Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD Review

A closer look at the Corsair Neutron GTX hardware.

Let’s take a look at the hardware found inside the Corsair Neutron GTX SSD.

Inside the case.

Inside the case of the SSD we can see that the printed circuit board doesn’t run the full length of the case.

PCB

PCB topside

On the top side of the PCB we can see that the component count is quite low. We can see the first of two 128MB of DDR2 800 cache. It is understood that the cache on the Neutron GTX is not used for caching data, so the most likely use of the cache is to hold the FTL and LBA tables.

PCB underside

On the underside of the PCB we can see eight NAND chips manufactured by Toshiba, the second 128MB of DDR2 800 cache, and finally the LAMD LM87800 SSD processor.

Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 SSD controller.

Above we can see the LAMD LM87800 SSD processor. The LM87800 is a dual core device, most likely an ARM 9. There isn’t a lot known about this processor, but it has 8 channels to the NAND array, and NAND endurance is handled by a technology known as EBoost.

Toshiba toggle mode MLC NAND

The NAND onboard the Corsair Neutron GTX is Toshiba toggle mode, with each NAND package having a capacity of 32GB giving a total of 256GB of NAND flash memory. Corsair have 13% of the NAND set aside as an over-provisioned area. When the Neutron GTX is formatted, the user is left with approximately 224GB.

Data Encryption

Although 128/256bit AES encryption is supported in hardware, Corsair have not implemented AES encryption in the Neutron GTX.

Specifications

Drive maintenance features

For Windows 7 users and some distributions of Linux, the Corsair Neutron GTX SSD supports ATA TRIM to keep the NAND clean. The Corsair Neutron GTX also has advanced garbage collection to clean the NAND during drive idle periods.

 

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

 

• Introduction
• Test PC and testing procedures