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qamaro

macrumors member
Jun 30, 2007
56
0
It's essentially 4x512Gb SSDs... No way this is cheaper than $2,000, I'd say even closer to $3,000

Well hopefully the if Crucial follows through with their announcement to release their 980GB SSD (M500) at around $600, would force the price on the OWC one to come down. As 2 x M500 would be $1200 - $1400 verses an OWC 2TB est. at that 2K - 3K range. In fact you could get the OWC multi-mount bracket allows for 2 SSD's in the 3.5" bay.
 

Dwalls90

macrumors 603
Feb 5, 2009
5,426
4,391
Well hopefully the if Crucial follows through with their announcement to release their 980GB SSD (M500) at around $600, would force the price on the OWC one to come down. As 2 x M500 would be $1200 - $1400 verses an OWC 2TB est. at that 2K - 3K range. In fact you could get the OWC multi-mount bracket allows for 2 SSD's in the 3.5" bay.

To add to what I said before, OWC never really plays the price comparison game.

Look at their existing SSD line, they are as expensive if not more expensive than what's out there.
 

el-John-o

macrumors 68000
Nov 29, 2010
1,588
766
Missouri
If you're that one person in the world who uses a workstation with his head stuck in the enclosure instead of looking at the screen, yes

I've always wondered why there was no 3.5" SSD until now. More space would mean more room for organized circuits and heat dispersion. It seemed self-explanatory that higher-voltage high-performance and capacity SSDs would be possible in the traditional desktop drive format, yet no one made one until now!

I think the main reason is marketability. Even now SSDs don't outsell spinning drives, and a 2.5" equivalent size drive fits BOTH. So they need only engineer and maintain one product.

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To add to what I said before, OWC never really plays the price comparison game.

Look at their existing SSD line, they are as expensive if not more expensive than what's out there.

Absolutely. OWC's pricing is outrageous with seemingly no particular advantages or ways in which their products are unique and worth the price premium.

They are playing (or preying) on two things. One; unfamiliar apple users purchasing their products under an understanding that the competition is not compatible with their computers (thus they only need to compete with apples also outrageous upgrade prices). And two; components for which there is no competition, like rMBP SSD blades.
 

anthony11

macrumors 6502
May 18, 2007
332
8
Seattle, WA
Building large capacity rotating drives makes sense because a rather large fraction of the cost of the device is the storage infrastructure rather than the storage medium itself.
Flash storage turns that on its head. The vast majority of the cost is the storage medium itself.
... and then you go on to ask for expensive storage infrastructure:
What I want to see is a NAS that looks a bit like the inside of HAL-9000 - a large number of relatively small flash modules, each easily field-replaceable.
SAS/SATA expanders can do that sort of thing, but the chassis/backplane for the above would be neither compact nor inexpensive, and a capable RAID HBA / embedded controller would be needed.
In order to make this a reality, what I think is necessary is a new, cheap, simple interface standard for flash memory modules.
I should think SATA is cheap enough, but the chassis and backplane are going to cost regardless of the interface standard.
Groups of these modules could be grouped together behind a single SATA controller for an eSATA flash "JBOD" style enclosure, or a larger number of them could be RAIDed
Just like HBA's have done for years
for a NAS.
Why bring NAS into it? :confused: That's only going to slow it down, might as well stick with spinning rust.
 

Oracle1729

macrumors 6502a
Feb 4, 2009
638
0
I've always wondered why there was no 3.5" SSD until now. More space would mean more room for organized circuits and heat dispersion.

Because for a desktop, sticking an SSD in a 3.5" HDD size enclosure is the worst idea of 2013.

It's a desktop. Build a PCI-E card that will make the sata-3 connection look like a very tight bottle neck and leaving the chips outside an enclosure will improve heat dispersion. It's been available as long as the 2.5" enclosure versions. You know, sort of like this product: http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-3-x2-pci-express-ssd.html
 

JHankwitz

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2005
1,911
58
Wisconsin
thats not an attractive color

Who cares? It gets mounted inside where no one can see it, but is very visible to service people that open the case. Looks like a great decision.

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Question is, how fast is it compared to other SSDs? I know there's a considerable difference in the speed of memory cards I can get for my camera. Is there this great a difference in SSDs?
 

All Taken

macrumors 6502a
Dec 28, 2009
780
1
UK
Who cares? It gets mounted inside where no one can see it, but is very visible to service people that open the case. Looks like a great decision.

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Question is, how fast is it compared to other SSDs? I know there's a considerable difference in the speed of memory cards I can get for my camera. Is there this great a difference in SSDs?

I think you need to read a little about SSD's to get an answer that gives your question justice. In short it's a vast answer given IOPS, file size, controller version etc etc. Now if you had a SSD purely for loading the OS anything above 300MB/s is generally considered excessive as you won't notice a performance increase. Accessing other media or even using it as a swap disk would be an important factor in your decision regarding speed.

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Well hopefully the if Crucial follows through with their announcement to release their 980GB SSD (M500) at around $600, would force the price on the OWC one to come down. As 2 x M500 would be $1200 - $1400 verses an OWC 2TB est. at that 2K - 3K range. In fact you could get the OWC multi-mount bracket allows for 2 SSD's in the 3.5" bay.

OWC sell overpriced components, a cheaper per GB SSD from another firm will not change this strategy. They rely on the ignorance of users.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
Because for a desktop, sticking an SSD in a 3.5" HDD size enclosure is the worst idea of 2013.

It's a desktop. Build a PCI-E card that will make the sata-3 connection look like a very tight bottle neck and leaving the chips outside an enclosure will improve heat dispersion. It's been available as long as the 2.5" enclosure versions. You know, sort of like this product: http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-3-x2-pci-express-ssd.html

At that price wouldn't a second GPU be way more beneficial than a PCIe SSD?
 

Oracle1729

macrumors 6502a
Feb 4, 2009
638
0
At that price wouldn't a second GPU be way more beneficial than a PCIe SSD?

That really depends what you're doing. And I'm sure when you're at these price points anyway you're doing commercial work and buying both the graphics card and SSD might be worthwhile.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
That really depends what you're doing. And I'm sure when you're at these price points anyway you're doing commercial work and buying both the graphics card and SSD might be worthwhile.

True, but then you'd be limited by the number of PCIe slots available on the motherboard and how thick the GPU is x)
 

InuNacho

macrumors 68000
Apr 24, 2008
1,998
1,248
In that one place
If OWC is gonna make 3.5 SSDs why can't they make a 3.5 Hybrid-drive like the Momentus XT? I'd be far more interested in a desktop version of the XT instead of an expensive SSD.
 
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