Aimed at the professional market, the storage devices will start selling in July

Jun 5, 2012 11:48 GMT  ·  By

For people who want some fast solid-state drives, Corsair has developed the Neutron Series, which don't use any of the controllers so far advertised.

We can't really guarantee that the storage devices will be cheaper than SandForce or other high-end models, but we suspect they will be, since the write speed isn't as high here.

Sure, the read rate of 555 MB/s is pretty much the maximum so far achieved over SATA 6.0 Gbps, but the 370 MB/s write speed lags quite a bit behind the theoretical 500+ MB/s of SandForce.

Then again, real world performance of SF-enabled SSDs doesn't easily reach that potential.

Anyway, the Neutron Series of solid-state drives that Corsair has just launched is designed with the LM87800 6 Gb/s SSD controller from Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD).

The capacities are 120 GB and 240 GB, while the random read/write performance is of 90,000 / 85,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).

For those unaware, random performance is relevant during data-intensive tasks, when different bits of information have to be constantly accessed. Since 90,000 is a fairly high number, it makes sense that Corsair would mean for the Neutron SSDs to be sold to enterprise customers and mobile PC makers.

Of course, consumers won't be barred from ordering one or two of these things, when availability ramps up in July.

In addition to the regular Neutron line, Corsair has introduced the Neutron Series GTX, which comes in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB. The random performance is 90,000 for both reading and writing and the sustained data scribing speed can reach 500 MB/s, not just 370 MB/s.

Corsair will sell Neutron GTX mostly to content creators and other IT professionals.

"The Neutron Series SSDs, a strategic collaboration between Corsair and LAMD, reflects the shared commitment to performance, quality, and reliability ingrained in our companies," said Thi La, vice president of memory products at Corsair. "Together we've raised the standard for SSDs, and we have more exciting products on the way."

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