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Review: Corsair
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The last few weeks were very exciting for
Solid State Drives. The arrival of PCIe and M.2 that can give speeds up to
10Gb/s shows the direction that consumer drives will be moving forward. Setting
aside all this, we need to see what is currently available to us. So far SATA
6Gb/s is here and it has also become more and more affordable, so there are no
excuses now for anyone having the OS installed on a spinning drive.
Corsair’s Force LX is an SSD that is more
focused on a low budget without having to compromise on the performance. The
Force LX is only available in two capacities, 128GB and 256GB, and in this
review I will be taking a closer look at the 256Gb SSD.
So let’s see if the Force LX SSD has what
it takes to deserve a place in our system. We'll start by taking a look at the
package and its contents.
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD
As always I will be first examining the
packaging and its contents.
Packaging
The front of the box has a different colour scheme from the Force LS.
and the back of the box
The Corsair Force LX shares pretty much the
same design as most of their SSDs, the main difference is the that Force LX
comes in two sizes, 128GB and 256GB, so now let’s see what is inside the box.
A closer look at the Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD
Top side of the Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD
Drive underside
Now let’s look at what’s inside the SSD.
Looking
at the top of the Corsair Force LX SSD we find four NAND chips made by Micron.
On
the back of the Corsair Force lX SSD we find another four 20nm NAND chips, the
MSI Controller, and the DDR3 RAM.
Here
is a closer look at the 20nm NAND.
A
close look at the four channel SM2246EN, Silicon Motion controller.
The
DDR3 memory is manufactured by NANYA.
Specifications
The following specifications are taken from
the official Corsair website, to find out more click here.
On picture below we can see some general
specifications for the Silicon Motion Controler, you can find more information
about the SM2246EN on the Silicon Motion website.
CrystalDiskInfo
In
the above screen shot we see all the available info for the Corsair Force LX SSD.
Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.
Test machine
For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 (Intel Z68
chipset) - Processor: Intel 2nd generation
Core i5 2500K @ 4Ghz - RAM: 2x4GB Kingston DDR3
- GFX: Onboard Intel HD 3000
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - Hard disk OS: Corsair Nova 64GB
- PSU: Corsair CX430 430W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit with
Service Pack 1
The Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD was
connected to the Intel native SATA 6Gbps (port 1) on the Z77 motherboard of our
review PC and all tests on the drive were carried out with the drive connected
to this port. All power saving features were disabled during all of my synthetic
benchmarks.
AHCI mode was also selected for all drives
in the UEFI of our test PC, and all the tests were carried out in this mode. As
we can also see the formatted size of the Corsair Force LX SSD is 238GB.
The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review
PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 11.7.0.1013.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Corsair
Force LX 256GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this
review.
- HD Tune
Pro - ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD
Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark
- Anvil’s
Storage Utilities - PCMark
Test procedures
I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Corsair
Force LX SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.
SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Corsair Force LX SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Corsair Force LX SSD performs in the real world.
The reality of SSD performance
While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.
A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?
The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.
Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance
IOPS
This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.
The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random read
output transactions in a one second interval.
Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?
This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.
On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of
application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.
So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?
In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.
OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?
You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?
While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.
In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.
So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?
Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.
Sequential performance
I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.
To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using their
PCs these days?
Summary
So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?
In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS
performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random
performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high
performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.
However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were
defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD used in this article had
their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.
Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.
Corsair Force
LX 256GB SSD
Comparison SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD Tune – Sequential reading test
I present the graph below for comparison
with other recently tested drives.
The Corsair Force LX SSD is slightly slower
than the Force LS, the result is simply good.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDD and SSD. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
Testing the Corsair Force LX SSD with ATTO we
can verify the numbers that corsair is giving, read speed is close to 560MB/Sec
and the write speed is up to 300MB/Sec.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive.
The performance of the Force LX SSD continues
to be very good, and sequential numbers are very close to the ones that we saw
when the drive was tested with ATTO.
Below I am posting two graphs that give a
more detailed view of the differences between the Corsair Force LX and other SSDs
that I have tested.
Clearly
the Corsair Force LX isn’t the fastest drive, but it’s able to give some very
good results when it comes to read speeds.
Write
speeds are very close to the specifications that Corsair has in their website,
but compared to other drives the write speed of the Force LX is slow.
Overall the performance of the Corsair
Force LX can be described as very good when it comes to reading data, and
simply good when it comes to writing.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.
Now let’s look at the results for the Corsair
Force LX SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.
Corsairs Force LX and its limited write
speed isn’t giving the drive a chance to be any higher in this chart.
Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark Vantage and PCMark 8.....
PCMark Vantage - HDD Suite
For these tests we will be using
FutureMark’s PCMark Vantage. This suite of real world test applications is
highly regarded, as one of the most comprehensive ways of testing a computer’s
performance in the real world. The PCMark Vantage test application also
includes an HDD/SSD/USB Flash suite of testing procedures, designed to fully
test out the performance of an HDD/SSD to its limits.
PCMark Vantage HDD suite results
Here
are the results for the Corsair Force LXSSD.
Here is a detailed view of the performance
of the Corsair Force LX SSD, and you can compare the result with other drives
that I have tested.
The Corsair Force LX is the second fastest
drive in this test. Again, a very good result for the Force LX.
PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite
Here at Myce.wiki, we only recently
introduced PCMark Vantage to our SSD testing. PCMark Vantage is a good test,
but is now somewhat outdated in the applications that it tests, even to the
extent of including a test trace on how Windows Vista booted. We could have
course have opted for the newer PCMark 7, but I personally had issues with the
way it ran the HDD tests.
We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.
I will describe the basic way that each
test is carried out, above the graph for each test.
PC Mark 8 HDD suite results
Here
is a screenshot of the Corsair Force LX SSD result.
The Corsair Force LX SSD in the middle,
with a very good score of 244.1MB/Sec.
A detailed graph which gives you a closer
look at the performance of the Corsair Force LX SSD.
Summary:
There is no doubt that the Force LX has
very good performance for a drive that isn’t aimed at the enthusiast.
Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able to
cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.
The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.
Partition alignment and sector boundaries
Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Corsair Force LX is 4k boundary aware, and will use these boundaries if
possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility with the sector
boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.
IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.
I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.
If any of you would like to see a
screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to
request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.
All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.
The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.
Queue depth 1
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD – 4K random write (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random write queue depth profile
For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.
A detailed view of the performance of the Corsair
Force LX SSD with various Queue Depths.
IOMeter 4K random read test.
If there are many 4k files created, then
that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.
Queue depth 1
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
Here is a more detailed view of the performance
of the Corsair Force LX SSD at different Queue Depths.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very
important; in this test sequential writing performance is measured.
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD 512K Sequential write with repeating data
Again the Corsair Force LX SSD is limited
by its write performance.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
This read shows the opposite result from
the write test, as here the Corsair Force LX is on top of the chart with its
sequential performance.
IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).
When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64
(threaded).
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD – Workstation simulation
Finishing this set of tests the Corsair
Force LX SSD ends up in the middle. Again, a very good result for the Corsair
SSD.
Summary
The only limiting factor for the Corsair
Force LX SSD is its write speed, but we expected this from this drive, the rest
of the performance is very good for its class.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Corsair Force LX SSD
performs using Anvil's Storage utilities....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.
Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.
I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.
I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.
- 0 fill (100% compressible data)
- Application simulation profile (46%
compressed) - 100% (non compressible data)
So let’s begin the tests.
0 fill
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (0 fill)
Results
are ranked by highest total score.
The Corsair Force LX doesn’t like
compressible data, and also in this test it shows a slow overall performance.
Application profile
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
In this test we start to see some
performance from the Corsair Force LX, the drive manages to get close to the
middle of the pack.
100% incompressible
Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the total highest score.
It’s clear that the Corsair Force LX likes to
handle incompressible data, and it not only beats the Force LS, but it’s also
able to give a better result than the Kingston HyperX 3K.
Summary
Corsair’s Force LX SSD is showing some very
good read speed but unfortunately the slow write speed continues to push the drive
away from the middle of the chart. Overall the Force LX is a drive that has
very good performance.
Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....
It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.
From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.
Real
world copy tests
I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.
As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.
Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.
As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.
Copy tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)
I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD, and as we can see the Corsair
Force LX SSD gave a very good result.
Copy tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, and this time I
will be copying 3.377 picture files that are stored in the RAM disk to the Corsair
Force LX SSD. Again the result is very good for the Force LX SSD.
Copy Tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task, in
this test there are two files, an MKV and an SRT file. The Corsair Force LX continues
to give the same, very good, performance.
WinRAR – Compressing and extracting a full DVD
For this test, I copied the contents of the
'Iron Man' movie to the hard drive, then used WinRAR to compress the movie, and
also to decompress it. In WinRAR I used the store setting. Now let's see how
the tested SSD performs.
I was surprised by this result, the Force
LX required a few extra seconds to finish this test.
Windows start-up and closedown based on the Event Viewer
Logs
Start-up & Shutdown time
The next two screen shots were taken after I'd
installed all the drivers and software that I use every day. Below are the
results.
Used
state boot time in measured in milliseconds.
Used
state shutdown, again measured in milliseconds.
It’s clear that the Corsair Force LX SSD is
giving a very good performance, as both start-up and shutdown times are
impressive. However you have to keep in mind that over time these figures will
change.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly
something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk,
then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications,
most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)
Now let’s see
how the Corsair Force LX SSD performs
with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.
The procedure
followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and
used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.
The Corsair Force LX SSD isn’t showing the
performance that I would like in this test, thankfully it's a task that you only
have to do once.
Speed degradation after heavy testing
On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.
I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when
the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive performs
with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its capacity, use
the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark. The same
procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be filled
close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will simply
delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that the
controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.
Here is the first test run that I did for
the Corsair Force LX SSD, when the drive has only the necessary drives and
applications that I need. The first result is very close to the one that I got
when I ran my synthetic benchmarks.
After filling the drive with data, up to
50% of its capacity, we can see a small drop in the performance of the Corsair
Force LX SSD.
It’s not a very common thing to leave less than
4GB of free space on an SSD, and it’s very unlike to happen. However I tried to
replicate this scenario on the Corsair Force LX so that we can get a better
idea of the performance that the tested drive will give. It was expected to see
a drop in performance, and the Corsair Force LX SSD shows that drop. There is
no reason to push your SSD that far though.
Removing all the unnecessary files and
applications, then allowing the drive to have a few minutes for TRIM to work, I
can now re-run the AS SSD benchmark. I was not surprised, the Corsair Force LX
was able to restore its performance, and give an even better result.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
Conclusion:
Let us summarise the most important
positive and negative points below:
Positives:
- 3 year warranty.
- Power efficient.
- Read speeds are very high.
- 7mm thick SSD.
- Excellent TRIM operation
Negatives:
- Write speed could have been a little
higher.
To sum up, this is what I would say:
As I said in the beginning of my review, SSDs
are moving forward at a vast rate, but we still need drives that are pushing the
price down that also have very good performance. That’s where the Corsair LX
256GB SSD comes in, as a low cost SSD with very good performance as your main
drive. The thing that caught my attention was TRIM, as the drive showed some
impressive performance and was able to reach a fresh out of the box state very
easily. The three year warranty is something that also gives points to the
Force LX. The Force LX showed some very good read speed in my real world tests and
synthetic benchmarks, and at the same time Corsair is keeping the price down.
But does this mean that you will have to sacrifice something? You sacrifice some
write speed, but in a real use scenario you wouldn't be able to notice this.
I know that it’s a compromise that you have
to make, but the question is “does this makes any difference in real life?”. The
answer depends on your use. If you are someone that wants to replace the 750GB
HDD that came with your Dell laptop (like I did), then you can only gain from
this change. In my case an SSD like Corsair’s Force LX was the piece that was
missing from my laptop, after that you will be getting the maximum out of your
hardware and all this from a value update that will make your life faster.
The parting sentence is:
“Corsair’s Force LX is a drive that
delivers what it promises, you should check this drive if you are looking for a
new value SSD.”
I therefore give the 'Very good' rating to
the Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark for providing a
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