Monday News, May 16th 2011

Every now and then it is refreshing to see a company that believes that rushing into the dog race of technological advance might not be as business smart as simply understanding customer needs. This is definitely the case with Patriot and their new Torqx 2 SSD that not only remains to be a SATA 2.0 drive, but also, is definitely in the price range to attract new SSD enthusiasts. In the rush to push out SATA 3, SSD manufacturers may have forgotten that 99% of computer owners are using SATA 2 systems and just might seek a SATA 2 SSD in the near future.


Todays review will focus on the performance of a single F4EG, and the benefits of placing them in a RAID array. With 5400 RPM drives being a bit slower, quieter and a better value than their 7200 rpm counterparts, many have chosen these drives in RAID configurations for maximum performance at a great price point. We will focus on the benefits of this type of array using the four drives and hope to demonstrate the amazing performance in RAID 0 (stripe size of 128) of these drives.


Today we received an e-mail from Jessica Luken, Global Marketing Director of OCZ Technology stating that a new Vertex 3 Max IOPS SSD was en route and, if you would believe it, we received the package not 20 minutes later. I will have to admit that I was a bit unprepared and stood their wondering what the difference was between the two Vertex 3′s at only a $20 upgrade. The question then presented itself as to whether the consumer would see a marked difference between thet two. A bit of background and several tests later lead us to the belief that the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS SSD just may be the equal to the previous generation SandForce
equipped SSDs that utilized the large 27% over provisioning vice the standard 7%, this time around without the massive premium.


Solid State Drives are selling well in 2011, with a growing percentage of enthusiast users adopting one as a fast, primary boot drive. A few weeks ago we reviewed the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB drive, and today we will compare it against the ADATA S511 240GB, a hot new model set to offer the same stunning levels of performance, but at a
slightly lower price point.


Case, Cooling and Power

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Interested in faster-than-mechanical performance but don’t want to splurge on a big SSD? Intel has a tech for that, and it meets you half-way by utilizing a modestly sized SSD for caching purposes, used in conjunction with any HDD you want for total storage. Read on as we cover both the setup process and our real-world test results.


ADATA aims to combine performance, quality and price with the Nobility N005. Priced to please the mainstream user, it offers a sturdy aluminum enclosure and advertises solid performance numbers. We take the drive for a spin to see if they have managed to combine the best of the three attributes or if it is too good to be true.


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