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With the release of Intels X79 chipset and new 2011 socket it was only a matter of time before we saw Motherboards aimed at the gamer. X79 brings Quad Channel memory architecture and PCI 3.0 supporting the RAM and Video Cards respectively. Finally we get to take a look at the infamous ASRock Fatal1ty Professional Motherboard with the new X79 Chipset. The new X79 chipset brings PCI3.0 and Quad Channel Ram onto the Intel market. PCI3.0 is aimed squarely at gamers because of its throughput for the latest high end GPUs and this board has 4x of them. Fatal1ty has always been aimed at the power-user and gamer and they have (seemingly) not disappointed at first glance. All of this leaves us excited to get our hands on the board. ASRock has given us this boiled down spec sheet which leave us drooling...
Our SSD analysis today is going to be on both the 256GB and 512GB versions of the OCZ Vertex 4 SATA 3 SSD and you are going to need to take a seat for this. We guarantee that there has never been an SSD capable of creating such a stir in the SSD world and will not be at any time in the near future. In fact, I will guarantee that you will look at solid state drives in an entirely new light by the time you’re finished reading this report. After all, the Vertex 4 is truly the first of its kind.
When i first started using a personal computer i remember that i chose a configuration with an 300MB hard disk drive which was not only the highest capacity drive available at the time but it also cost as much as half of the entire system. Almost 22 years later technology has advanced to a level where a person can actually purchase one of the latest entry level 4TB hard disk drives (4000000MB) for less than USD350/300Euros, currently that is since prices tend to fall. Hitachi GST has already released 3 different 4TB HDD models in the market, two in their Deskstar consumer oriented line and one in their Ultrastar enterprise line. Today with us we have the high end consumer model, the Deskstar 7K4000 (HDS724040ALE640) and as usual it will go through rigorous testing to see just how well it performs compared to other hard disk drives in the market.
We were picked up from the Hsin Chu high speed rail station by our friendly marketing contact at Kingston who drove us directly to Kingston's ten SMT-line ready Taiwan factory, which is about 15 minutes from our entry point back to Taipei. We were told that this factory only (we laughed when Kingston said its Taiwan facility is a small operation) has 600 employees.
With the introduction set, it brings us to the reason for this article and that is our factory tour. We were exclusively invited into the Kingston factory where few media have been and got shown the process of making an SSD from start to finish. Due to media restrictions, we were not allowed to produce a video of the tour, but we were allowed to take photos. Obviously Kingston is a market leader in memory and SSD products and there is plenty of sensitive machinery and such - and we needed to respect that and their rules.
OWC has jumped feet first into the Enterprise space with the new OWC Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G SSD. Leveraging one of the fastest controllers on the planet, the LSI SF-2582 in tandem with Toshibas Enterprise Toggle Synchronous eMLC NAND, this SSD promises the absolute best in long term performance and endurance. OWC is also throwing in an outstanding industry-leading 7 Year Warranty with this product.
Over the last couple of weeks we've seen some pretty amazing SSDs. You know when you are doing one thing, but really want to work on something else? That is what I've been going through these last couple of weeks. The reason why is because Corsair has taken another approach in order to achieve modest performance improvements.
We've seen the SandForce SF-2282 controller used on a retail consumer drive one other time, but it's implementation was identical to the SF-2281 configuration. The SF-2282 is identical to the 2281 in every way except one, the number of byte lanes, moving from 8 to 16. We've speculated for some time that the SF-2282 was used on most if not all 480GB models, but we've yet to see one to confirm. Ironically we'll have our first 480GB drive in the lab tomorrow.
It wasn’t so long ago that we had a sit down with Crucial/Micron at Storage Visions 2012 and they spoke of their SSD plans for the year, the Adrenaline Caching SSD and production of a mSATA SSD being high priorities on the list. Shortly after that venture, we reviewed the Adrenaline and here we are back once again with announcement, and full review, of the new Micron C400 SATA 3 Client mSATA SSD. The C400 is not a retail item, however, fret not as we are sure that release of the M4 mSATA can’t be far behind.
Our SSD report today examines the Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SATA 3 SSD, ’3k’ signifying Kingston’s move to the more economical 3k PE (program/erase cycles) rated NAND for increased consumer value. For the typical consumer, this will mean little as their new HyperX 3k will still last years, however, interestingly enough, Kingston claims no performance loss for the better value and this is definitely encouraging.
The idea behind the Crucial Adrenaline and Nvelo's Dataplex software is that we drop in the SSD and use it as a high speed cache which allows our system to perform faster while using an existing mechanical drive for storage. Today we take a look at this solution to find out if it is the ideal solution for those who might not have the budget for a high end/capacity SSD.
One of the biggest issues with SSD right now is the price. But Crucial has come up with a solution. With the Crucial Adrenaline, you can get the blazing fast speed of an SSD while maintaining the massive storage and cheap prices of a hard drive
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