Corsair Performance Series Pro (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on May 14, 2012 9:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Corsair
- Marvell
- Corsair Performance Pro
Corsair Performance Pro: Packaging and Internals
Corsair Performance Series Pro comes in a compact cardboard box. The box is smaller than most SSD packages I've seen, but it has everything that is necessary: 3.5" bracket, quick installation guide, mounting screws and of course the SSD itself. Unfortunately there is no cloning utility included, which is something you would expect from a high-end drive.
The chassis is made out of brushed metal like most SSDs are nowadays. It feels robust and very well built. Like 2.5" drives in general, the Performance Pro has height of 9.5mm and may hence not be suitable for all ultrabooks.
Heat dissipation is handled by 11 thermal pads: One for the controller, eight for NAND packages and two for DRAMs. The internal layout is a match with Plextor's M3.
From inside, the Performance Pro is identical to the Plextor M3. There are eight quad-die 32GB NAND packages (TH58TEG8D2HBA8C) on the PCB. As with the M3, the NAND is Toggle-Mode MLC NAND manufactured by Toshiba. The DRAM chips are from Nanya and there are two 256MB DDR3-1333 chips on the board. Thermal pads make photographing a bit more difficult since some residue is left on the surface of the chips, so my apologies if you can't see the markings clearly.
On the other side of the PCB, we find Marvell's 88SS9174-BLD2 controller, again exactly the same as used in Plextor M3. Is it just a coincidence that these two SSDs are so similar or is there a reason behind it? It's time to find out!
Plextor M3 Pro and M3 on the top and Corsair Performance Series Pro underneath the two
Neither Plextor or Corsair manufactures the drives they sell. Both companies buy their drives from Lite-On and if you take a look at Lite-On's M3S SSD, it seems a lot like Corsair's Performance Series Pro and Plextor's SSDs, doesn't it? That's why the hardware of the Performance Pro and M3 is the same—they come from the same plant. However, it should be kept in mind that hardware is only one part of the equation.
As you will see in our tests, the Performance Pro and M3 do not perform the same. This is due to firmware differences. Corsair uses a stock firmware provided by Marvell while Plextor has a whole R&D team dedicated to their SSD firmware development. In other words, Plextor uses an in-house firmware which is also the reason for differences in performance. Whether Plextor's firmware is a tweaked stock firmware or totally built from a scratch I don't know, but either way it's not the same as what Corsair uses.
The Test
| CPU |
Intel Core i5-2500K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo and EIST enabled) |
| Motherboard |
AsRock Z68 Pro3 |
| Chipset |
Intel Z68 |
| Chipset Drivers |
Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel RST 10.2 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 2 x 4GB (9-9-9-24) |
| Video Card |
XFX AMD Radeon HD 6850 XXX (800MHz core clock; 4.2GHz GDDR5 effective) |
| Video Drivers | AMD Catalyst 10.1 |
| Desktop Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| OS | Windows 7 x64 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
41 Comments
View All Comments
SlyNine - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Put a M4 in my GF's computer and she has had no problems at all. Friend also has one and again no problems.Just because you have had issues doesn't mean someone else will, if they were that easily repeatable they would be easy to fix.
ShieTar - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Why does this article contain two tables with the exactly same lable "NewEgg Price Comparison (5/5/2012)" but very different numbers?Kristian Vättö - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
If you loaded the article right when it went live, it's possible that you saw two different tables. I updated the prices just before I posted this, but forgot to copy-paste the new table to the final page. Both tables should be up to date now, though.CyberAngel_777 - Thursday, May 17, 2012 - link
I wish you had two different dates and prices just show the price fluctuationsand then later with updated data also updated prices
every drive should have thickness data recorded
thank you!
Coroder - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Does the vertex 4 drive in this test use the new firmware that was made available? It increases the speed in most tests by quite a bit.XJDHDR - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
I believe they are waiting for the firmware to come out of beta testing.jwilliams4200 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Lite-On owns Plextor, so it is misleading to say that Plextor buys the SSDs from Lite-On. It would be more accurate to say that the Plextor / Lite-On relationship is like the Crucial / Micron relationship.koinkoin - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
At my company we use McAfee Endpoint Encryption, how does this affect the performance of the drives and how much does this change over time?I went for a Plextor M3 256GB and seem to be working fine as for now, but only got it now for 2weeks.
rlhunts - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
My company also uses the McAfee Endpoint Encryption. I upgraded the WD 250 GB 7200 RPM drive to a Samsung 830 258 GB SSD in my Dell laptop (I5 2540M processor) a couple months ago. It definitely helps, especially with boot time, but McAfee EE adds a lot of processor overhead, which a drive can't help with. It's still slow as a slug compared to the same machine and software configuration without McAfee with a traditional 7200 rpm hard disk.Movieman420 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
In all fairness the Vertex 4 needs to be re-tested with the latest 1.4RC fw...or wait til it's final then flash up.