Intel Cherryville Retail 240 GB at Newegg for $359

[cbuchach]

I was just checking prices for Intel SSDs and noticed that the retail 240 GB Intel Cherryville drive was listed at $359? I checked a few days ago and it was well over $500. Did the price on these just go down or is this some sort of pricing error?

 

[NitroTurtle]

Definitely seems to be trending downward: http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16820167086

 

[BenJeremy]

It's just trending down to where the all the other Sandforce-based SSDs are.

Intel has a bit of a stinker here... sure, they tested the hell out of it but they won't say there won't be BSoDs with their Sandforce-based SSDs.

I've been shopping for a couple of weeks for a good 250GB-class SSD to buy a pair of and build into a RAID-0 boot drive. I ended up getting Samsung 830s (typing this from the machine I built today). In the end, it was more about reliability, and Intel simply can't deliver that with this latest generation.

It didn't hurt that I got Batman Arkham City and Ghost 15 with each drive...

At least this mess with Sandforce controllers will finally bring the price of SSDs down to reasonable levels in the next 6 months. They'll continue to push out hardware that will crash until they can figure out what is going on and replace the controller (next-gen). In a way, it's sad... the consumers get potentially screwed here... but as I said, it forces manufacturers to continue cutting prices to unload them on those willing to take a chance.

The thing is, I am replacing a system built on a 2x RAID-0 array of OCZ 60GB Agility drives, and they ran very well, without issue, for over 2 years. The only reason I've built a new system is because the motherboard blew a cap and no longer provides stable CPU voltage (resulting in random shutdowns). Those first sandforce controllers were beasts... fast and reliable. I'm not sure a simple firmware update will fix the 2200 series, from what I've heard.

 

[exdeath]

I now have 6 Sandforce SSDs (4 x Patriot Wildfire 240GB, 1 x Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB, and 1 x OCZ Agility 3 120GB) and have not had problems with any of them.

Except for that I only picked up the Agility 3 because it was $97 on a Shell Shocker and the only thing I had to throw it in was a old nForce4 system that only runs SSDs in SATA I mode for some reason.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The thing is, I am replacing a system built on a 2x RAID-0 array of OCZ 60GB Agility drives, and they ran very well, without issue, for over 2 years. The only reason I've built a new system is because the motherboard blew a cap and no longer provides stable CPU voltage (resulting in random shutdowns). Those first sandforce controllers were beasts... fast and reliable. I'm not sure a simple firmware update will fix the 2200 series, from what I've heard.

The OCZ Agility drives are Indilinx Barefoot controllers, not Sandforce.

And when I put two of them in RAID-0, the lack of TRIM caused them to degrade slower than a single drive after a week of usage.

Did you ever bench your array before and after? And a single drive? I think you might be surprised how badly your array degraded.

 

[BenJeremy]

The OCZ Agility drives are Indilinx Barefoot controllers, not Sandforce.

And when I put two of them in RAID-0, the lack of TRIM caused them to degrade slower than a single drive after a week of usage.

Did you ever bench your array before and after? And a single drive? I think you might be surprised how badly your array degraded.

Ah, for whatever reason, I was thinking Sandforce. At any rate, I only had 120GB... I pretty much filled it up early and left 10GB free, putting other apps and stuff on my data drive and only installing new drivers and such to the array.

I would leave it in the BIOS setup to do Garbage Collection, since the RAID didn't support TRIM back in those days. Intel's RST is supposed to support TRIM in 11.5 - unfortunately, it seems only 10.8 is available today to the general public right now.

I just didn't want people to think I'm just anti-Sandforce... the performance is great, and if they work for you, fantastic. I'm just shocked at the numerous reports though, and wasn't going to risk it to build my "main machine" - I telecommute as a software developer, so having an unreliable system is no good at all. As a former embedded systems engineer, I also sympathize with the Sandforce engineers in finding a bug that is sporadic and not recreatable. Too many people are getting lucky in the wrong fashion with these drives, and that is what the price is reflecting - that you are gambling to get good performance AND reliability. I simply wasn't going to gamble on that.

 

[Rvenger]

Agility 3 has the Sandforce 2200 controller. Not Indilinx. Older Agilitys may of had Indilinx.

 

[Motorheader]

I've seen it as low as $343 shipped at buy.com.

Even though intel name, going to take the "wait and see" approach and continue to peruse the intel forums.

 

[Obsoleet]

This is an equal price with the regular Samsung 830 256GB price, with Samsung having the same speed and a better reliability record this is not a hot deal.

 

[bradley]

This is an equal price with the regular Samsung 830 256GB price, with Samsung having the same speed and a better reliability record this is not a hot deal.

I can only think of one rebuttal: the Intel drive has a 5-yr warranty, and will likely have better resale value. Otherwise, yeah, the Samsung is the far better deal at the same price. Though still great to see so much competition in the SSD space.

 

[BenJeremy]

I can only think of one rebuttal: the Intel drive has a 5-yr warranty, and will likely have better resale value. Otherwise, yeah, the Samsung is the far better deal at the same price. Though still great to see so much competition in the SSD space.

True... though I did get Batman Arkham City (download code) and Norton Ghost 15 (disc) with my Samsungs.