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
Final Words
Corsair's Performance Series Pro is very fast, and well behaved. Its power consumption is also nice and low, making it a good fit for notebook users. In the end, it all boils down to pricing. SSD pricing is highly volatile - at the time of publication the Performance Series Pro, at least at Newegg, came in a bit too high.
Given the solid track record of Samsung's SSD 830 and its good performance, we really need to see pricing more in-line with it or Crucial's m4 for the Performance Series Pro to make sense. If you come across one of these drives on a good sale however, don't hesitate to pull the trigger.
Longer term there are always concerns about Marvell's ability to deliver timely firmware updates to its customers who lack their own internal firmware teams. It's because of this that pricing is even more important to get right.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (5/14/2012) | ||||
| 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
| Corsair Performance Series Pro | N/A | $200 | $340 | N/A |
| Plextor M3 | $130 | $180 | $340 | $660 |
| Crucial m4 | $80 | $120 | $250 | $600 |
| Intel 520 Series | $113 | $179 | $331 | $825 |
| Samsung 830 Series | $100 | $130 | $310 | $710 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | $165 | $110 | $250 | $650 |
| OCZ Vertex 4 | N/A | $150 | $300 | $650 |
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FunBunny2 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
-- Only Intel uses in-house firmware whereas the rest use the firmware that SandForce provides.OCZ seems to say that they do their own firmware. How to know which is which?
SilthDraeth - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Doesn't Samsung use their own firmware also?Operandi - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Samsung uses their own everything.vol7ron - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Can someone do a follow-up to see that those Sequential Read numbers are right for the Vertex 4?It just seems odd that the Vertex-4 bested the Vertex-3 on everything, but was significantly lower with Seq.Read
SSD_Privacy - Thursday, May 17, 2012 - link
Yes Samsung does, but does it erase your data when it says it does? The Corsair, OCZ etc.?http://www.usenix.org/event/fast11/tech/full_paper...
According to this paper SSD's are very insecure. One drive reported that the data was gone when in fact all of the data was recoverable.
Which drive was that? This paper does not tell us that. It would be very helpful if Anandtech would replicate this study and tell us which drives performed in what capacity. Much more helpful than whether drive A performed a write/read 10kb/sec faster than drive B.
appliance5000 - Friday, May 18, 2012 - link
I might be misunderstanding what's being said here, but unless you do a "secure empty trash" all that's happening when you empty the trash is that you're telling the computer that it can write over the sectors that were "emptied". The trashed data is actually still there until overwritten and thus recoverable. This is true with all drives.SSD_Privacy - Saturday, May 19, 2012 - link
SSD drives do not store data as platter drives do. An SSD drive has a controller on board that is independent of the operating system. Data is stored all over the drive at random and tracked by the controller and firmware. When you use Secure Delete Trash or Eraser on a file stored on a platter drive it will erase the data, but used on an SSD the operating system is blind to the actual location of the file.The controller removes data using its firmware "garbage collection" to prepare it for new writing. In addition, some drives have significant space that is not accessible by the user that stores and rewrites data, so if you do a full wipe none of that data will be wiped. Also some data was found to be recoverable on one drive after twenty wipes had been performed due to how the wipe was implemented by the controller on that SSD.
exallium - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
I believe Crucial uses the Marvell controller on the M4Kristian Vättö - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
To clarify: I was referring strictly to SandForce based SSDs. Only Intel has a custom firmware in their SandForce based 520 and 330 series SSDs - other OEMs use the firmware that SandForce provides.When we hop off the SandForce train, custom firmwares are much more common. Samsung makes everything from DRAM to firmware, Micron/Crucial uses Marvell controller but everything else is in-house, OCZ uses (possibly custom) Marvell controller in Vertex 4 but in-house firmware, and so on.
Tommyv2 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
How come there's no Plextor M3 Pro review, or at least including it in the charts? That's the one to beat, not the stock M3. It's supposed to be the "best of the best" of Marvell drives and AT has ignored it...