Corsair Force GT 120GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

Even before the Corsair Force GT arrived at my door, I knew it would be hot. I get a lot of emails from readers and don't mind answering each and every one, but right after our review of the Force 3 went live I was flooded with emails asking about the Force GT. The only other product that I can think that generated so much interest to date was the Fusion-io ioDrive.

The Force GT has some nice features that allow it to stand out from the rest of the Team SandForce products. The first is Corsair's known reliability and exceptional customer support. The drive itself is also red, much cooler than the run of the mill black SSDs floating around. Then there is the mystery over what components Corsair chose to use in their flagship SSD.

The Corsair Force GT uses the SandForce SF-2281 SATA III controller that is quickly becoming the industry standard for SSDs in 2011. As you may know, this controller is the starting point and the flash it's paired with is what's differing the high end products from the mainstream. The Force 3 is Corsair's mainstream offering with async flash and the Force GT uses synchronized flash. For a while we predicted the GT would launch with Toshiba Toggle flash, but that isn't the case. This combination puts the Force GT directly in line with the OCZ Vertex 3 and these two drives will battle it out on the price front for the next year.

Ah, pricing. Let's look at the specs first.