As part of the transition to SSDs based on 25nm NAND, Corsair has announced the Force Series 115GB and 80GB SSDs. The Corsair F115-A and F80-A 25nm drives will be available by the end of February. Corsair has taken the welcome tact of being transparent about the change in capacity and performance – and they’ve also dropped the price. The current generation F120 carries an MSRP of $249 for instance; the new F115-A will retail for $215. The F80-A will see a suggested retail of $169.
As part of the transition to SSDs based on 25nm NAND, Corsair has announced the Force Series 115GB and 80GB SSDs. The Corsair F115-A and F80-A 25nm drives will be available by the end of February. Corsair has taken the welcome tact of being transparent about the change in capacity and performance – and they’ve also dropped the price. The current generation F120 carries an MSRP of $249 for instance; the new F115-A will retail for $215. The F80-A will see a suggested retail of $169.
“So that our customers are perfectly clear about what they are getting, we will be changing the model numbers on all 25nm based drives and transitioning the drive capacities we offer where necessary. For example, a drive that would have been sold as 120GB when built with 34nm flash will be launched as a 115GB version,” said Jared Peck, Global Product Marketing Manager for SSDs at Corsair, “All Force Series drives built with 25nm flash will also have a ‘-A’ suffix on the part and/or model number, making it easy to determine exactly what you’re getting.”
In terms of performance, the SSDs will see a little drop, 3-4% according to Corsair’s internal testing data. Whereas the F120 saw 285/275 MB/s reads and writes, the new 25nm drives post 280/270 MB/s reads and writes. In terms of real world usage, the drop is probably negligible, though we’ll put that theory to the test in our upcoming review.
To stem any concerns about performance, the Corsair blog does provide a breakdown across several benchmarks, including this IOMeter test that happens to show the F115-A a hair faster than the F120.
| IO Meter Alignment 4k 100% Write 100% Random | F120 34nm | F115-A 25nm | F80-A 25nm |
| Total I/O’s Per Second | 39,398.49 | 39,828.76 | 36,935.02 |
| Total MBs per Second | 153.90 | 155.58 | 144.28 |
In late March Corsair plans to update the other 34nm based capacities they offer. The F180 and F240 will migrate to 25nm as the F180-A and F240-A. The F40 and F60 will also go to 25nm NAND in March as the F40-A and F60-A; with a design that preserves capacity and boosts performance, but requires a nominal price increase.
