Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD Review

Corsair Force 3 120Gb – A Look Inside

No surprises as we crack the case open.

We see the usual layout for the SandForce drives with the NAND on one side and the controller opposite. Four screws hold on the back plate with four more securing the PCB.

Four NAND chips on this side and the same amount on the other accounts for all of the flash memory on board.

Looking closer we see that it’s Micron NAND with part number 29F64G08CBAAA. These are asynchronous 25nm chips, each with 8 GB in density and when totaled up, give us 128 GB on board. This is in contrast to the GT model which features faster and more expensive synchronous NAND.

Flipping over the board, we see the remaining NAND modules along with the controller which is the same view allowed when first opening the case. Standard stuff for SandForce drives.

The SandForce SF-2281 controller is the very same as in the GT version of the Force 3 drive. It handles the mundane duties of wear-leveling, real-time compression, encryption, and error correction which is even more critical when employing 25nm NAND since errors are much more error prone than that of the NAND with the larger architecture. As always, the DuraClass technology, proprietary to SandForce, is responsible for all of the aforementioned tasks and more like TRIM and garbage collection which are supported to maintain a high level of performance for extended periods of time.