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Monday 21 September 2015

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Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB SSD: Review and Specifications


At Computers and more, we have reviewed almost every kind of product that Corsair offers except for the SSDs lineup. So this time Corsair has been generous enough to provide us with the Corsair Neutron GTX SSD for review. Now here I have the 480Gb variant for review, which is the largest capacity that is being offered by the company in the GTX series.
Taking a look at the SSD we can see that the 480GB variant is identical to its 240GB in every way except for the price and capacity. The PCB layout is identical but ofcourse the NAND memory chips have gone from 32 GB to 64 GB, giving the drive a total capacity of 512 GB. But some portion of the memory has been kept aside for long term performance and reliability, and that's why we only get 480Gb of usable space on the drive. Lets take a closer look at the module:

Layout and Packaging

The Corsair Neutron GTX 480Gb comes in a standard packaging. The box has a red and black theme which looks very appealing. Inside you'll find the SSD in a hard blister pack, the desktop adapter bracket and a manual come pamphlet.


Corsair has claims a maximum sequential read speed of 555 MB per second and maximum write speed of 511 MB per second. It has maximum random 4k write speeds as high as 85,000 IOPS.
The Form Factor is 2.5 inch and the MTBF is 2,000,000 hours. Corsair is offering a good 5 year warranty for the product.
The below two images are courtesy to TweakTown


The Corsair Neutron GTX uses a controller by the Japanese Link_A_Media (LAMD) LM86800AA. The controller is paired with 24nm Toshiba Toggle Mode flash and two 128MB Micron DRAM chips both DDR2-800 clocked at high frequency. One chip works as buffer while the other one stores map data.

Features



The Corsair Neutron GTX 480Gb offers a plethora of features and well why not. To justify the high price tag, Corsair will have to offer some great features to its users.

Fast Mutlitasker


As claimed by Corsair the Neutron GTX is designed for multi-tasking at very high speeds. It is designed to support complex data-intensive work that involves accessing multiple files simultaneously- video production, large-scale graphics editing, etc. It also offers saving compressed data at high speed, as we know that saving a data that's already compressed causes an SSD to perform slower but that's not the case with Corsair.

Compatibility with PCs and Notebooks

Neutron GTX SSD follow the universal 2.5” standard, and easily mount in desktop PCs with 2.5” drive bays. Or, mount it in a hard drive bay using the included 3.5” adapter.

The 7mm form factor fits both standard notebooks as well as the latest generation of slim notebook designs. However, the high voltage consumption might lead your notebook to provide lesser hours of battery backup.

Compatible with SATA3 and SATA2

The Corsair Neutron GTX 480 Gb SSD is designed to support the SATA 3 6Gb/s but is also backwards compatible with SATA 2.

Long Life Span

Out of the total 512GB only 480GB is usable keeping the extra 32GB in reserve to give enhanced life span aswell as consistent performance over a longer period of time in comparison to other SSDs.

Load tests and Benchmarks

Now, enough of on paper claims, lets dig in to see what the SSD is actually capable of. For load test and benchmarking I used the following setup:

CPU: Intel Core i7 5960X
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Gaming X99-Gaming 5P
RAMs: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2800Mhz 16GB DDR4 (4x4)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110 CPU Liquid Cooler
Graphics card: Asus STRIX Radeon R9 390X 8GB DDR5
Power Supply: Corsair AX860i 860W 80+ Platinum

ATTO Disk


ATTO Disk Benchmark measures transfer rates across specific lengths for any storage system. ATTO uses RAW data, I set my transfer size from 0.5 to 8192kb. This is generally the most reliable benchmarks for today's SSDs.
Its clear from the above image that the Neutron GTX reached its maximum read and write speed (somewhat more I'd say!) as advertised which is a great sign.

CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2


CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful. As seen the Corsair Neutron GTX performs very well.

AS SSD


The next test is the AS SSD Benchmark. The name itself suggests that its aimed specifically at testing SSDs making it a reliable tool for benchmarking. This benchmark contains four synthetic as well as three practice tests.
The results obtained are in coherence with the CrystalDiskMark3.0

Anvil Storage Utilities


The next test is Anvil Storage Utilities, which is a really great piece of software. The SSD benchmark gives you scores for both read and write as well as a combined score. Anvil also includes Threaded IO tests, which test IOPS. We ran both the random read and random write tests. The results are below.

As you can see that although the read write speeds are somewhat less but the IOPS is upto the mark.

My Verdict

Before doing the tests I didn't expect much from the Corsair Neutron GTX. Honestly I thought it to be another over priced SSD but beleive me its not that. The SSD does provide the claimed read write speeds, looks very elegant and premium and performs really fast during multi tasking as well as compression/decompression. The GTX model comes with Toggle NAND flash memory, which really does make a difference when you focus on write performance and sure, the IOPS performance was great as well.
With priced at around $400 (INR 28,650) the Corsair Neutron GTX 480Gb SSD is completely a value for money product and gets a big thumbs up from my side. 
I give it 8.5/10

Shivani Mishra
About the Guest Author:
An Engineer by profession and a writer by passion. Trying to solve others problems and learning in the due course.

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