Intel Releases 40GB X25-V Solid-State Drive

For as long as Intel has been offering solid-state drives to consumers, none of the available models could have ever been considered “budget” or “value-oriented”. That is until now, with the X25-V. This 40GB drive isn’t much different from Kingston’s SSDNow V series from a few months back, and it’s for good reason… the internals are identical.

The way the story played out is that Kingston had the right to sell these budget 40GB drives first, as per an agreement with Intel. Part of the agreement was also to allow Kingston to have access to TRIM firmware once it was available, but for some reason Intel scrapped those plans after the drive hit the market. So instead, it’s Intel’s version of the same drive that has TRIM support, not Kingston’s.

That’s the reason that we recommended Intel’s drive back when we took a look at Kingston’s. TRIM isn’t “everything” per se, but it’s important enough to be on the lookout for, especially on a smaller drive. Aside from TRIM, Intel’s drive supports read speeds of 170MB and write speeds of 40MB/s. These speeds are in all regards modest for SSD standards, but while the write speed is slower than a typical mechanical hard drive, the read speeds are much faster.

It’s a bit strange that Intel is announcing this drive now, as it’s been available for at least a month-and-a-half, but hey, it could be a slow news week. The drive is sold from Intel at $125 in quantities of 1,000, but a quick check at Newegg shows the drive selling for $130. So there’s not too much of a mark-up, and this is still a great SSD to consider if you are looking to pick one up on the cheap.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 15, 2010 – Intel Corporation announced today a new addition to its award-winning lineup of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs): the Intel X25-V Value SATA SSD. Priced at $125, the 40 gigabyte (GB) drive is aimed at value segment netbooks and dual-drive/boot drive desktop set-ups to offer users the performance and reliability advantages of solid-state computing at an affordable, entry-level price.