Corsair 240GB Force GT RAID0 Review

Conclusion

One of the things you have to be constantly on guard about when reviewing hardware is the tendency to become a little jaded. To accept exceptional performance as the norm, because we’re fortunate enough to get to play with some very high performing stuff. So it’s easy to get used to how fast a GTX580 is, or a i7-3960X. Equally we know that manufacturers claims are always over-estimated. Therefore when we headed in to this review having tested a few SATA6 SSDs before, we knew that potentially the Corsair Force GT RAID 0 setup should be capable of 1GB/s according the Corsair figures, but that in reality we should see maybe 700MB/s.

So it’s definitely worth stating that throughout testing we never stopped being amazed at how high the performance of the Corsair Force GT was. It’s not just a case of two drives being twice as fast as a single high performance one. If it was that we’d be impressed but not necessarily staggered, but rather with the Corsair Force GT we have two drives working together so well that more often than not it makes the single drives seem positively pedestrian. Despite being cautious of the official Corsair figures the Force GTs actually backed them up with actual performance. 550MB/s is claimed, and with two we did see 1.03GB/s from our RAID 0 arrangement. Given a little overhead this is spot on and the write speeds amazingly actually bettered those claimed by Corsair. A company understating the ability of their product. Someone check to see if hell has frozen over.

Of course any setup that can give you 1GB/s speeds is bound to leave us gasping for breath with the sheer audacity of seeing those kind of results. However the most impressive part of our testing was always the write speeds available. So often drives are geared towards giving massive read performance and decent to good write performance but the Force GT is clearly designed to have equal speed in both elements. If anything the write speeds outshine the read ones which considering the numbers we’re dealing with is an impressive feat on its own. Of course with such excellent performance both reading and writing the data then real-world performance is exceptional and PC Mark Vantage was testament to this.

Naturally such performance isn’t without cost. A RAID 0 set up like this will cost you around £660. Sure that’s a lot of money but the key thing is that when you compare it to its contemporaries, it’s good value. The Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 are about a tenner cheaper, the Kingston about a tenner more. So even as a single drive it’s a better option because of the speed available, and when paired up like we have today there isn’t a faster SATA-based setup available.

TRIM support, insane performance both in read and write scenarios and 1GB/s available in RAID 0. The Corsair Force GT is the Bugatti Veyron of storage solutions and, despite the pretty high cost, the performance will leave you grinning long after the initial purchase price sting has long since left you.

   

Thanks to Corsair for providing the Force GT for review. Discuss in our Forums.