OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD Review

We received one of the first retail samples of the 240GB drive in an eye catching green and black box with a list of main specifications on the front.

The bundle includes an installation leaflet on the product, a tongue in cheek ‘my SSD is faster than your HDD' sticker, and the drive itself protected in an anti static bag, sandwiched inside a protective container.

The drive is finished in a traditional OCZ green and black with the name of the product on the front. A fairly standard chassis design. It is opened by removing four small screws on the rear. Please be aware if you do this, you invalidate the warranty. We don’t really care, but if you buy one, you should.

The unit we have on review is 240GB and OCZ place a NAND flash partition of 16 ICs onto the PCB. Technically, new 25nm NAND FLASH memory has a reduced overall lifespan from 10,000 upwards to around 5,000 program/erase cycles. Industry insiders have hinted that consumer grade 25nm NAND flash memory will have a slightly lower lifespan, between 3,000 and 4,000 program/erase cycles.

While this sounds concerning, if you work out that under normal conditions only between 20-35 full SSD write cycles will be used each year, there is plenty of life in the product. Drive wearing protection also helps to ensure longer lasting flash memory. Thankfully, there is also full TRIM support.

As many already know Sandforce controllers use real time compression. The controllers store a ‘representation’ of your data, not the actual data itself which is achieved by creating a partition of the available NAND flash memory. It can handle around 63 MB/s from one of the eight available channels.

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