Kingston 128GB SSD - $135 AR @ Buy.com

[Zap]

Yeah, saw it on Newegg and was gonna get it (as a spare, honest!) but... a half hour later when I went to add to cart, price had gone up.

 

[Vidman]

Got mine, installed it, used the tweaktown dot com SSD tweaks
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3116/tweaktown_s_solid_state_drive_optimization_guide/index5.html
and am getting atto numbers that exceed what the mfgr posts in their specs. I'm very happy with it especially since fat wallet came thru with the $8 off to go with the $10 off buy dot com coupon and $75 rebate. final price = $114 and some change. SWEET !!

 

[superHARD]

If you have a microcenter nearby they have their 128GB SSD for $128+tax for pickup. I think it uses a different firmware than their sandforce 64GB drives.

Can I get a link? Can't find on their site.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

Can I get a link? Can't find on their site.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0331849

 

[M1A]

OOS

 

[qliveur]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

 

[Engineer]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

Remember 4% Fatcash (or other cash back) to sweeten the deal. If you are lucky enough to get the $10 off coupon (posted earlier), could potentially get this for under $110. Pretty good deal.

(I'm still crying over missing the Mushkin 256GB for $200 shipped a day or two ago... :crying like a baby emoticon: )

 

[qliveur]

That wasn't posted here, was it?!

 

[Engineer]

That wasn't posted here, was it?!

No. I missed it by about 5 minutes over on the Hot Deals forums at [H]ardforums. The only saving grace is that Indilinx drives seems to have issues still (see the OCZ forums for Indilinx based drives) so it may not have been all bad. Heck of a price though...straight from Mushkin's online store.

Oh, and that was a straight up price with free shipping. No rebates to deal with.

 

[Eyeless Blond]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

What's the power consumption on this drive? I kinda want to put this in my netbook, to make it less dangerous for use while on the road (jarring movement + spinning HD = madness), but I've read elsewhere that these drives used to suck up more power than hard drives. Is that still true?

 

[qliveur]

^Huh?

My guess is that it's fine for a netbook. Surely it draws less power than a physical drive. Not to mention that it's dirt cheap for an SSD.

 

[Engineer]

^Huh?

My guess is that it's fine for a netbook. Surely it draws less power than a physical drive. Not to mention that it's dirt cheap for an SSD.

Actually, from what I've read, it actually draws more power than some regular hdd's.

 

[Zap]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

5% cashback through Shop Discover. Hmmm...

 

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, it was from an old article; things seem to have changed since then.

Still looking for power consumption results for this specific drive, though; I have heard rumours that it is more than others.

 

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, looks like Anand actually reviewed this drive... sort of. That's the newer version, with updated firmware; performance should be improved, but power consumption probably won't.

Excerpts (Emphasis mine):

"We reported drive only power consumption in three scenarios: idle, during sequential writes and during high queue depth 4KB random writes. At idle the V+100 does incredibly well, but under load it is one of the most power hungry SSDs we've tested. As bad as that sounds we're still talking about half of the power usage of a 600GB VelociRaptor, but in a notebook don't expect to save any power under load - only at idle."

"And there's one phrase in Kingston's press release that sums up why Apple chose this controller for its MacBook Air: "always-on garbage collection".
[...]
The benefit of this is you get peak performance out of the drive regardless of how much you use it, which is perfect for an OS without TRIM support - ahem, OS X. Now you can see why Apple chose this controller.

There is a downside however: write amplification. For every 4KB we randomly write to a location on the drive, the actual amount of data written is much, much greater. It's the cost of constantly cleaning/reorganizing the drive for performance. While I haven't had any 50nm, 4xnm or 3xnm NAND physically wear out on me, the V+100 is the most likely to blow through those program/erase cycles. Keep in mind that at the 3xnm node you no longer have 10,000 cycles, but closer to 5,000 before your NAND dies. On nearly all drives we've tested this isn't an issue, but I would be concerned about the V+100. Concerned enough to recommend running it with 20% free space at all times (at least). The more free space you have, the better job the controller can do wear leveling."

In other words, for a laptop user:
1) You'll probably see an increase in battery life, but only if you don't stress the HD/SSD with I/O intensive tasks.
2) Keep as much free space on the drive as possible, and do as little writing/overwriting as you can.

The first concern isn't a big deal, but the second... yeah, that's a worry.

 

[Jmegapac]

Well, looks like Anand actually reviewed this drive... sort of. That's the newer version, with updated firmware; performance should be improved, but power consumption probably won't.

Does the new V+ 100 series have the same issues as the older V 100 series? I was looking at the model number, and the one on buy.com is SNV425-S2BD, while the one reviewed by Anandtech is SVP180S2.

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

what about the life span of ssds? i hear that they arent that durable. I have had a 40 gb mechanical HD for 10 years and it still works. If i were to spend an exorbitant amount for these performance drives i would like it to have similar potential longevity while usually under heavy use or i would just wait untill they become so or become much cheaper

 

[Zebo]

what about the life span of ssds? i hear that they arent that durable. I have had a 40 gb mechanical HD for 10 years and it still works. If i were to spend an exorbitant amount for these performance drives i would like it to have similar potential longevity while usually under heavy use or i would just wait untill they become so or become much cheaper

Myth & FUD not only that you got a drive when they were made better IMO - GL getting 10 yrs today off a non enterprise mechanical drive. I've had so many fail about 6 in last 10 years.

Edit: deal is sold out

 

[Zebo]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

Sold out as Well

Hellofadeal

 

[Eyeless Blond]

Dude, I must have gotten like the last one; I ordered less than three hours ago! I've been waffling over this all weekend; I'm glad I managed to get it.

 

[arkcom]

Bare drive is now $124.95 AR FS.

It's back.

$20 cashback through ebillme
$8 cashback through fatwallet

$97 shipped after rebate.

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

even better too bad they charge tax to NY, do you think a deal like this or better will exist like in 2 months time? cant use it till i assemble my pc then.