Introduction

We've spent so much time talking about the high end market with new products from SandForce and Marvell, but failed to keep track of the mainstream products that cater to the bang for your buck crowd. In this class of products you find controllers from Toshiba, Samsung, JMicron and now Phison. Phison has been around for several years and is one of the early developers of consumer class SSD controllers. Their early products made their way into OEM netbooks, but were never fast enough to warrant a large scale 2.5" form factor product for the discrete aftermarket folks; at least none that read these pages.

That has changed with the new Phison PS3105-S5. While this might be the first time you've heard of the PS3105, I've had to hear about it for the last three months. Solid state engineers have been talking this controller up for quite some time. The new Phison is supposed to be a perfect mainstream SSD with acceptable SSD speed and an acceptable mainstream SSD price.

Even with all of the hype, we still have our doubts, at least this early in the review. You see, last year's enthusiast dynamo, the SandForce SF-1200, is this year's mainstream super boy. Well, that is if you can still find one using 34nm flash. Let's see if the Patriot Torqx 2 can take the SATA 3G, low cost crown, or if last year's enthusiast king still reigns over the SATA 3G kingdom.