Corsair F90

Corsair Force F90 90GB Solid-State Drive Review

Whenever I think about solid-state drives I am reminded of a famous quote I heard, "There's a basic principle about consumer electronics: it gets more powerful all the time and it gets cheaper all the time." - Trip Hawkins. Okay, maybe that quote was actually heard in a game of Civilization V, but still its validity certainly couldn't be any truer. When SandForce SF-1200 based solid-state drives launched in 2010 they started off at over $3 per gigabyte. The Crucial C300 launched closer to $4 per GB. Heck, when Intel launched its first 160GB SSD in 2008 it was priced at over $6 a gigabyte! By comparison, for the start of 2011 prices are just below $2 per GB, although for consumers wishing to make every penny count, promotions can sharply drop this figure to around $1.50. We have already observed one major rebate promotion (expired) that pegged a SandForce drive at an eye-popping $1.10 per GB, and I expect that this is just the start of the trend. Consumers have very low NAND market prices to thank for such a rapid decrease in SSD costs, and with foundries starting up <30nm NAND production and new, even higher performance SSDs expected to launch this year, it is a safe bet that we will see high-performance drives reach $1 per GB prices this year.