Corsair's 128gb MLC SSD - CMFSSD-128GBG1D

Product link

Rated specs of 90MB/s read and 70MB/s write.

HDTune w/ most accurate and 8mb
HDTach w/ long bench
ATTO default

Desktop: E7200 stock, Gigabyte P35-DS3R, 8gb DDR2, Vista Home Premium 64-bit







Netbook: Eee 1000H, 2gb DDR2, Vista Ultimate 32-bit






Subjective experience so far is that it definitely feels as fast as both the Titan and the Core V1 w/ SteadyState. Obviously, since it has a Samsung controller and not the dreaded JMicron, there are zero stuttering issues. It also runs much cooler than the Titan. Where both this drive and the Core gave me about 5-5.5 hours of battery life on the 1000H, the Titan brought me down to 4.5. The Titan was also hot to the touch and I couldn't tolerate sitting the 1000H on my lap with the Titan inside whereas the Core and Corsair are both just warm and definitely fine for roaming netbook use.

What's interesting is ATTO showing consistency with the rated specs whereas HDTune and HDTach go all over the place, with the benches from the desktop showing more than twice as much as the rated read speed! I hope some good standard accurate benchmarking programs designed specifically for SSDs come out soon.

I'll be using this drive for the rest of the week and will post any further relevant experiences.

For anyone interested, the Titan's up for sale in the classifieds.

Wow, thanks for the update. I've been considering buying this drive myself given the Samsung controller and extra space compared to the X25-M.

How do you feel about the overall performance?

I've read a few posts from folks who guess that it's a rebadged Samsung drive, and performance would be somewhat lackluster compared to a regular HD (say, Caviar Black or VR.) Ignoring the idea of RAID, do you think it lives up to the sort of "instant on" reputation of SSDs?

EDIT: Before I mangle words too much, I just figure at $300 or so, it's worth it to buy a really fast, bottleneck killer SSD even if it's small. If the Corsair lives up to that without any of those stuttering issues, I'm in. Otherwise, I can only hope the Vertex can do it...?

Anyone who tells you the performance of this drive is lackluster compared to a regular HD has no idea what they're talking about.

I think instant on reputation comes from much more expensive SLC drives that boot up in 15 seconds. That reputation doesn't apply for MLC drives although boot times are still faster than compared to mechanical drives. On my netbook, I'm at the Vista Ultimate desktop within 30 seconds or less. Apps load and install much faster compared to mechanical drives and the overall experience is much smoother.

After using both the Titan and the Corsair, here's what I think. Neither have stuttering issues, both have lots of space, both are similarly priced and both are very fast. But, 1. the Titan runs hotter and uses more battery life compared to the Corsair and 2. the Titan is faster with regards to read/write so long as you're not limited to a SATA I controller.

If you have a desktop, go with the Titan. If you have a netbook, go with the Corsair. If you have a laptop, it depends on what kind of laptop. For a desktop replacement that'll be sitting in one place most of the time, then the Titan. For something that requires more portability and battery life, and will be sitting on your lap every now and then, go for the Corsair.

I think whichever you decide to go with will give you a much better much faster experience compared to what you'd get with a traditional hard drive.

so maybe I'm out of the loop, but whats the jump in read speed from 90mb/s to 160mb/s?

I think it's a glitch from HDTach and HDTune not being designed explicitly for SSDs. You'll notice that the ATTO benchmarks are consistent with the rated read/writes.

Is there some other way I can test the read speeds aside from a benchmark? Any real life indicators?

Ashura said:

I think instant on reputation comes from much more expensive SLC drives that boot up in 15 seconds. That reputation doesn't apply for MLC drives although boot times are still faster than compared to mechanical drives. On my netbook, I'm at the Vista Ultimate desktop within 30 seconds or less. Apps load and install much faster compared to mechanical drives and the overall experience is much smoother.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I suppose I'm speaking of the wrong thing here. It's not necessarily that important that Windows turns on like a light (to be honest, my Windows 7 boot-time is sub 20 seconds on an old HD anyways) but if apps are loading and responding snappier, that's worth a lot to me. Thanks

Ashura said:

After using both the Titan and the Corsair, here's what I think. Neither have stuttering issues,

Click to expand...

Now this, I have a read a *lot* of differing opinions about. Maybe 50/50 on people encountering stutter vs. no stutter on the Titan. Difficult to sort through the FUD, but I have to say the jmicron controller really does concern me.

Ashura said:

If you have a desktop, go with the Titan. If you have a netbook, go with the Corsair. I think whichever you decide to go with will give you a much better much faster experience compared to what you'd get with a traditional hard drive.

Click to expand...

It's a desktop, so I suppose what I'd like to know is whether the speed difference is actually that tangible in real-world use. If they are both clearly heads above a typical rotating hard drive, then I would likely stick with the Corsair just to avoid the headaches. (I'm not too worried about heat, but no, I don't have any sort of cooling system pointing at/near the drives.)

Ashura said:

Is there some other way I can test the read speeds aside from a benchmark? Any real life indicators?

Click to expand...

Probably been mentioned here, but the big real life indicator of general SSD use is how well it handles lots of Firefox tab loads. I keep hearing about the jmicron drives stuttering under pressure as the profile / window history keeps getting saved during browsing?

Yes, real world speeds are definitely heads above mechanical drives. And sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Titan needs active cooling. It would do just fine without it, only wanted to point out that it is hotter (very important factor for a netbook user like myself).

And, I've had, at times, at least 80 Google Chrome tabs open along with 25 or so Firefox tabs, with no stuttering. Only time I had a slowdown was due to the limitations of the Atom on flash heavy sites. That's with both the Titan and the Corsair.

Ashura said:

Yes, real world speeds are definitely heads above mechanical drives. And sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Titan needs active cooling. It would do just fine without it, only wanted to point out that it is hotter (very important factor for a netbook user like myself).

And, I've had, at times, at least 80 Google Chrome tabs open along with 25 or so Firefox tabs, with no stuttering. Only time I had a slowdown was due to the limitations of the Atom on flash heavy sites. That's with both the Titan and the Corsair.

Click to expand...

Hmm, okay, thanks. Interesting that you had no problems with the Titan either, I wonder what the stuttering was all about. Anyway it sounds like I may need to buy that Corsair then. The Vertex is tempting (64MB cache!) but it's also 50% more money compared to the Titan/Corsair. Not sure if doubled transfer rates are worth that.

EDIT: The other thing I heard mentioned was the concept of SSDs slowing down after being completely filled since they have to move to read-erase-write from read-write once they run out of empty blocks. Have you tried filling the drive yet? Or was that all nonsense?

Your netbook impressions were great too, btw. I have a Lenovo X41 tablet that has to use a 1.8" 4200RPM HD (SATA); I'm hoping when Sandisk or whomever starts shipping the 1.8" I can swap that in and dramatically boost the reliability and responsiveness of the laptop.

Thanks for the review Ashura.

I was about to pull the trigger on the corsair but upon looking at newegg today, it looks like they had a price drop on the OCZ Apex 120gb drive. Its now $319 with a $20 MIR bring it to $299.00. the price difference between it and the corsair is negligible, $20, and you lose 8GB but the read/writes are supposed to be much better. I'm going to give it a shot. benchmarkreviews gave it pretty good marks too. we'll see.

rza49311: If you haven't made the purchase yet, I'd advise waiting for the G.Skill Titan 128gb to come back in stock. The price should become competitive with the Apex and performance is supposed to better according to bit-tech who reviewed both the Apex and the Titan: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/02/09/ocz-apex-120gb-ssd-review/7

I recommend the Corsair for laptops/netbooks that depend on low heat and low power, but for desktops and laptops where heat and power aren't that important, I recommend the Titan.

Hey Ashura,

Thanks for taking the time to post your findings and opinions. This info is not only interesting, but useful for perspective buyers like me.

baditude_df: No problem, threads like this at ocforums have helped me out a lot over the years so I'm more than happy to give back what little I can.

puzzlemouse said:

The other thing I heard mentioned was the concept of SSDs slowing down after being completely filled since they have to move to read-erase-write from read-write once they run out of empty blocks. Have you tried filling the drive yet? Or was that all nonsense?

Click to expand...

I don't think you have to worry. SSDs "erase" large blocks repeatedly throughout the life of the drive, any "erasing" that you have to do once the SSD is filled won't permanently somehow change the way the SSD handles reads/writes. I put the word erase in quotation marks because it's not really describing the process correctly, but it works fine for the purpose of this discussion.

You can learn more about the process at anandtech's excellent in-depth article on SSDs here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=3