Intel reported to be considering major price cuts to their SSD 320, 330 and 520 lineup
Cheaper SSD prices, I don’t mind if I do Sir.
Hard Drive prices have been all over the shop recently, with traditional hard drives being extremely expensive from last yeah (although their price is now starting to fall again) SSD’s on the other hand have long been considered to be one of the best upgrades for performance, but their prices have always seemed high per MB.
However in August it’s likely that Intel will be updating their pricing structure, with some of their models seeing a reduction of 37% of their current price. The price points of several models in the SSD 320, 330 and finally 520 families are likely going to be axed.
It’s likely that the cuts, initially at the least, won’t be affecting the lower-capacity SSD 320 series. The likely-hood being Intel are after the units over 300GB in size, due to the fairly mainstream performance it would seem Intel want to give incentives for the customer to fork out for the larger capacity drives.
The Intel SSD 320 Line cuts
OEM prices (these are in multi-unit quantity) of the SSD 320 300 GB is expected to go down $499 to $444, repressenting around an 11% cut. Well, who cares about that I hear, what about you and I, who buy the damn thing off the shelf? It’s apparently going to fall from $519 to $464.
The SSD 320 600 GB OEM price will be from the current $1,039 to $859 (a significant drop) which carries over to the retail pricing of $1,059 to $879. This gives a little insight into the price difference of OEM vs retail too.
What about the Intel SSD 520 Line cuts?
These series of drives are targetted more towards business end / series performance-segment consumers. Such as for Servers, rendering work stations, that type of work. The 240 GB and 480 GB are among those being cut, along with smaller drives.
- SSD 520 60 GB: OEM price down from $99 to $89; Reseller pack down from $109 to $99 (9% cut)
- SSD 520 120 GB: OEM price down from $179 to $129; Reseller pack down from $189 to $139 (26.4% cut)
- SSD 520 180 GB: OEM price down from $269 to $189; Reseller pack down from $279 to $199 (28.6% cut)
- SSD 520 240 GB: OEM price down from $339 to $249; Reseller pack down from $349 to $259 (25.8% cut)
- SSD 520 480 GB: OEM price down from $799 to $494; Reseller pack down from $809 to $594 (37.7% cut)
The Intel SSD 330 series cuts
Intel’s SSD 330, which represents their latest ‘mainstream’ line, are also having their prices slashed by a significant margin.
- SSD 330 60 GB: Reseller pack price down from $94 to $69 (26.5% cut)
- SSD 330 120 GB: Reseller pack price down from $149 to $104 (30.2% cut)
- SSD 330 180 GB: Reseller pack price down from $234 to $154 (34.1% cut)
You certainly cannot accuse Intel of not trying their best to the growing demand of SSD’s.
