WEBVTT

00:00:00.520 --> 00:00:05.920
today I have a very cool and interesting new product to unbox this is a Corsair

00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:11.200
solid state drive and as you can see from the sticker applied at the bottom

00:00:07.399 --> 00:00:14.519
of the box it is a 4 series 60 gig drive

00:00:11.200 --> 00:00:16.359
so the four series um very creatively

00:00:14.519 --> 00:00:21.760
named because of the sand Force controller that it uses is a

00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:27.599
state-of-the-art SSD that has the fastest reads and writs available on the

00:00:24.880 --> 00:00:31.920
market in many common applications now there's one that is a little bit faster

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

00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:40.719
firmware issues with that and it's sort of debatable whether it's worth the risk

00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:44.480
or not sandforce on the other hand has proven to be a very stable platform and

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

00:00:46.039 --> 00:00:52.199
includes a couple of different accessories with their uh four series

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

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

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

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

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

00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:18.400
side so if you have a a hard drive mounting system that requires the holes

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

00:01:21.479 --> 00:01:28.560
all of the screws included that you need anyway what's so special about the four

00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:32.720
series drives is that along with the new sand Force controller comes a couple of

00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:39.240
cool features first thing to notice is that this is a 60 gig Drive the original

00:01:35.479 --> 00:01:41.720
sand Force drives were in 50 100 and 200

00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:47.520
GB capacities but what has been done with the latest firmwares is it's been

00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:49.960
improved to 60120 and 240 gig capacities

00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:54.600
because they're using slightly less spare area now spare area gives you a

00:01:52.520 --> 00:01:59.399
little bit of extra space to uh tweak performance but some companies were able

00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:04.159
to find ways to tweak the performance of the drive free up some spare area and

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

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

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

00:02:15.200 --> 00:02:21.680
sort of uh matte finish whereas the top is actually got like a nice brushed

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

00:02:24.599 --> 00:02:31.160
appreciate the little touches like that that make it look nicer now cool thing

00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:34.519
about the four series drives again is the sequential reads and sequential

00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:39.920
rights as well as the random read and random right performance now this four

00:02:36.920 --> 00:02:42.640
series Drive can actually write at up to

00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:46.840
275 megabytes per second sequentially it can read it up to 285 megabytes per

00:02:44.879 --> 00:02:52.040
second sequentially now it used to be when we only had drives like the ocz

00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:55.360
vertex this is a gen one vertex that

00:02:52.040 --> 00:02:57.959
used mlc flash now mlc flash means that

00:02:55.360 --> 00:03:04.120
it can actually store Two Bits of data where SLC single

00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:06.040
SLC flash can store only one bit so mlc

00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:10.040
is obviously much cheaper because you get double the capacity that you would

00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:16.599
of out of each flash cell that you have to um manufacture so mlc flash

00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:21.239
inherently cannot write as fast as SLC Flash the reason I keep holding this

00:03:17.879 --> 00:03:24.000
drive up is this is an Intel x25 e 32

00:03:21.239 --> 00:03:28.480
gig drive this uses SLC Flash and what happens is SLC can be written to much

00:03:26.319 --> 00:03:32.239
much faster but the four series controller actually uses special

00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:38.799
algorithms to compress the data as you're writing it to allow it to write

00:03:36.640 --> 00:03:44.519
285 G or rather 275 Megs but actually it's only writing

00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:48.720
less data to the drive because it's compressing it and then decompressing it

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

00:03:50.640 --> 00:03:57.720
expensive controller but you save money because instead of spending four times

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

00:03:59.239 --> 00:04:03.959
only costs double but rather than spending so much more on the flash

00:04:02.239 --> 00:04:07.799
you're spending more on the controller which is relatively minor so thank you

00:04:05.959 --> 00:04:13.360
for checking out my unboxing of the Corsair 4 Series f60 SSD and uh

00:04:11.959 --> 00:04:16.759
hopefully you stay tuned I'm going to be doing something on my ncx tech tips

00:04:15.319 --> 00:04:22.120
Channel with this drive so don't forget to subscribe Linus Tech tips as well as

00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:24.720
subscribe to my ncixcom channnel for all

00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:27.720
of the latest tech updates