OCZ is working on budget SSD and announces new Vector

OCZ has announced its latest solid state drive for the higher segment during Computex. The Vector 180 is production-ready, but won’t hit stores until around the end of July. A budget SSD should follow in September, which will be made with tlc flash.

The Vector 180 is OCZ’s latest drive and the SSD will use a proprietary Barefoot controller. That Barefoot 3 M00 controller will power Toshiba’s last-generation mlc-nand. The process is still 19nm, but the new A19 chips are smaller than the current 19nm generation, so that more chips can fit on the PCB. In addition to the first 120GB, 240GB and 480GB copies, a 980GB version will also be available. The SSDs have capacitors on board against data loss in the event of a power failure and will initially be about ten percent more expensive than the Vector 150 series.

In addition to the new Vector, OCZ is also working on a budget drive. This one will not be performance oriented like the Vector 180, but a low price. The still unnamed series of SSDs will use tlc-nand, which is cheaper and is used in Samsung’s EVO drives, among other things. The drive should therefore compete with the EVOs and Crucials M500 and MX100 drives. Prices are not yet known, but the TLC drives should be available around September.