solution.

Dubbed the “Z-Drive,” the new SSD product comes in two flavors: The e84 series with SLC NAND cells, and the p84 series with MLC NAND cells. Both variants are mated to 256MB of onboard cache and plug into a PCI Express x8 slot.

On the SLC front, the e84 drives offer the choice between 256GB or 512GB, with sustained performance at or around 800MBps read and 750MBps write, respectively. SLC is slightly quicker on the draw, and that’s reflected in the 16k IOPS to the 10k offered by the MLC cells in the e84.

The MLC-based e84, meanwhile, comes in 256GB-1TB flavors and tops out at 870/760MBps for the 1TB model. As we mentioned above, the p84s offer a “mere” 10k IOPS to the e84′s 16k.

The drives are available on the US side of the pond from Amazon and other retailers for $1560-$3370 USD.

Comments

1. 
   16 Sep 2009 ~ 1:01pm Cliff_Forster Icrontic needs a review sample. I must see a real time performance test.
2. 
   16 Sep 2009 ~ 9:15pm Zuntar Cost is just stupid high. I get some of the why in the expense, but seriously.
3. 
   17 Sep 2009 ~ 10:43am Tim SSDs are getting better, but they need mass production and sales to drop the cost to something less than insanely high numbers. This is worse than when the latest version of a graphics card comes out!
4. 
   18 Sep 2009 ~ 4:07pm Preacher Wow. It is fast, but NOT $1500 fast.