That day has finally arrived: Crucial is selling a 1TB SSD for just $600. Not only is this the first mainstream SSD to offer a terabyte (960GB) of capacity, but it also clocks in at just 60 cents per gig — by far the cheapest high-capacity SSD on the market. Crucial’s 1TB drive is actually significantly cheaper (per gig) than the smaller drives in the same range.

Crucial’s new drives, which launch under the M500 moniker, are fashioned from Micron’s 20nm MLC NAND and a Marvell 9187 controller. There are 120GB ($130), 240GB ($220), 480GB ($400), and 960GB ($600) models, all of which are theoretically capable of 500MB/sec sequential read, and up to 400MB/sec sequential read on the 480GB and 960GB models. In actual benchmarks, the 960GB and 480GB M500 is a mid-range SSD that’s outpaced by its contemporaries, including the Samsung 840 Pro. Its performance is by no means bad, though — and really, let’s be honest here: The M500’s main selling point is its ability to offer a truly usable amount of storage space at a reasonable price. The use of MLC should mean that the M500 has greater endurance than its TLC-based counterparts, such as the Samsung 840, too.

To squeeze 1TB into a single SSD, Crucial uses Micron’s new 128Gbit (16GB) 20nm MLC NAND die — double the previous max of 64Gbit (8GB) per die. To achieve such a huge density, Micron had to increase the page size from 8KB to 16KB, which increases the die’s density — but also the latency, thus reducing overall performance. Micron squeezes four of these dies into a single chip, for a total capacity of 64GB per chip — and then Crucial shoehorns 16 NAND chips into the drive, for a total capacity of 1024GB (960GB usable). The M500 is the first drive to use the 128Gbit die, which is why no other drive comes close to it in terms of capacity or cost-per-gig. We can expect other drive vendors to follow in the M500’s footsteps and release 1TB (or perhaps even larger) drives later this year.

SSD prices have been slipping below the $1/GB threshold for the last few months, but only at smaller sizes (120GB and 240GB). For a 1TB (960GB) to drop so far below $1/GB is quite simply extraordinary. To reach that density, Crucial had to make some performance sacrifices — but, put simply, Crucial couldn’t care less that the M500 is 10% slower than a drive that can only manage a puny 512GB of storage. Crucial has launched the first ever mainstream, 1TB drive at below $1 per gig — and that’s a big deal.

If you want to get your hands on a M500 drive, Newegg has some in stock at $650; Amazon is already out of stock. For benchmarks, see the always-ineffable Anandtech.

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