Corsair Force GT 240GB Solid State Drive Review

By: Chris Ramseyer (more) | Storage Content | Posted: Oct 3, 2011 9:15 am

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TweakTown Rating: 92% Manufacturer: Corsair

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

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I think everyone has seen these numbers before. The SandForce SF-2281 controller dictates how fast a drive is. Using the right motherboard or controller card, you can hit 555MB/s read and 525MB/s write speeds. At this time your best performance is coming from Intel Z68 and P67 motherboards with native SATA 6Gbps ports.

The SF-2281 controller used in the Force 3 and GT is a fairly unique design. It's been awhile since we talked about the standout features that make the SandForce SF-2281 the best consumer SSD controller on the market today. If you want all of the technical details, check out our SF-2000 Series Client Series article. The short version is SandForce designed their controller to operate without a cache buffer, limit write amplification (write cycles to the actual NAND flash) and perform at the highest data transfer rates.

With so many companies offering SandForce based products on the market today, companies like Corsair have to push the envelope even further to make their products stand out. This has pushed warranties, accessory packages and total cost of ownership to new levels.

We'll start with the current prices available at Newegg at the time of writing. The Corsair Force GT 60GB is now available for 134.99 ($114.99 after a mail-in-rebate), the 90GB is 189.99, the 120GB is 219.99 (189.99 after a mail-in-rebate), the 180GB is 359.99 and the 240GB that we are looking at today is 459.99; the largest capacity size of the current lineup.

Newegg lists 26 240GB SSDs at this time and the Force GT is the lowest priced drive that uses a SandForce SF-2281 controller and synchronous flash. We'll talk about the differences between synchronous flash and asynchronous flash later in the article.

When it comes to add-ons, Corsair includes a three year warranty with the Force GT and a desktop adapter bracket. If you are using your Force GT in a desktop, you'll want a desktop adapter bracket that allows you to install your 2.5" form factor SSD in a 3.5" form factor (standard desktop HDD size) space.