Storage

Corsair Force LS 240GB Review

vortez
September 13, 2013 8 Min Read
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Corsair introduce a new addition to the Force SSD family – Force LS features the Phison controller and plans to deliver great performance at an attractive price-tag.



Product On Review: Force LS 240GB
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Corsair
Street Price: £153

The Force product line has been one of Corsair’s long standing names in the storage arena. The original Force Series, GS and GT all have their respective names tied in to performance and quality, and today sees this range welcome yet another addition to the family.

Force LS moves away from the LSI SandForce controller which has been a mainstay throughout the Force lineup, and takes on a Phison offering as well as Toshiba 19nm NAND flash. Corsair boast that Force LS can sustain 555 MB/s and 535 MB/s transfer rates whilst supporting TRIM, garbage collection and SMART functions. The Force LS is poised to deliver great performance and yet have a respectable price-tag to suit…



Corsair on their Force LS
Force Series LS features SATA 3 6GB/s support for optimal performance with the latest systems, and it’s backward compatible with SATA 1 and 2 for maximum compatibility. The thin 7mm height, low heat generation, and solid-state reliability make it ideal for everything from desktop PCs to the latest ultra-thin laptops.

Technical Specifications


Warranty
Three years
SSD Unformatted Capacity
240 GB
Max Sequential R/W (ATTO)
560 MB/s sequential read
535 MB/s sequential write
Interface
SATA 6Gb/s
Technology
MLC, Toggle NAND
Form Factor
7mm high, 2.5 inch
DRAM Cache Memory
512 MB
Weight
0.05kg
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
40G
MTBF
1,000,000 hours

Closer Look


Force LS is presented in a small but highly decorative cardboard packet. Key features are listed on the front and back including an emphasis on the drive being 7mm in height.

Within this packet the drive sits inside a plastic container with four mounting screws and a warranty leaflet.


Eye-catching packaging


The drive itself, as Corsair confidently affirm, is a mere 7mm in height and powder coated black – meaning it will fit inside slim notebooks without any hassle. The specifications label is found on the front side of the drive – this details the capacity and serial/part numbers. The reverse of the drive is blank and without any distinguishing features.


The front of Force LS



Blank on the reverse


To remove the covers there are a series of screws to de-attach – doing so voids warranty, do so at your own risk. Under the covers we can reveal the inner-workings of Force LS. Our drive uses Phison PS3108-S as its controller and this is the first occasion Corsair have used such a component.

Force LS uses a total of 16 Toshiba NAND flash chips based on a 19nm process.


Phison PS3108-S used for controller



16 Toshiba flash chips

Test Setup & Methodology


Our test 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:

Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
Windows 7 Boot Time Test


Test system
CPU Intel Core-i7 4770K
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– Corsair Force LS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– 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 Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

Benchmarks: ATTO

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.).



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.


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

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.



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 drive – 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


In the last 6 months SSD prices have plummeted and the fight for storage limelight has become increasingly fierce. Have Corsair done enough to steal the attention?

Throughout our benchmark testing the Force LS demonstrated good results in the sequential read/write arena. The ATTO results were particularly good but during Iometer the drive struggled to maintain consistency.



The reliability of the Phison PS3108 controller remains unknown at this point, although this is a new venture for Corsair we can place confidence in their rigorous pre-production testing.

Pricing is an area which is a particular highlight for Force LS. The 240GB version we have reviewed today can be found for as little as £153 which is regarded as great value for money. Around this price-range there are however a number of popular rivals – competition could well be tough for Force LS.

Corsair’s new Force LS SSD is a good performer – it demonstrated prowess in a range of our benchmarks and comes in at an attractive price-point.

Pros
+ Good performance
+ Affordable
+ TRIM Support
+ 7mm in height (can be installed in slim notebooks)
+ 3 years warranty

Cons
– Fell behind in Iometer benchmarks
– Unknown reliability with new controller



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