Corsair Blog

At the Corsair Labs, we get a chance to test all kinds of hardware. This week, we spent some quality time with our new 40GB Force Series F40 SSD, comparing it to the 40GB Intel X25-V and the 30GB Kingston SSDNow V Series across a series of benchmarks.

Lowering Capacity to Lower Cost

Because the NAND flash used in SSD makes up the majority of the cost of the SSD, lower capacity drives are in high demand lately for two reasons: first, because they have fewer flash ICs, they are less expensive; and second, you only need about 30-40GBs to load Windows 7, Office 2010, and a few of your favorite games. You can use traditional spinning hard drives to store the rest of your data and applications (like music, movies, or less frequently-used games). This makes smaller capacity SSDs very appealing as a boot drive for your desktop PC. Reducing the number of Flash ICs may reduce the cost, but it also lowers the number of channels for reading and writing data. This means most of the current lower capacity SSDs typically have lower performance than their larger capacity counterparts.

But not the Force Series F40!

DuraClass Technology Delivers

The SandForce SF1200 SSD Processor that powers the F40 is able to produce amazing read and write performance, along with incredible IOP numbers, even in a 40GB configuration. This is a direct result of their DuraClass technology, as our VP of Engineering, Kevin Conley, discussed in more detail this recent blog entry. Now, let's see how all of this actually translates into performance.  

The Test System

Test Results

ATTO Bench32

Wow, check out the difference in Sequential Write numbers!  

IOMeter 2008(4K Random Write/4K Aligned)

***Time Based, lower value is better Again, the Force Series F40 shines in IOPS, MB/s, and response time.  

CrystalDiskMark

The results are closer here, with the Intel X25-V turning in faster read scores, and the Force Series F40 delivering significantly faster writes.  

HDBench

Again, here the results are closer, with the Intel X25-V turning in faster read times, but the Force Series F40 is again the leader in write speeds, making it a more balanced performer.