Corsair Neutron Series GTX 480GB SSD Review

Introduction

With OCZ Technology slowing down, or falling off a cliff, depending on who you ask, some say Corsair is next in line to become number one. Number one at what wasn't defined, but it was an interesting conversation with an employee from another manufacturer that clearly had a special place in his heart for Corsair.

At Computex 2012, Corsair had a good showing and appeared like a company that could ride the white horse in the front of the cavalry. Computex brought two new controllers, one from LAMD and one from Novachips, Corsair has an exclusive on the LAMD. This strategy is old hat from SSD manufacturers. We're just used to seeing OCZ Technology wearing the hat, and everyone else waiting for their turn to chime the ME TOO bell.

Prior to the Neutron and Neutron GTX release Corsair sent drives to a few media partners to test even while the firmware was going through the final stages of qualification. This process gave the media an opportunity to really shake the drives down, time to run a lot of tests and more importantly time to really get a feel for the performance and endurance. Corsair came out looking presidential after that.

Today we're looking at the Neutron GTX 480GB, Corsair's current flagship model, in its largest capacity. In the past large capacity drives always came with a catch 22. The large capacity meant lower performance, mainly in the 4K write speed. Today we'll see if the Neutron GTX 480GB manages to keep pace with the 240GB model, and we'll also introduce you to some of our exciting new tests that we've been working on for the last few months.