Corsair Force GT SATA III 120GB SSD Weight:80g SATA 3 6Gb/s

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.

Capacity, Final Thoughts & Conclusions

It's pretty much standard now to see the 120 GB drives with 111 GB of user accessible space on the SandForce drives. It seems manufacturers have settled on a happy medium of enough overprovisioning to maintain a healthy drive over the long haul without taking too much away from the user. The Corsair Force 3 GT is no different as we determined by the capacity reported in Windows.

As we mentioned at the opening of the article, we hadn't had the opportunity to test out the non-GT version so direct comparisons are not available to us at this time. As such, we'll rely on the comparisons to other drives in its class. Corsair lists the Force 3 GT 120 GB specifications as 555MB/s and 515MB/s maximum reads and writes which is slightly behind some of the fastest SATA III drives we've tested. In the sequential benchmark featuring compressible data, the GT hit these maximum speeds no problem. On the incompressible data, speeds were noticeably less but that's typical of SandForce drives which relies on real-time compression to maximize performance.

Put up against other drives of its ilk, the Force 3 GT performed well overall but was measurably slower on sequential writes with incompressible data. The random reads/writes were as good or better than the other drives which are the types of transactions most often encountered with normal computing activities. So, the one performance fault I can find with the drive isn't one that will cause any noticeable difference to the user. In fact, our real world tests showed it to perform very well. Overall, we'd have to say that this is one of the better drives on the market but with SF-2200 drives coming out seemingly daily, the competition gets progressively tougher.

Current pricing of the 120 GB GT drive stands at retailing for $250 USD which comes out to roughly $2.25 per usable GB. That's a little on the high side as compared to some of the other drives we've been seeing but it just recently hit the market so it's probably carrying that new product premium whereas several competitor drives as well as the non-GT Force 3 drives have been available for a while. As part of the package, it does come with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter plate and Corsair covers their workmanship with a three year warranty.

Legit Bottom Line: Corsair tweaked their successful Force 3 drives in the creation of the GT version to eke out a bit more performance. The question is, does the red and black color scheme and minor speed improvements justify the extra $75?