The New Vertex 3 Form Factor

The above image contains the Vertex 3 120GB model I reviewed last month. This used the same case as the pre-production 240GB drive I reviewed a few weeks prior and the width of the drive measured about the same as every other SSD I have on hand.

Next came the 240GB Vertex 3 and Vertex 3 Max IOPS, both with the new case with a plastic top cover. Here we see a 1mm difference in size. For most things in life 1mm isn't that big of a deal. Today we are talking about installing an OCZ Vertex 3 in a very common series of notebooks, so that makes it a big deal. For the last four or five years I've only owned Lenovo notebooks so I don't have anything else on hand to test with, but it's safe to say that some other manufacturers products are affected as well.

At this point you may be wondering how to tell the difference between the new and old case that houses the Vertex 3 before purchasing your drive. For that I have no answer. Here we see the 120GB next to the 240GB Vertex 3. It appears that OCZ has played with their BOM yet again and end users are going to suffer. Both drives have product numbers that start with VTX3-25SAT3-. The remaining designation only refers to the drives capacity.