Corsair Force GT SATA III 120GB SSD Review

Corsair Puts the GT in The Force Series

Though Corsair stumbled out of the gate a bit getting their Force 3 drives out in good order, they promptly made good with their customers and have now bolstered their Force 3 line with the GT version. With the GT suffix, you’d expect this to be a sportier version of the Force 3 drives – and you’d be right. While being powered by the same SandForce SF-2281 controller as the original Force 3 drive, the GT version kicks it up a notch with faster NAND on board. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the opportunity to test out the non-GT version so we can’t provide any direct comparisons between the two models but we’ll see if it lives up to the specifications provided by Corsair.

The fiery red shell is indicative of the high performance nature of the drive and enthusiasts who like to color match and show off their components will find this to be one of the more ornate SSDs on the market. With max read performance listed as 555MB/s and 515MB/s for max writes, it doesn’t boast the best specifications of any SandForce drive on the market but it’s right up there. More importantly, it’s a tad faster than the non-GT version of the Force 3 drives which specs out at 550MB/s and 510MB/s. This extra bit of speed brings an extra bit of price with the 120 GB GT version retailing for $250 USD currently. This is roughly $75 more than the non-GT version (after rebate) which is a pretty big gap.

The back of the drive is comprised of a black brushed aluminum plate to accent the red of the remaining shell. The features and specifications are as follows:

Corsair Force 3 GT Features and Specifications:

• Warranty:

• Three years

Unformatted Capacity:

• 120 GB

Read Performance (max):

• 555 MB/s

Write Performance (max):

• 515 MB/s

Random Write 4k (max):

• 85k IOPS (4k aligned)

Form Factor:

• 2.5

Interface Type:

• SATA 3 6Gb/s

Form Factor:

• 2.5 inch

DRAM Cache Memory:

• No

Weight:

• 80g

Voltage:

• 5V 5%

Power Consumption (active):

• 2.5W Max

Power Consumption (idle/standby/sleep):

• 0.6W Max

S.M.A.R.T. Support:

• Yes

Shock:

• 1500 G

MTBF:

• 2,000,000 hours

Operating Temperature:

• 0C to +70C

Storage Temperature:

• -20C to +85C

Operating Humidity:

• 10% to 90% RH (0 to +40 C)

Storage Humidity:

• 5% to 90% RH (-10 to +60 C)

Maximum Operating Altitude:

• 3,048 m (up to 10,000 ft.)

Maximum Non-Operating Altitude:

• 12,192 m (up to 40,000 ft.)

Included in the bundle is a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter plate which is also found in the non-GT version. Included are the needed screws to connect the drive appropriately.

Let’s have a look inside to see what Corsair has done to increase performance.