Corsair Force F40 40GB SSD Review

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

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