OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 (1.6TB PCIe SSD) Review

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In our last SandForce SSD roundup I talked about how undesirable the consumer SSD market is, at least for those companies who don't produce their own controllers and/or NAND. There's a downward trend in NAND and SSD pricing, which unfortunately squeezes drive manufacturers as they compete for marketshare. The shrinking margins in the consumer SSD space will ultimately drive companies out of the business, consolidating power in those companies who are fine operating with slim margins. There are other effects, such as insufficient validation testing that result from this price crunch.

Public companies are under an even greater pressure to maintain high profit margins. Investors don't care about good product, they care about good returns. What is a public SSD manufacturer like OCZ to do? Go after the enterprise market of course.

OCZ has quietly addressed the enterprise SSD space for a while now. Today you can custom order an OCZ Deneva 2 SSD which is an enterprise focused SF-2000 based solution. OCZ's enterprise drives are fully customizable down to the controller, firmware and NAND type on-board. If you want an SF-2000 drive with SAS support and SLC NAND, OCZ will build it for you.

In the enterprise segment where 1U and 2U servers are common, PCI Express SSDs are very attractive. You may not always have a ton of 2.5" drive bays but there's usually at least one high-bandwidth PCIe slot unused. The RevoDrive family of PCIe SSDs were targeted at the high-end desktop or workstation market, but for an enterprise-specific solution OCZ has its Z-Drive line.

Read on for our review of OCZ's Z-Drive R4.

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