Corsair Blog

There's almost always some very cool unexpected news announced each year at Computex and we have some this year. Corsair has proudly announced the Neutron Series and Neutron Series GTX Series SSDs. These SSDs come in fast, and faster configurations respectively. Both are based on a new SSD controller exclusive to Corsair, the LM87800 6Gb/s SSD controller from Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD).

Here's the Neutron Series SSD. Neutron Series SSDs are based on Micron ONFI NAND flash and it is extremely fast.

Neutron Series GTX SSDs are built with Toshiba Toggle-Mode NAND for even faster performance.

Available in capacities of 120GB, 240GB and 480GB, Neutron Series GTX SSDs are designed with toggle NAND flash memory to deliver up to a super-high 90,000 random read and write IOPs (input/output operations per second), which speeds up data-intensive tasks like video and image editing. These drives also provide superior sequential speeds of up to 555 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write, for lightning fast file access. The standard Neutron Series SSDs, available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, provide up to 90,000 random read IOPs and 85,000 random write IOPs with sequential speeds of up to 555 MB/s read and 370 MB/s write.

All Neutron Series SSDs incorporate LAMD's powerful on-the-fly error correction and advanced NAND management technologies which improve the endurance of onboard flash memory, giving the SSDs enhanced reliability and durability. Neutron Series GTX SSDs also include adaptive DSP technology which maintains superior performance throughout the lifetime of the SSD. Neutron Series and Neutron Series GTX SSDs are backed with a five year warranty.

Neutron Series SSDs provide impressive read and write speeds with both compressed and non-compressible data regardless of file type. This is a significant advantage compared to other SSDs on the market which offer quick load times with compressible files, but get bogged down significantly when reading compressed data such as video files.

We'll have much more technically oriented material later but first, here's some early performance marks based on some well established benchmarks.

ATTO is an industry standard test for measuring disk performance. From the ATTO website:

"As the industry's leading provider of high-performance storage connectivity products, ATTO has created a widely-accepted Disk Benchmark freeware utility to help measure storage system performance. Disk Benchmark identifies performance in hard drives, solid state drives, RAID arrays as well as connections to storage."

Here's an ATTO screenshot from the Neutron (left) and the Neutron Series GTX (right). As noted, fast and faster!

In many past SSD articles, we've included the FutureMark 3DMark Vantage HD Suite results. This benchmark is a very good indicator of what many refer to as "real world performance". Again Neutron Series SSDs are a very strong performer but Neutron Series GTX pulls ahead again due to the Toshiba Toggle-Mode NAND flash.

Another test we've used in our past SSD articles is a basic file transfer test to take a look at SSDs in another "real world" situation. I compiled a 21.9GB master file filled with all sorts of stuff. It's filled with music, movies, and Office files. There are also quite a few .RAR files in there also to provide some incompressible files. Once again, Neutron Series was fast and Neutron Series GTX was faster.

The motherboard was the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme Z. Both the Neutron Series SSDs were connected to the SATA3/6GB headers. The source drive was a RAID 0 stripe of 2 x 120GB Force GT SSDs transferring the files to the Neutron and Neutron Series GTX. They both made very quick work of the 21.9GB files with the copy times of 1min 21s and 1min 10s respectively.

Here's a good look at the IOMeter IOPs and Crystal Disk Sequential Read and Write Performance:

Neutron Series and Neutron Series GTX are two exceptionally fast SSDs with blazing performance in all the areas where it counts. You can now harness the power of the Neutron for your system!