In the spotlight is the new Force Series GS Solid State Drive. Can this SandForce driven SSD deliver the best SATA 3 performance we have ever seen?
Product on Review: Force GS Series
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Corsair
Street Price: £240 / $239 (At time of review)
At the beginning of this month Corsair announced Force GS Series; A new line of Solid State Drives that promise to deliver their most competitive read/write transfer rates yet. Armed with SandForce SF-2281 and SanDisk Toggle Mode NAND the Force GS Series is ready to do battle, how will our 240GB drive compare to other prominent rivals?
Today we shall be taking a look at the 240GB variant; available in the Force GS Series are the following capacities: 180GB, 240GB, 360GB and 480GB. So let’s waste no further time and begin our analysis of the new Force GS Series.
Corsair on Force GS Series
Force Series GS solid-state drives are powered by a SandForce SF-2200 SSD Processor and fast Toggle NAND memory for both fast sequential read/write speeds and strong random write speed for impressive real-world performance.
Technical Specifications
Warranty
Three years
SSD Unformatted Capacity
240 GB
Max Sequential R/W
(ATTO) 555 MB/s sequential read — 525 MB/s sequential write
Max Random 4k Write
(IOMeter 08) 90k IOPS (4k aligned)
Interface
SATA 6Gb/s
Technology
Toggle NAND
Form Factor
2.5 inch
DRAM Cache Memory
No
Weight
80g
Voltage
5V ±5%
Power Consumption (active)
4.6W Max
Power Consumption (idle/standby/sleep)
0.6W Max
S.M.A.R.T. Support
Yes
Shock
1500 G
MTBF
2,000,000 hours
Three years
SSD Unformatted Capacity
240 GB
Max Sequential R/W
(ATTO) 555 MB/s sequential read — 525 MB/s sequential write
Max Random 4k Write
(IOMeter 08) 90k IOPS (4k aligned)
Interface
SATA 6Gb/s
Technology
Toggle NAND
Form Factor
2.5 inch
DRAM Cache Memory
No
Weight
80g
Voltage
5V ±5%
Power Consumption (active)
4.6W Max
Power Consumption (idle/standby/sleep)
0.6W Max
S.M.A.R.T. Support
Yes
Shock
1500 G
MTBF
2,000,000 hours
Packaging, Bundle & Closer Look
Force GS is presented in an attractive box that identifies the capacity, interface, size and speed of the drive, whilst the back features a brief description along with product and serial numbers.
Inside the packet Corsair have bundled a 3.5” to 2.5” metal adapter allowing the user to conveniently attach the drive to the computer chassis. Aside from screws and a warranty leaflet there is nothing else within the included accessories bundle.
Packaging is lively and attractive
A 3.5” to 2.5” metal adapter is included in the bundle
With the packaging out of the way we can finally take a good look at the drive itself. Force GS has been given a bright red coating which is a breath of fresh air compared with the majority of black or dark SSDs that are available these days. In the middle there is a label that identifies the capacity of this drive along with the part number – useful should you need to liaise with Corsair customer support.
The front of Force GS with its bright complexion
The surface texture on the outer casing for Force GS has a rough feel to it. Although it can appear smooth to the eye from some angles the surface is in fact grainy – this outer casing is metal.
Flipping the 2.5” SSD over to take a look at the underside there is a smooth metal plate protecting the underneath. This plate has a brushed aluminium appearance and having metal construction on both sides means that we have a rather sturdy storage drive before us. Four screws hold this metal plate onto the underside of the SSD and a large sticker covers one of the screws informing the user that should they remove the screws warranty is void.
A grainy, metal outer shell
Brushed aluminium plate covering the underside
On the next page we will take the covers off to reveal the inner-workings of Force GS Series.
A look at the internals
* Opening up an SSD voids the warranty and should be done at the users own risk. *
The first side visable after removing the screws is the side with 16 flash chips. These chips are SanDisk branded and use 24nm process. Each of the 16 flash chips are 16GB each.
Removing the entire PCB from the casing we can finally see the very heart of Force GS – SandForce SF-2281. This controller is a popular choice for SandForce driven SSDs and has been used in some of the more prominent names within the industry.
16 SanDisk flash chips – 16GB each
SandForce SF-2281 is at the heart of Force GS
On the subsequent pages we will be testing the Force GS within our SSD suite to determine how well this new SSD performs against popular rivals.
Testing Methodologies
Our SSDs have recently been moved to a new test system as the Intel P67 setup has been decommissioned for the newer Intel Z77. As a result, the database whilst still having a reasonable number of test subjects to compare against isn’t as extensive as we would like so keep a look out over the coming weeks for more additions!
The system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
Windows 7 Boot Time Test
Test system
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard MSI Z77A-GD65
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 8GB Corsair Vengeance 2133MHz
HDD
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU OCZ 750W Fatal1ty
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard MSI Z77A-GD65
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 8GB Corsair Vengeance 2133MHz
HDD
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU OCZ 750W Fatal1ty
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Benchmarks: ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.
Benchmarks: IOMeter
Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination with 100% Random Distribution – reporting back on IOPS and MBs per Second.
Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Benchmarks: Windows 7 Boot
Synthetic testing is valuable in the examination of Solid State Drives. But some of the tests may not mean all that much to some readers so the final test in this review is a real world test showing the Windows 7 boot time.
In order to perform this test (and indeed all other benchmarks), a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional was installed on the HyperX 3K – the image of this install with no additional applications or drivers was exported for importing onto each drive at the time of testing. This will provide a clean and fair environment for comparing the boot times on each of the drives. The times were monitored using a stopwatch.
In order to perform this test (and indeed all other benchmarks), a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional was installed on the HyperX 3K – the image of this install with no additional applications or drivers was exported for importing onto each drive at the time of testing. This will provide a clean and fair environment for comparing the boot times on each of the drives. The times were monitored using a stopwatch.
Conclusion
Equipped with SandForce SF-2281 and SanDisk Toggle Mode NAND the recipe for success is there, has Corsair got all the boxes ticked?
Only a few weeks ago we reviewed the Vertex 4 and we were impressed by its performance delivery and there were little to rival such a drive, and then along comes the Force GS Series – completely blowing this drive out of the water. If you have looked at the performance benchmarks on the preceding pages you will notice mostly run sequential tests as this provides the most intensive and rigorous procedures. Force GS Series dealt with these tests very well indeed and demonstrated consistent transfer rates.
Priced at around £240inc. VAT this 240GB SSD is bang on £1 per GB and is therefore a good value for money option for those wanting SATA 6GB/s performance. Although right now the Force GS Series is a good value for money, the storage market has recently seen significant price-drops and Corsair should probably respond to this by dropping the price slightly in order to remain more competitive.
The Force GS Series is without doubt one of the best SandForce driven SSDs out there. It pushes the boundaries for performance, is very sturdy, comes with 3 years peace of mind warranty and looks quite funky too. Due to all of these aspects the Force GS Series deserves nothing less than our Gold award for excellence.
Pros
+ Sturdy construction, nice aesthetics
+ Strong sequential performance
+ Affordable
+ TRIM support
Cons
– There are none!
+ Sturdy construction, nice aesthetics
+ Strong sequential performance
+ Affordable
+ TRIM support
Cons
– There are none!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
