Where are you on the storage upgrade cycle?

Mark McCarter, Ortial Technologies’ Director of Product Development, discusses why the company is seeing a huge spike in demand for SSDs…

At Ortial we firmly believe that there has never been a better time to upgrade your PC’s storage. Over the past 18 months we have seen prices cut by half for standard SATA drives and even the faster NVMe drives have seen significant price drops. We know the cost per GB is still higher than standard hard disk drives but let’s look at why we believe the higher cost is worth it.

Why improved speed is in such high demand

Speed is the headline you read most when looking at SSD but what does this mean in real word terms?

Well if you use an SSD for your operating system then you will certainly notice much quicker boot times. If you’re a ‘gamer’ then you will also see much reduced game loading times. These quality of life improvements can be difficult to rationalise on paper, but ask any gamer about waiting for a new area of a map to load or waiting for the extended initial load time on their favourite game and it’s clear to see why this demographic is demanding this improved level of performance to facilitate fewer interruptions to the flow of their game.

SSDs are silent in use and certainly more resilient to being dropped, thanks largely to the lack of moving parts when compared to HDDs and have lower power consumption. SSDs are certainly the best choice if you value performance above cost per GB.

At Ortial, our customers are not just gamers on the bleeding edge of technology, we have many customers who just want their laptops to feel more responsive and boot quicker, and we designed the Ortial Plus range of SSDs for this very reason. Available in multiple capacities up to 960GB, it offers a fine combination of performance and value. With the added benefit of a 10 year warranty, it’s an ideal tool for gamers, professionals and consumers in need of a low cost, high capacity storage solution to improve their existing system.

Storage is no longer the bottleneck

In the last six months we have seen a huge spike in demand for our recently launched NVMe range of SSDs. They offer speeds up to five times faster than our current fastest 2.5” SSD. What was once perceived as a nice to have solution is quickly becoming a feature that anyone buying a new performance PC or laptop demands as standard.

Storage has, for a long time, been the bottleneck in many systems. This is no longer the case. As anyone buying one of the latest Macbooks will testify, it boots in seconds, and programs open instantly. Although it sounds a small change it all adds up to create a customer experience that makes using the technology we interact with every day more enjoyable.

Advice and support

The question we ask all our customers is “Where are you on the storage upgrade cycle?” We listen to how they currently use their systems, what their frustrations are with the way they currently work, and we offer advice to help them get the best from their system.

Of course storage is just one part of the system. Other things will affect performance such as the CPU speed and the amount of RAM. Ortial currently has over 5,000 lines of 2.5” / M.2 SSDs and RAM in stock ready to ship next day through our distribution partner CMS Distribution.

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