Recommended Award
RRP: $309 | Website: http://www.corsair.com/products/ssd_force/default.aspx
CORSAIR FORCE SERIES 120GB SSD
Test Machine
• Intel Core i7 960
• Gigabyte X58-UD4P
• Corsair Nova Series
120GB SSD
• Corsair Nova Series
128GB SSD
• AMD Radeon HD5870
• Antec 1200OC PSU
• WD VelociRaptor 300GB
• Noctua NH-U12P
• Windows 7 32-Bit
T
he largest gain in SSD
performance over the
last few years has been the
Sandforce SF-1200 SSD
processor. At present this
controller gives the ultimate
18 The OverClocker October 2010
performance to SSDs, enabling
up to 285 MB/s sequential
reads and 275 MB/s sequential
writes. The controller is also
considered excellent for
random IOPS and this is the
number one reason users
would consider a SSD over a
magnetic disk. In competitive
overclocking we don’t have
a large number of uses for
SSDs but they are useful for
PCMark05 and Vantage which
require SSDs for world records.
3DMark Vantage also benefits
from faster load times and
overclockers are starting to
consider an SSD or two as an
essential part of their toolkit.
Analysis
We recorded a number
of very interesting results,
comparing the top of the line
Corsair Force with the Nova.
Taking a quick browse across
all results we saw that the
Force is by and large a much
faster disk, but there were
a few areas where the Nova
was faster. Looking at the
HDTUNE results, the read
result was approximately 20
MB/s faster but it was the write
result that was an amazing
70 MB/s faster than on the
Nova. In this sequential write
operation IOMETER painted a
similar picture and it’s in this