Corsair V128 Nova Review
Introduction
Published: 19th April 2010 | Source: Corsair | Price: £292.72 |
Introduction
This Monday sees another of our old favourite, the SSD, come through the OC3D secret underground testing facility. Rarely does any hardware have more predictable responses in our comments section with the opinion split between wonderful and expensive.
Thanks to recent reductions in the price of NAND flash, Solid State Drives are slowly creeping down in price. That isn't to say they are as affordable as mechanical drives, but for something that gives the same equivalent performance gain as a new processor or monster graphics card, they are exactly the price you'd expect.
Today we take a look at the latest in a long line of Corsair SSDs, the Nova.
Technical Specifications
Before we discuss what we have, here are the specifications from the Corsair website.
| Model | CSSD-V128GB2-BRKT |
| Technology | Indilinx Barefoot controller |
| Form Factor | 2.5 inch |
| Capacity | 128GB unformatted |
| Interface | SATA II 3.0Gbps |
| Memory | Intel 32nm MLC NAND Flash |
| Performance | 270MB/s sequential read 195MB/s sequential write |
| DRAM Cache | 64MB Elpida |
| Weight | 80g |
| Power Consumption load | 2.0W maximum |
| Power Consumption idle | 0.5W maximum |
| Mean-Time Before Failure | 1 Million Hours |
| Shock Absorption | 40G |
| Extras | Two year warranty Included 3.5" adaptor bracket |
Three big technological things to take note of here. Firstly we have an Indilinx Barefoot controller which is the controller of choice for high end SSDs. Allied to this is 64MB of Elpida cache and, of the two major NAND manufacturers, Corsair have chosen to use Intel rather than Samsung memory chips. We'll take a closer look at these later on.
The other interesting thing is that Corsair claim the performance is 270MB/s read and 195MB/s write. Heady numbers indeed. Of course we all know what to make of claimed performance, but Corsair rarely over-state their case and if they are accurate we could be looking at quite a beast here.
Most Recent Comments
|
Originally Posted by name='Chewbacca'
I want one! Does it really make that much of a difference going from a normal HDD to an SSD?
|
At such a low capacity, u would probably end up using ur old drive as a means to store stuff, leaving mainly the OS, and ur malware etc on the SSD.
For definite, if the cash is available and u don't use much harddrive space, they're great. But apparently having the cash to buy a pc component is not meant to be the way to look at it, ur meant to look at them value for money. Bang for buck. Speed for sure - capacity (the bread and butter of drives) a definite no. Some people will buy these then complain about the prices of other things, e.g.
I use them in many pc/mac setups now and tbh, if ur OS is installed and maintained efficiently, there are just as viable alternatives, leaving u to spend ur cash on more important components.Quote
CSS Valid