1
00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:05,920
today I have a very cool and interesting new product to unbox this is a Corsair

2
00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:11,200
solid state drive and as you can see from the sticker applied at the bottom

3
00:00:07,399 --> 00:00:14,519
of the box it is a 4 series 60 gig drive

4
00:00:11,200 --> 00:00:16,359
so the four series um very creatively

5
00:00:14,519 --> 00:00:21,760
named because of the sand Force controller that it uses is a

6
00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:27,599
state-of-the-art SSD that has the fastest reads and writs available on the

7
00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:31,920
market in many common applications now there's one that is a little bit faster

8
00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:36,000
in some situations it's a SATA 3 SSD from uh crucial but there have been some

9
00:00:34,320 --> 00:00:40,719
firmware issues with that and it's sort of debatable whether it's worth the risk

10
00:00:39,040 --> 00:00:44,480
or not sandforce on the other hand has proven to be a very stable platform and

11
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:47,039
so that's what we are going to be having a look at today so of course there

12
00:00:46,039 --> 00:00:52,199
includes a couple of different accessories with their uh four series

13
00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:58,680
SSD first of all they have a 2 and 1/2 to 3 and 1/2 in drive adapter so this is

14
00:00:56,680 --> 00:01:03,239
just it's a pretty pretty bog standard one you can see how it works here so

15
00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:07,320
you've got four screws to attach the drive to the adapter here you can see it

16
00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:11,640
mounts off to the side a little bit and then you've got four screws to mount the

17
00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:15,640
drive adapter which you can oh it looks like you can only mount it by from the

18
00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:18,400
side so if you have a a hard drive mounting system that requires the holes

19
00:01:17,159 --> 00:01:24,040
on the bottom you won't be able to use this adapter you might have to get a different one but uh yeah you've got the

20
00:01:21,479 --> 00:01:28,560
all of the screws included that you need anyway what's so special about the four

21
00:01:25,920 --> 00:01:32,720
series drives is that along with the new sand Force controller comes a couple of

22
00:01:30,640 --> 00:01:39,240
cool features first thing to notice is that this is a 60 gig Drive the original

23
00:01:35,479 --> 00:01:41,720
sand Force drives were in 50 100 and 200

24
00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:47,520
GB capacities but what has been done with the latest firmwares is it's been

25
00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:49,960
improved to 60120 and 240 gig capacities

26
00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:54,600
because they're using slightly less spare area now spare area gives you a

27
00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:59,399
little bit of extra space to uh tweak performance but some companies were able

28
00:01:57,560 --> 00:02:04,159
to find ways to tweak the performance of the drive free up some spare area and

29
00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:09,399
still get the same performance out of a 60 as you could out of a 50 and out of a

30
00:02:06,439 --> 00:02:12,400
120 as you could out of a 100 Gig drive so of course there has kind of a neat

31
00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:17,800
finish to their drives you can see the side is sort of just a plain uh a plain

32
00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:21,680
sort of uh matte finish whereas the top is actually got like a nice brushed

33
00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:26,440
finish to it so if you're mounting this drive somewhere where you're going to be able to see it you'll definitely

34
00:02:24,599 --> 00:02:31,160
appreciate the little touches like that that make it look nicer now cool thing

35
00:02:28,640 --> 00:02:34,519
about the four series drives again is the sequential reads and sequential

36
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:39,920
rights as well as the random read and random right performance now this four

37
00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:42,640
series Drive can actually write at up to

38
00:02:39,920 --> 00:02:46,840
275 megabytes per second sequentially it can read it up to 285 megabytes per

39
00:02:44,879 --> 00:02:52,040
second sequentially now it used to be when we only had drives like the ocz

40
00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:55,360
vertex this is a gen one vertex that

41
00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:57,959
used mlc flash now mlc flash means that

42
00:02:55,360 --> 00:03:04,120
it can actually store Two Bits of data where SLC single

43
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:06,040
SLC flash can store only one bit so mlc

44
00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:10,040
is obviously much cheaper because you get double the capacity that you would

45
00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:16,599
of out of each flash cell that you have to um manufacture so mlc flash

46
00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:21,239
inherently cannot write as fast as SLC Flash the reason I keep holding this

47
00:03:17,879 --> 00:03:24,000
drive up is this is an Intel x25 e 32

48
00:03:21,239 --> 00:03:28,480
gig drive this uses SLC Flash and what happens is SLC can be written to much

49
00:03:26,319 --> 00:03:32,239
much faster but the four series controller actually uses special

50
00:03:30,360 --> 00:03:38,799
algorithms to compress the data as you're writing it to allow it to write

51
00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:44,519
285 G or rather 275 Megs but actually it's only writing

52
00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:48,720
less data to the drive because it's compressing it and then decompressing it

53
00:03:46,720 --> 00:03:53,319
whenever you're reading it on the fly so it does make for a more complicated more

54
00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:57,720
expensive controller but you save money because instead of spending four times

55
00:03:55,079 --> 00:04:00,959
the amount on SLC flash or well four times by the time it hits a shelf it

56
00:03:59,239 --> 00:04:03,959
only costs double but rather than spending so much more on the flash

57
00:04:02,239 --> 00:04:07,799
you're spending more on the controller which is relatively minor so thank you

58
00:04:05,959 --> 00:04:13,360
for checking out my unboxing of the Corsair 4 Series f60 SSD and uh

59
00:04:11,959 --> 00:04:16,759
hopefully you stay tuned I'm going to be doing something on my ncx tech tips

60
00:04:15,319 --> 00:04:22,120
Channel with this drive so don't forget to subscribe Linus Tech tips as well as

61
00:04:19,120 --> 00:04:24,720
subscribe to my ncixcom channnel for all

62
00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:27,720
of the latest tech updates