Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB review

1. Introduction2. Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Real Life File Testing9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

It's been quite a while since we looked at anything from Corsair's storage division but today we look at the new top end high-performance SSD family, the Neutron XTi. The new drives replace the old but ageing flagship series, the Neutron XT.

Just like the Neutron XT, the XTi  uses the Phison PS3110 S10 controller but this time it is paired with Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND. The XT series used 19nm NAND.

At the time of writing this review, there are three capacities making up the XTi series; 240GB, 480GB and the current flagship 960GB. We say current flagship as there is a 1.9TB model rumoured to be in the pipeline.

Performance figures quoted by Corsair for the 480GB model are up to 560MB/s and 540MB/s  for sequential read/writes respectively with 4K Random IOPS performance of up to 100,000 IOPS for reads and 90,000 IOPS for writes. The 480GB Neutron XTi has a quoted endurance of 320TBW which works out to around 175GB writes per day over the 5-year warranty that Corsair back the drive with.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 240GB, 480GB, 960GB
NAND Components: Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND
Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Form Factor: 2.5in, 7mm
NAND Controller: Phison PS3110 S10
Dimensions: 100 x 70 x 7mm
Drive Weight: 55g

Firmware Version SAFC02.3

The front of the box features an image of the drive, its capacity and its headline sequential and 4K random IOPS performance numbers. There's also a small list of the drives other features.

On the rear of the box is just some multi lingual marketing text. The only thing bundled in the box is a 2mm spacer to allow the drive to be fitted securely into larger notebooks.

 

The Corsair Neutron XTi is built on a standard 2.5in, 7mm format and the drive stands out from the crowd thanks to its bright red finished metal casing.

The enclosure is of the clip type so to ruin your warranty you need a very small blade to persuade the clips to release.

The Neutron XTi 480GB is another drive whose PCB doesn't fill the enclosure. The top side of the board holds four 64GB Toshiba 15mn MLC NAND packages (coded TP79G5LASA) and a single Nanya NT5CC256M16DP-DI 512MB DDR3-1600 cache IC.

On the flip side of the PCB are four more 64GB Toshiba 15nm NAND packages, the Phison PS3110-S10-X controller and another 512MB cache IC, giving the drive a raw capacity of 512GB with 1GB of cache.

  

Phison's PS3110-S10-X controller is quad core chip (with three cores solely dedicated to Flash management) supporting up to 8-channels of NAND and four-way interleaving. It supports both MLC and TLC  NAND (its Phison's first TLC capable controller) and 256-bit AES encryption as well as end-to-end data path protection.

         
Corsair's SSD management software goes by the name of SSD Toolbox (at the time of writing it's version 1.2.4.2) and is available as a download from Corsair's website.  The open page of the utility provides detailed information about the drive and the ability to check for firmware updates and to implement them.

The next section provides the means to manually adjust the Over Provisioning for the drive. A third page provides S.M.A.R.T details and the Toolbox also provides disk cloning, Trim command scheduling and secure erase support.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main system:
Intel Core i7 4790K with 16GB of DDR3-2133 RAM, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an ASRock Extreme 6 motherboard.

Other drives
Crucial BX100 500GB
Crucial MX100 512GB
Crucial MX200 500GB
Intel SSD730 480GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 480GB
OCZ Trion 100 480GB
OCZ Trion 150 480GB
Patriot Ignite 480GB
PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB
Samsung 830 512GB
Samsung 840DC EVO 480GB
Samsung 840DC PRO 400GB
SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB
Seagate 600 480GB
SK Hynix Canvas SL300 512GB
SK Hynix Canvas SL301 500GB
Toshiba THNSNF512GCSS 512GB
Transcend SSD220S 480GB
Transcend SSD370S 512GB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
AS SSD.
IOMeter

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3.

 
Corsair's Neutron XTi performs well at a queue depth of 32 for both read and writes and is also shows pretty strong write performance at a queue depth of 1. However at this queue depth the read performance isn't as strong.

Looking at both sets of results the Phison PS3110 S10 controller shows a marked preference for compressible data especially when it comes to read performance, as can be seen by the read results in the 0 fill test.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.

Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Corsair quote sequential read/write figures for the Neutron XTi 480GB at up to 560MB/s and 540MB/s respectively which are confirmed by the ATTO benchmark, putting the drive firmly into the top 5 fastest 480-512GB 2.5in class drives we've tested to date.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

The impressive performance continues with the AS SSD benchmark where the drive flies into the number one slot on our graph. The drive has particularly strong 4K performance at deeper queue depths while the 4K write performance at shallower depths is also pretty good. Not so strong is the 4K read performance at a shallow queue depth.

IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will sometimes differ from manufacturer’s quoted ratings. We do test all drives in exactly the same way, so the results are directly comparable.

 
Corsair quote 4K random performance for the drive at  up 100,000 IOPS for reads and up 90,000 IOPS for writes which once again are confirmed by a benchmark in this case, IOmeter. Once again it shows just how strong a performer the Neutron XTi is.

To test real life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of  drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.

60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files).
10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of .png, raw and .jpeg images).
10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files).

The drive seems to handle large file sizes much better than small bity files particularly when it comes to reading them. This can be seen with the read figures for both the 50GB file and the 60GB Steam folder as compared to the larger media file transfers.

It's been a while since we seen any new SSD's from Corsair let alone a flagship one so the arrival of the Neutron XTi is very welcomed. Corsair haven't tried to re-invent the wheel with the XTi but rather they have taken a fast performing drive in the shape of the Neutron XT and given it an upgrade by using more up to date NAND and a hefty chunk of DDR3 cache.

Performance wise the 480GB XTi is very impressive. For the 480GB drive Corsair quote 560MB/s and 540MB/s for sequential read/writes respectively and up to 100,000 IOPS for 4K random reads and 90,000 IOPS for 4K random writes. These were confirmed by our benchmarks which produced figures pretty much bang on with the official figures.

The only real fly in the ointment is the pricing. We found the drive on Scan HERE for £189.98 which is some twenty quid more than the Neutron XT it replaces and puts it right up at the top end of the 480GB/515GB market segment. The trouble with that is it puts in direct competition with the 512GB version of Samsung's mighty 850PRO which has more technically advanced NAND and is around a tenner cheaper.

Pros

• Excellent all-round performance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• A bit pricey.

Kitguru says: Corsair are back with a bang – the Neutron XTi delivers great results. It's a fast drive but we hope prices will drop by £20 in the coming weeks.

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