Corsair Showers CES With New Flash Drives, Cooling Products, And Neutron XT Series SSDs
For those yearning for an SSD with "no compromises", there's Corsair's Neutron XT. Available in sizes of 256GB ($150), 512GB ($270), and 960GB ($540), this Phison-based drive will deliver 560MB/s reads and 540MB/s writes. In what seems to have become a theme at this CES, no further performance (or durability) information has been given beyond that.
Other Neutron XT perks include a thickness of 7mm, and enterprise-esque technologies that keeps the drive running in tip-top performance, and data safe in the event of a failure. According to Corsair, the Neutron XT is available right now, and should you pick one up, you can feel safe with your purchase thanks to the drive's five-year warranty.
Corsair might have unveiled just one SSD at CES, but it makes up for any dearth with the announcement of four flash drives. These include the Slider X1 and X2, and also the Voyager GS and GTX.
As you can probably guess, the Slider series (seen above) features a no-cap design, so the drive itself slides out when it needs to be used, and then slides back to safety when you're done. Both the X1 and X2 are available in densities of 16GB ($15 for the X1, $20 for X2) ~ 256GB ($150 for X1, $190 for X2), but performance-wise, both are a fair bit different. The X1 can hit a read speed of 130MB/s, while the X2 kicks things up a notch, hitting 200MB/s.
The performance of even the lowly X1 might sound impressive given that we're talking about a modest flash drive, but believe it or not, both the X1 and X2 are wimps when compared to the GS and GTX - the latter of which is able to peak at 450MB/s read and 200MB/s write. The Voyager GS is spec'd at 260MB/s read and 105MB/s write.
It'd be an odd CES without Corsair announcing a cooling product, and so it has. First, there's the Hydro Series H110i, a Corsair Link-enabled all-in-one liquid CPU cooler that features a 140mm x 322mm radiator and two SP140L high static pressure fans. This cooler is priced at $130 and carries a five-year warranty.
A recent trend has seen a number of cooling products come out that utilize AIO coolers like the one above to cool a GPU instead, and Corsair is joining in on the fun with its HG10 N780 GPU cooling bracket. If you're familiar with a solution like NZXT's Kraken, you probably know the story here - you install this bracket onto your graphics card, and affix the liquid cooler to it.
Oddly, Corsair doesn't state support for the latest crop of GPUs from NVIDIA, eg: GTX 980 and 970. Instead, it supports the top-end last-gen models, the 770, 780, 780 Ti, and TITAN. I'm unsure at this point if the bracket doesn't in fact support those newer GPUs, and I was unable to find further information on Corsair's site, despite the press release saying that information could be found there. (Addendum: Corsair has let us know that a bracket to support NVIDIA's 9-series will be coming in the near-future.)
If you're building a monster rig and want a power supply that's guaranteed to run stable under huge workloads, you might want to turn your attention to Corsair's HX1200i. This 1200W behemoth carries 80 Plus Platinum badging, with Corsair saying that it will deliver 92% or better efficiency. As the "i" in the name alludes to, this PSU supports Corsair's Link monitoring system.
Priced at $270, the HX1200i will become available next month, and will bring with it a seven-year warranty.
Finally, Corsair has also unveiled a new chassis, and for once, it's not a high-end model. Instead, the 100R will retail for $50, but promises to deliver great looks and a great build quality nonetheless. And, I do admit... it looks quite nice for a chassis of its price-range.
The 100R offers 2 USB 3.0 ports at the front, direct airflow to the top GPU, cable routing behind the motherboard tray, up to 5 120mm fans (the 2 front ones can be 140mm instead, if desired), two 5.25-inch drive bays, four internal 2.5/3.5-inch drive bays, and seven expansion slots. The 100R supports mATX, mini-ITX, and ATX motherboards.
For those wanting to make their inexpensive build as quiet as possible, Corsair will be offering a "Silent" version of the chassis, which is sound-dampened and will tack $10 onto the price tag.
Overall, an incredible showing from Corsair at this year's CES.