Specifications, Pricing and Availability

Zalman doesn't give us a lot of information in their small specifications sheet, but the official product page is loaded with bits of information about performance, comparisons and such. The F1 Series consists of three capacity sizes - 60GB, 120GB and the 240GB size that we are reviewing today.

The 240GB model offers the highest random IOPS performance of the lineup. Zalman claims 45K IOPS read and write, but those are outdated numbers, as we'll show you today. The read IOPS performance is around 45K, but the 3.3.2 firmware delivers around 93K write IOPS, a large boost and a good showing of what SandForce is capable of when they finish their fine tuning of the firmware.

Firmware has become a hot issue over the last six months. In order to officially run 24nm Toshiba Toggle Mode flash LSI SandForce released firmware 5.0.1 and 5.0.2. Both of these releases broke the TRIM command, but LSI SF recently fixed the issue with 5.0.3. The Zalman F1 Series use IMFT flash and came loaded with firmware 3.3.2, one of the best SandForce firmware releases ever. With 3.3.2 we have working TRIM and very good performance, something we'll show you today.

Zalman offers a three year warranty and the F1 Series come with a desktop adapter bracket, screws for mounting and access to data migration software.