OCZ introduces budget SSD ARC 100 series

OCZ has released its latest series of solid state drives. The Arc 100 series has to compete with budget series such as the MX100 from Crucial. The drives are available in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities.

Since OCZ became part of Toshiba and the company took over controller manufacturer Indilinx, OCZ has all the components for the production of SSDs in-house. Toshiba’s A19 chips are used for the nand chips: these are 19nm mlc flash chips. These are controlled by the Barefoot 3 M10 controller, the same one used in the Vertex 450 and 460, among others. However, the controller is clocked a bit lower than in the Vertex 460 and is combined with 256MB cache. The storage memory is made up of 8GB chips, making the 120GB version with 16 chips somewhat slower than the other capacities with 32 and 64 chips of 8GB respectively.

The difference in performance is quite small, according to the manufacturer, with a sequential write speed of 395MB/s against 430MB/s for the 240GB version and 450MB/s for the 480GB version. The read speeds are respectively 475MB/s, 480MB/s and 490MB/s. Many other manufacturers have SSDs in their range with stated speeds of well above 500MB/s, but the Arc 100 is not intended to compete on speed. The drives have to compete directly with budget drives such as the MX100 and OCZ has therefore chosen a very aggressive pricing. The three capacities of the Arc 100 drives have received suggested retail prices of 71, 116 and 230 euros.

That is even more expensive than the retail prices of the MX100, for example, but the actual retail prices of the OCZ drives will undoubtedly fall below the recommended retail price. To quickly remedy any defects, Arc 100 drives come with a three-year Shieldplus warranty. To exchange a defective drive, all you need to do is provide a serial number and a new drive will be sent, along with a shipping label to return the old one.