14 DAY TRIAL // With the rapid and rather widespread adoption of the SandForce controller in solid state drives, it was not exactly surprising to hear of Corsair entering the fray. Not long ago, the company announced the Force series, SSDs based on multi-level cell NAND flash chips, operating on the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface. The two units, the 100GB and 200GB versions, were described as the fastest SSDs from Corsair to date and were slated to start selling during the next few weeks. Their price, unfortunately, was not disclosed, but they have finally been listed on Scan.
"The Force Series are the fastest SSDs that Corsair has launched to date," stated Kevin Conley, Vice President of Engineering at Corsair. "We have been very impressed with the SandForce SSD Processor innovations in the months that we have been working with them, and we can't wait to get these extraordinarily fast SSDs into the hands of our most demanding customers."
“The SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor employs revolutionary flash management technology to create a new class of SSD with unparalleled performance and reliability,” said Thad Omura, Vice President of Marketing at SandForce. “We have enjoyed working closely with Corsair to bring this exciting technology to market for Corsair’s large worldwide network of system builders, retailers, and computing enthusiasts.”
The actual read and write speeds of the two solid state drives are 285 MB/s and 275 MB/s respectively, whereas the MTBF is estimated at 1 million hours. Naturally, when seeing such numbers, one expects the prices to be consistently large and, sure enough, the online listings seem to confirm this idea.
The 100GB model carries a price tag of £333.19, which translates into roughly $502 or 369 Euro. As for the 200GB version, the price is set at £578.44, the equivalent of $872 and 641 Euro. These prices are rather high, but they place the two units on about the same playing field as OCZ's Vertex LE.
The Force drives are accompanied by a two-year warranty.