welcome to my unboxing and first look at the ocz vector which has one of the
cleanest shrink wraps I've ever seen it's really hard to get a handle on this
I mean I maybe this is part of their whole like restructuring they've gone
through I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to the uh to the stock news and all that kind of stuff
but ocz um went through a huge
restructuring CEO was gone replaced by uh replaced by another guy and uh they
laid off a significant portion of their Workforce with the idea being that
they're going to get leaner and meaner and more focused on you know behaving
like the very large company that they have now become so the vector is the
longest development cycle that we've ever seen from an ocz SSD it took longer
than 18 months to bring to Market which means that they were I mean think about
that for a second that means back when you know vertex 3 was Riding High they
were already working on this in addition to having Vertex 4 in the pipeline and
this is the true next generation replacement to anything that we've seen
over the last little while from ocz this has just taken a very long time to bring
to market for context previous ocz
products have taken less than 12 months to actually bring them to the market so
they're much more focused on validation and compatibility and delivering a more
consistent user experience so what that
means is this drive should be Far and Away the
finest thing we've ever seen out of ocz which is very very exciting I mean
remember something guys ocz has taken a lot of flak over the years for issues
with indel linkx controller drives issues with San Force controller drives
because their whole thing is they were always first to Market with it so all
these ocz drives were out there and even though every other manufacturer had the
same issues ocz took a lot of the flat cuz they had more drives out there so
there were more people complaining about them whereas now they've they've decided
we're going to take a completely different approach we're not going to release this thing till it's completely
ready I haven't heard any complaints about the vector yet and in terms of
performance it is right up there with Samsung's new 840 Pro I mean think about
that I mean back when ocz was saying okay yeah we're going to be an SSD
company we're kind of looking at it going okay well Intel was just
dominating back then with the x25 series and you're kind of going oh yeah okay
let's see if these guys can go up against the Juggernaut like Intel now Intel's kind of faded away now we're
kind of we were kind of saying oh you know Samsung launched the 840 the 840
Pro how are they going to go up against a juggernaut like that well they figured out a way so the vector is very
competitive with the 840 Pro Series it uses 25 nanometer NLC flash so it's not
using TLC flash like the 840 which causes it to have not very good right
speeds compared to a flagship product that is using mlc flash remember TLC
means three bits per cell as opposed to two bits per cell which is what we're
seeing in the higher end drives um right right the most exciting thing about this
it comes with a 2 and2 inch to three and a half inch no that's not the most
exciting thing about it this is also the first ocz SSD you see this indel linkx
infused thing here so if you guys remember the original IND linkx Barefoot
controller back in the vertex and everyone else had access to that too uh
so that was the first generation indel linkx controller then Barefoot 2 never
really seemed to come to life unless that's what they ended up branding the one in the octane and the Vex 4 so then
there finally there was another Eng link controller that was actually not ocz
design silicon that was a Marvel controller That Was Then repurposed with
a with an ocz firmware this is designed inhouse by the plx team the indel links
team and another sort of segment of the team based out of ocz's California
headquarters so it is designed from the ground up it uses an ARM cortex core and
an Aragon co-processor whatever that guy does ocz is not sort of giving out all
of the details about how exactly that works but it is completely actually
designed by them both hardware and firmware and then they're just finding a
Fab to manufacture the chips for them I mean same thing goes for the flash
itself it's Intel flash so ocz doesn't actually manufacture The Flash but
they're packaging it themselves so once you actually open up the drive
everything's ocz in there comes with all the mounting options you'll need for
your notebook so there's your side mounts there's your bottom mounts idle
power consumption is a little little bit higher than something like a Samsung 840
Pro but at load they're very very close which means that it's totally suitable
for Notebook use however I think most people still these days are buying these
high performance ssds for desktop use uh it's warrantied for up to five years up
to five years well yeah up to 5 years or I think it's something some number of
ter I can't remember exactly how many terabytes but they're warrany it for 20
gigs per day for 5 years so think about that for a minute I mean just for fun
try to figure out how many gigs you write to your boot Drive every day I can
pretty much guarantee you it's a lot less than 20 G gabes and then you know
you go away for a week on vacation maybe you don't use your computer every single
day now you've banked up some more I realistically if you don't get more than
5 years out of this drive then I'll be very very surprised in terms of
performance it's right up there with drives like the 840 Pro hangs with
pretty much well I mean the 840 Pro has been in a league of its own for a little while so it hangs with that which means
it is a perfect choice for an Enthusiast grade top tier SSD it also provides very
consistent performance whether it's U the fact that it has trim which I mean
any sort of modern SSD has uh or whether
it's you know how um how cluttered up
the drive is or whatever else is going on with it it responds very very
consistently which to me is what SSD is all about because you can take a hard
drive and you can go okay yeah I'm going to write a sequential file or read a sequential file oh yeah it's almost as
fast as an SSD her her it's not about that it's about when things get rough
when things get fragmented on the actual drive itself how well does it react when
it has to rely mostly on its random performance and the vector performs very
very well so thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look for those
of you who need a summary the most important things to take away are true
Flagship performance Drive the first truly
ocz designed right down to the very heart and soul of the drive that we've
seen yet and 5year warranty so it's
right up there with everything else like the Intel 520 series don't forget to
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