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I have been exceptionally impressed with the latest Corsair Neutron Solid State Drives. Adopting the new LM87800 controller may have been considered as risky, but we feel it was a necessary move if Corsair wanted to stand out in market saturated with Sandforce 2281 powered drives.
The vanilla Corsair Neutron is a little slower than the GTX counterpart, but both versions are capable of delivering substantial bandwidth with sequential transfers, equally strong with incompressible and compressible data.
Regular readers will remember our review of the OCZ Vertex 4, which uses the Indilinx Everest 2 controller. Both Vertex 4 and Neutron solid state solutions are batting at class leading levels.
AS SSD results of close to 1000 points would verify the potency when forced to deal with pure incompressible data. This is a significantly stronger result than any Sandforce 2281 solution on the market.
Neutron IOPS performance is simply outstanding, capable of sustaining random 4k read/write levels between 83,000 and 86,000. These are some of the highest results we have recorded yet from a consumer level solid state solution and certainly a primary characteristic worth considering if you are contemplating a purchase.
The GTX version of the drive has stronger sequential write performance, due to the high grade Toshiba Toggle Mode 24nm NAND flash memory. Both drives however are phenomenal performers.
The Neutron and Neutron GTX are competitively priced in the United Kingdom, with Overclockers offering a week long deal at time of publication, dropping the price even further. The Neutron 240GB is available for £169.99 inc vat. The Neutron GTX 240GB is available for £199.99 inc vat.
Pros:
- Balanced high performance with incompressible and compressible data.
- class leading IOPS performance.
- slim line 7mm chassis.
- 5 year warranty.
Cons:
- Not the cheapest drives on the market.
Kitguru says: We weren't expecting OCZ's Vertex 4 to come under threat so soon, but the Neutron is a serious contender for top position.
