SandForce SSD Group Test

Corsair F100 100GB SSD Review

Manufacturer: Corsair
UK Price (as reviewed): £346.74 (Inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): N/A

Corsair was a little later to the SSD party than some manufacturers, but has since released drives based on pretty much every drive controller available. It’s no surprise to see Corsair launching a SandForce SSD then, but there’s something extra about the 100GB F100 that makes it stand out. Like the OCZ Vertex 2, the F100 boasts the optimised SF-1500 firmware, allowing it to achieve higher random write speeds than a plain SF-1200 controller. However, as Corsair didn’t have the official rights to do this at first, it’s used the beta 301 firmware released to drive partners when the first SandForce controllers were released for qualification. Corsair has disabled the low power state of the F100 drive that was known to cause a bug in this firmware.

Inside the F100 are 16 Micron 8GB NAND flash modules around an SF-1200 drive controller, although the PCB is fitted in the casing upside down. There’s also a 2.5in to 3.5in drive adapter included in the retail packaging.


Quoted sequential speeds of 285MB/sec read and 275MB/sec write were almost achieved in our ATTO test, with the drive managing a 278MB/sec read speed and 269MB/sec write speed. As usual with a SandForce SSD, AS-SSD’s uncompressible test proved a problem. However, the beta firmware of the F100 caused it so stumble more in this test than the other SandForce drives did, with a sequential write speed of just 89MB/sec rather than the 123MB/sec we saw from the other SandForce drives. Uncompressible sequential read was in line with the rest of the drives though, at 206MB/sec.

Random read/write performance was excellent, with 49MB/sec of random read and a huge 79MB/sec of random write speed. This would have been even higher had we queued more than three I/Os in our benchmark file, but as we test for real-world home use, pushing more work threads through an SSD would give completely unrepresentative results for home use. The F100 had a high maximum write latency of 331ms, a sign of the older firmware, even if it’s not a hugely worrying result.

The older firmware of the F100 didn’t have any impact on the drive’s performance degradation though. The write speeds of uncompressible data in AS SSD only dropped by 3MB/sec, while the ATTO test and its compressible data showed little sign of performance drop after heavy use.

Conclusion

In almost every test, the Corsair F100 is at least as fast as the fastest SandForce SSD, and even faster in our random write test. However, it has a few foibles too, due Corsair’s use of the original beta firmware of the SF-1200 controller. Sequential write speeds (with uncompressible data) were the slowest of all the SSDs we tested at 89MB/sec, even losing out to an Indilinx-powered SSD that we’d re-tested for comparison.

However, it’s value for money where the F100 really struggles – at £346 it’s by far the most expensive SSD in this test. The F100 also has the added worry of not receiving any firmware updates down the line; any update would be the official SF-1200 firmware, and would thus drop the F100’s random write speed to that of its competition, something Corsair is understandably not keen on.

The silver lining is that Corsair has already moved to pushing its 120GB SandForce drive, which costs a surprisingly low £282 (inc VAT). Corsair claims that this 120GB drive ditches the modified beta firmware of the F100 in favour of tweaked production firmware for better performance than typical 100GB SandForce drives. In light of this, the Corsair F100 driver can only be seen as a lame duck, and we’ve already got an F240 in for testing.

Note: just as we were about publish this article, a source confirmed that the Corsair F100 was already marked as End of Life, and so has been dropped from Scan's listing.

Note 2: Corsair has since got in touch with us to say that the F100 had been 'effectively End of Life for about three weeks' before this article was published and that 'it’s been sold out for even longer'. The price above dates from the initial launch of the drive, when high demand and limited avaialability of SandForce drive controllers pushed prices up. This is no longer the case, as the other drives in this group test show.

Anyone who placed a pre-order or an as yet unfulfilled order for a Corsair F50, F100 or F200 should contact the retailer for a refund. Corsair is currently working on a method to convert F100 drives into F120 via firmware update, though specific details on how this will work aren't clear yet. Stay tuned for updates.

Specifications

• Max Read: up to 285MB/sec
  
• Max Write: up to 275MB/sec
  
• MTBF: 1,500,000+ Hours
  
• Warranty: 3 Years
  
• Formatted Capacity: 93.16GB
  
• Extras 2.5in to 3.5in drive bay adapter
  
• Part Number: CSSD-F100GB2-BRKT