Samsung SSD 830 Series to hit the shelves in October

Soon there could be another reason to replace the spinning disk-based HDD in your desktop or laptop computer with a cutting-edge Solid State Drive (SSD) - Samsung has unveiled its new SSD 830 Series, which utilizes a SATA Revision 3.0 6 Gbps interface, and is encased in a brushed metal housing. It is aimed at the retail market.

The new arrival in Samsung's SSD lineup will not be as fast as the Optimus SSD that utilizes an SAS interface, or the Micron RealSSD P320h running a PCIe interface, although unlike these devices, the 830 Series will hit the shelves as an upgrade kit.

Recently, Samsung also unveiled its SSD PM830 Series SATA 3-based drives aimed at OEMs, while the 830 Series will be its retail version. According to Samsung, the SSD 830 Series doubles the data bandwidth of the previous 470 Series SSDs. While the company isn't providing detailed figures at this point, the speed is expected not to be lower than the PM830s, which is 500 MB/s reading and 350 MB/s writing. By comparison, the Intel 510 SATA 6 Gbps SSDs deliver up to 500 MB/s reading and 315 MB/s writing speeds.

The Samsung SSD 830 will be sold either as a standalone drive, or as an upgrade kit including a bracket for installing the 2.5'' drive in a 3.5'' bay and required cables for desktop computers, while the notebook upgrade kit includes a USB to SATA adapter cable. Both upgrade kits come with Norton Ghost software. Featuring a brushed metal enclosure, the SSD 830 series will be available in capacities of 64, 128, 256 and 512GB, starting in October. Pricing has yet to be announced.