Earlier this year we reviewed OCZ's flagship Vertex four SSD which at the time we were lead to believe was based on a second-generation Everest controller developed in-house. Having acquired IP and assets from Solid Data in 2022 to expand OCZ's controller and interface portfolio, followed past the acquisition of Indilinx, maker of the renowned Barefoot SSD controller, OCZ was in a adept position to start working on their own controllers.

Then when OCZ announced the arrival of the Octane SSD series based on the Indilinx Everest controller it seemed fairly plausible, despite the amazingly fast turnaround fourth dimension. Then OCZ went on to release a 2nd, Indilinx Everest two-based Vertex iv but months later. Some started to question how these new controllers were being adult so fast.

Somewhen information technology was revealed and later confirmed past OCZ that the Octane and Vertex 4 drives really used Marvell controllers, while the firmware was adult in-house past Indilinx (hence the 'Indilinx infused' moniker). That meant these SSDs were using the very aforementioned controller driving the Crucial m4 and Intel SSD 510, at least in the case of the Octane anyway.

Needless to say many consumers were not pleased with the deception. While we acknowledged that information technology was very sneaky on OCZ'southward behalf, it also didn't change things much for us. Regardless of who did or didn't brand the controller, the drives' performance however stood, and in the case of the Vertex 4 that meant it was one of the all-time performers and best values in the high-end SSD segment.

So with the controversy of the Vertex 4 most behind them, it appears that OCZ is finally ready to unveil its first truly in-house SSD controller. It's been 3 years since Indilinx released a make new controller and they are doing so today with the Barefoot three, which is to exist featured in OCZ'due south latest SSD series known as Vector.

OCZ Vector SSD

The Vector serial is aimed at functioning buffs, with initial Indilinx Barefoot 3 based models offering capacities of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. The drives take a slim 2.five" design, measuring 99.8 x 69.63 10 9.3mm and weighing up to 83 grams.

Power consumption is depression compared to conventional difficult drives as the Vector uses just ii.25 watts when active and 0.nine watts when in standby mode. While this is less than OCZ's claimed power rating for the Vertex 4, it's more than what Samsung claims for their latest SSD 840 Pro series.

The 128GB model packs read and write speeds of 550MB/southward and 400MB/s. Meanwhile, the 256GB and 512GB models feature the same 550MB/s reads, just writes are boosted to 530MB/s. When compared to the Vertex 4 series the read performance is down 10MB/southward while the write functioning is up 20MB/s.

All Vector models are loaded with 25nm IMFT NAND synchronous flash memory. Our review sample has sixteen 16GB NAND ICs which are labeled OCZ M2502128T048SX22, giving a total chapters of 256GB. Of course, OCZ is not in the business of creating their own NAND flash memory and instead purchases and packages the NAND flash wafers, which they say allows them to pass the cost savings onto their customers. The NAND flash memory is presumably manufactured past Micron.

Once formatted in Windows, the original 256GB is converted to 239GiB, though Windows shows this as 239GB, so it seems like vii% of the original capacity has been lost. With a suggested retail price of $270, the Vector 256GB costs $i.05 per gigabyte, an splendid value for a high-operation SSD.

The Indilinx Barefoot iii controller features an ARM Cortex processor and is coupled with a 1GB DRAM enshroud. OCZ used a pair of Micron DDR3-800 512MB chips, one on either side of the PCB.

The Vector SSD series is rated to deliver 20GB of writes per day for 5 years, which equates to a total of 36.5TB's of written information. OCZ also provides a full 5-yr warranty with all Vector drives, so that should provide users with some peace of mind.

Every bit a side note, OCZ says that the Barefoot three controller has endured a robust and lengthy validation bike and was distributed to a big network of beta testers. OCZ has talked a lot near quality, which is of import when discussing whatever storage device, and I'm sure they want to move away from the issues caused by the 2nd generation SandForce controller used in the Vertex 3 series.