The Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD is a fast performer overall, and is budget priced considering its performance. It also carries the bonus of a five-year warranty. But in our tests it was one of the slower SSDs we're tested recently when writing our large batch of files and folders, and Link a Media is a lesser-known controller brand, at least in the consumer market. See all storage reviews.
Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD review
Corsair's move to the Link A Media LM87800 controller has paid dividends. Though not quite as fast as the Samsung 840 Pro or the OCZ Vector, the Neutron GTX beat out the OCZ Vertex 4 to take third place overall in our December 2012 SSD roundup. The Neutron GTX uses Toshiba's toggle-mode MLC NAND and is rated at 511/555 MBps for sequential writes/reads, as well at at 85,000/85,000 4KB IOPs (read/write operations per second). Buying Advice: Corsair Neutron SSDs review: first SSDs with LAMD controller. Also, check out our Corsair Neutron SSD 240GB review.
Corsair Neutron GTX: performance results
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Corsair's Neutron GTX is one of the best deals you'll find in the high-performance consumer SSD market.
In our tests, the Neutron GTX read our 10GB mix of smaller files and folders at a rate of 414 MBps, and it wrote them at 371.4 MBps. That second number was the drive's low point, good for only a tenth-place finish. The drive wrote our single 10GB file at a blazing 610.6 MBps, on the other hand, and read it at 440.2 MBps; those are very good numbers. The average write speed was 512.3 MBps, and the average read speed was 405.8 MBps.
The 240GB Neutron GTX sells online for around £200, a cost of 83p per gigabyte. That makes it easily the best deal in a top-performing SSD at the time of this writing. It's only 7mm thick, which renders it suitable for use with thin-and-light laptops.
Corsair Neutron GTX review: SSDs explained
Installing an SSD in your PC, be it a laptop or a desktop, is one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost the machine's overall performance. The change won't be merely noticeable—it will startle you. Your system will boot more quickly, windows and menus will jump open, and programs and data will load much, much faster.
In case you don't know what an SSD is, the acronym stands for solid-state drive—that is, solid-state as in no moving parts, and drive as in the fact that an SSD appears as a hard drive to your computer. But instead of storing data on one or more spinning platters, an SSD writes and reads data to and from nonvolatile flash memory. In addition, an SSD contains a controller that's analogous to the memory controller in your PC's CPU or core-logic chipset.
Many vendors sell SSDs, but the devices are far from equal. Flash memory and controller technology have both advanced so quickly that what was fast last year is now second-class. The drives you might find in the bargain bin will be faster than a consumer-grade mechanical hard drive, but they won't deliver the astounding performance boost you'll be looking for.
The memory/interface controller is a major factor in determining each SSD's performance. Corsair is blazing a path with its Neutron series drives (the GTX and Neutron) by using Link A Media's LM87800 controller. In our tests drives with Link A Media controllers boasted significantly faster write speeds than the SandForce-based competition.
