Corsair Force GT 240GB & Crucial M4 SSD Update

Name: Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD
Brand: Corsair

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, November 11, 2011, 10:20 AM EDT

Performance Summary: Both the Corsair Force GT 240GB drive and Crucial M4 with its v009 firmware exhibited excellent performance throughout out battery of tests. Overall, the SandForce-based Corsair drive proved to be a somewhat better performer, especially in terms of writes. But the Crucial drive offered more consistent performance with all data types, thanks to the characteristics of its Marvell-built controller, which handles highly compressible and non-compressible data similarly.

The Corsair Force GT 240GB Solid State Drive

As of this writing, the Corsair Force GT 240GB could be found for about $410 on-line; the Crucial M4 256GB drive is going for about $380. At those prices, the Corsair Force GT 240GB model costs about $1.71 per GB and the Crucial M4 about $1.48 per GB. Looking back at performance, the somewhat higher cost of the Corsair drive is justifiable considering its better overall benchmark results. In comparison to similarly configured SandForce-based drives, the Corsair Force GT is also competitive. When compared to the OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS drive, for example, the Force GT offered similar or better performance (although only slightly) in all of our tests, but the OCZ drive with a similar capacity is currently setting for about $479.

All things considered, it's clear that the Corsair Force GT 240GB drive is worthy of an Editor's Choice award. The drive offers killer performance at a very competitive price. Crucial should also be commended for offering a free, sizable performance boost to owners of the M4. The drive may not be as fast as SandForce-based alternatives, but the M4 is a good product nonetheless and worthy of consideration, thanks to its lower cost-per-GB and consistent performance.

Corsair Force GT 240GB


Strong performance Competitive price Good warranty	Still pricey Somewhat inconsistent performance w/ compressible / incompressible data

Crucial M4 256GB

Tags: SSD, Corsair, Storage, Crucial, force, M4, GT

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com