Corsair Force F40 40GB SSD Review

One way that I know that I’m old is when I reminisce about the first computer I ever owned, which sported a 40 MEGAbyte hard drive.  By today’s standards, you can transfer a file half-way around the world over the Internet faster than these first consumer storage devices.  Magnetic hard drives have been getting progressively faster over the decades, implementing new technologies to squeeze out bits ever faster.

The need for throughput speed has brought us to the next paradigm shift in data access: the Solid State Drive, or SSD.  If you’re any type of PC enthusiast then you know that SSDs use fast NAND flash chips to store and retrieve data, which have significantly higher throughput rates and lower access times than even the fastest of magnetic hard drives.  These drives are starting to become cheap enough that they’re within reach of the average consumer, and every computing enthusiast should have at least one.

The competition has become very fierce in the SSD market, and Corsair (known for their outstanding computer memory products), has introduced their Force Series of Solid State Drives.  These drives use fast Intel flash memory, and the highly-praised SandForce controller chip to delegate the digital bits.  Corsair sent over a pair of their F40 drives, which have a capacity of 40 Gigabytes each for us to put through the test lab.

Features

For maximum performance for the ultimate system. The Corsair Force Series SSD product line offers the highest performance in Read/Write speeds of up to a maximum read speed of 285MB/s and write speed of 275MB/s. If speed is what you are looking for and what you expect from your performance or gaming system the Corsair Force Series SSD’s are the perfect choice.

Based on the SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor, the Corsair Force Series SSD’s are the ultimate performance drive. Choose from the F40, F60, F80, F120, F160 or F240 drive for the highest performance and density. Your system will start-up faster, applications and games will load quicker and you will see a huge improvement in overall system responsiveness. The Corsair Force Series SSD is the ultimate SSD for your demanding storage requirements.

• Fast Performance — Games, applications and files load faster, while your system is more responsive
• Compatible — Proven technology with installations on tens of thousands of systems worldwide
• Flexible use — 2.5″ form factor for your notebook or netbook needs, or use with included 3.5″ bracket for your desktop computer
• Silent operation — No moving parts means zero noise and high reliability
• Low Power — Extend battery life for notebook and netbook users
• Reliable — Over 1,000,000 hours mean time between failures
• Backed by Corsair — A respected name with a passion for great service and support

Features

• Maximum sequential read speed 285 MB/second
• Maximum sequential write speed 275 MB/second
• Random 4K write performance of 50,000 IOPS (4K aligned)
• Latest generation SandForce controller and MLC NAND flash for fast performance
• Internal SATA II connectivity
• TRIM support (O/S support required)
• No moving parts for increased durability and reliability and quieter operations over standard hard disk drives
• Decreased power usage for increased notebook or netbook battery life
• 2.5″ form factor for your portable computer needs
• Included 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket for installation on your desktop computer (Not included on F40)
• Three year warranty

On the next page we take the drive apart and take a look at its offerings…

The drives look very inconspicuous, as they are encased in a thin black aluminum shell with rounded corners.  Like all SSD drives, they are 2.5 inches wide and have standard SATA data and power connectors.   The drive has eight mounting screw holes (two on the left and right sides, and four on the bottom).   The drive can be taken apart by removing four screws located at each corner on the back of the drive (two of which are concealed underneath “Warranty Voided” stickers.

The data is accessed through a SandForce SF-1222 controller chip, which is placed in the very center of the small board.   This chip supports DuraClass technology (you can read the SandForce datasheet here if you wish), which has a host of flash management features that make the most out of the NAND flash chips.  DuraWrite technology optimizes the number of program cycles to the flash chip, thereby extending its endurance by 20 times ore more.  It also supports error correction and RAISE (the Flash version of RAID), which is how the chips can be arranged in a 4-channel setup.  The chip also monitors the flash chips for wear and helps to get the most life from the drive.

SandForce SF-1222 Controller Chip is the brains of the operation

There are a total of twelve Intel-branded 29F32G08AAMD8 34nm NAND 4GB Flash chips which are arranged in a four-channel setup.  Five of the chips are on the top side of the board, and seven on the bottom of the board.  The chips are arranged in a four-channel setupFour chip slots are left vacant; one of the bottom and four on the top of the board.  If you do some quick math, you can see that these twelve chips should provide 48GB of storage space, but the extra is usually taken up in overhead.

The front and back of the controller board

A quick online price search shows how the drives differ in price, and we can quickly calculate their value:

Corsair Drive	Price	$ per Gigabyte
F40	$104	$2.60
F60	$135	$2.25
F80	$184	$2.30
F120	$229	$1.91
F240	$451	$1.80

Just like when you shop at Costco, you can get more for your money when you buy in bulk.  The problem is that most people don’t buy 10 gallons of olive oil at once, and similarly most people can’t affort a $500 drive when you can get the same capacity in a magnetic drive for less than $40.   The drives are fast, but given the prices people will opt for the sweet spot of the most drive for their money… especially when considering the limitations of smaller drives.

The Corsair F40 SSD drives were tested using a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.  The drives were tested as standalone drives.  We also tested the drives in a RAID 0 configuration for an upcoming article.  We compared the Corsair F40 to an Intel X25-V 40GB drive, which uses an older Intel G2 controller. The Asus P6X58D-E motherboard uses an Intel ICH10R southbridge which supports TRIM.

	Component Brand/Model Live Pricing Processor (CPU) Intel i7-950 Click Here Motherboard Asus P6X58D-E Click Here Memory 12GB Corsair Dominator-GT DDR3-2000 Click Here Video Card eVGA nVidia 460 GTX Video Card Click Here Boot Drive 2x Corsair F40 SSDs (Raid 0) Click Here Case Lian Li V-1020B Black Aluminum Case Click Here Power Supply NZXT HALE90 750W Click Here Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Click Here

ATTO measures how read and write transfer rates differ at different volume lengths.  The test was run with the default settings of 0.5 kilobytes to 1024 kilobytes.  The test shows that the F40 handles small file sizes very well, and has amazing read and write speeds for a single drive.  The F40 topped out at  281MB/second read speed and 228MB/second write speed.

ATTO provides more favorable results than other benchmarks, but still shows the power of the drive

We’ve used HD Tach for years to measure  random access and read/write performance of hard disk drives.  HD Tach is a low-level hardware disk benchmark that bypasses low-level software layers to measure actual performance as closely as possible.

A little dip at the beginning, but consistent throughput over the entire virtual length of the drive

As was expected, HD Tach showed a consistent performance line over the entire length of the drive, and scored an impressive 251 Megabytes per second with an amazing 0.1ms random access rate.

We recently started using AIDA64’s Disk Benchmark, which is the successor to Everest.  The Disk Benchmarks are rather comprehensive, as they can test Linear Read, Random Read, and Average Read Access performance of a storage device.  The F40 had a consistent Linear Read of 267.1 MB/s, a random read average of 250 MB/s, and a very low average read access of less than 0.1 millisecond.

AIDA64’s verdict on the F40 is about the same as the other benchies

Of course, who could forget SiSoft Sandra?  They recently released their Sandra 2011 suite, which produces some of the prettiest graphs in our benchmark testing.  Again, the Corsair F40 shows a consistent read rate of 259 Megabytes per second, while the write Drive score was lower than the other benchmarks at 209 Megabytes per second.

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Read and Write speeds

So the drive is fast.  On the next page we go over some points to consider when selecting a smaller SSD like the F40.

The performance of Corsair’s Force Series Solid-State Drives is absolutely amazing.  Matching a good SSD with your powerful rig really shows off just how fast a computer can be.  While 40GB is enough to install Windows 7 and many applications, you still have to make some compromises.  Users with small SSDs who want to boot from them will find themselves moving their User folders, virtual memory, and other operating files to a magnetic drive.  A typical installation of Windows 7 and typical applications can easily take up 30 to 40GB, even after implementing a lot of space-saving tricks.

The Corsair Force Series are amazing drives, but there are a few issues with the F40 to consider.  First, the F40 does not come with any 2.5″ to 3.5″ mounting hardware, which are included with all of the other Force Series drives.  While the F40 is the cheapest of the Force Series, but also has the highest gigabyte-per-dollar ratio.  The drives benefit from a better value ratio as the capacities increase, but for most people the F60 or F80 will be the sweet spot.  Given the fact that many people will run out of room fast with a 40GB SSD, the 60GB and 80GB versions even more appealing.

You can get better performance and double the space by pairing two cheap F40s in a RAID 0 configuration, but that’s a topic for another article.  This is essentially how OCZ is able to get double the performance with its RevoDrive card.   Most magnetic drives cannot get double the throughput when split into an array, but the F40 works beautifully in this configuration.

In addition to the blazing speed, the F40 drives are completely silent and produce no significant amount of heat.  Solid State Drives really are the way of the future, and Corsair’s Force Series is one of the best choices due to their choice of quality name-brand chips, inexpensive price points and blow-the-doors off performance.

	REPORT CARD : Corsair Force Series F40 40GB Solid State Drive category rating comments Quality 5 High quality components, Intel NAND Flash and SandForce controller chip in an aluminum case Innovation 5 Four-Channels of NAND Flash make this drive fly Performance 5 Amazing performance Installation 4 Plug and go, but the small size means you’ll have to configure Windows to not use up so much space Value 3 The only chink in the armor is the lower price-to-gigabyte ratio.  You get a better value by choosing the Corsair F60 FINAL VERDICT: 4 out of 5 stars