Corsair Announces Two New SSD Lines
The words Nova and Reactor may evoke certain images, such as a powerful explosion in space, or a containment unit melting down toward China. Seriously, however, they do convey power, and that's what Corsair probably had in mind with their new series (two of them!) of solid-state drives (SSDs).
The new lines of SSDs are called Nova and Reactor, as noted above. They are SATA-II 2.5" form factor SSDS, using an SATA-II interface, naturally. The Nova series is confirmed to use the Indilinx Barefoot controller with 128GB and 64GB capacities and two-year warranties. Their read speed is a maximum of 215Mbps, with write speeds of up to 195Mbps for the 128GB drive and 130Mbps for the 64GB model.
It's unknown what controller the Reactor has. The series comes in 120GB and 60GB capacities, with maximum read speeds of 250Mbps for the drives and maximum rated write speeds 170Mbps for the 120GB drive and 110Mbps for the 60GB drive.
The question probably on your lips is whether or not the drives ship with TRIM support. The answer is yes, they do. To be honest, most, if not all drives had better support TRIM out of the box in the future if they want consumers to buy them. TRIM, for those unaware, allows an operating system to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. Without this command, performance on an SSD degrades over time.
Pricing? U.S. pricing hasn't leaked, but Fudzilla found U.K. pricing that would translate to $180-192 for the low capacity drives and $360 on the higher capacity drives, for both series.
The new lines of SSDs are called Nova and Reactor, as noted above. They are SATA-II 2.5" form factor SSDS, using an SATA-II interface, naturally. The Nova series is confirmed to use the Indilinx Barefoot controller with 128GB and 64GB capacities and two-year warranties. Their read speed is a maximum of 215Mbps, with write speeds of up to 195Mbps for the 128GB drive and 130Mbps for the 64GB model.
It's unknown what controller the Reactor has. The series comes in 120GB and 60GB capacities, with maximum read speeds of 250Mbps for the drives and maximum rated write speeds 170Mbps for the 120GB drive and 110Mbps for the 60GB drive.
The question probably on your lips is whether or not the drives ship with TRIM support. The answer is yes, they do. To be honest, most, if not all drives had better support TRIM out of the box in the future if they want consumers to buy them. TRIM, for those unaware, allows an operating system to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. Without this command, performance on an SSD degrades over time.
Pricing? U.S. pricing hasn't leaked, but Fudzilla found U.K. pricing that would translate to $180-192 for the low capacity drives and $360 on the higher capacity drives, for both series.
