Corsair Announces Availability of Accelerator Series Solid-State Cache Drives

[Cristian_25H]

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the availability of the Accelerator Series SSD cache drives.

The Accelerator Series is designed for desktop PC users who want to give their Microsoft Windows based PC a dramatic performance boost with minimal cost and hassle. Corsair's new line of SSD cache drives includes premium Dataplex caching software from NVELO, for improved boot times and lightning-quick file access. After connecting an Accelerator Series SSD cache drive to their computer's SATA port and installing the caching software provided with the drive, users will see an immediate speed boost. No drive mapping, no reinstallation of the operating system or applications, and no complex file management is needed - the Accelerator Series SSD cache drive works in tandem with the customer's existing hard drive to provide optimized performance. Customers may see an improvement in read/write speeds of up to 5x their current hard drive performance after installing a Corsair Accelerator Series SSD cache drive.





"The newly available Accelerator Series SSD cache drives are some of the most cost-effective solutions for boosting PC performance without the complexity of drive swaps and reconfiguration," said Thi La, Vice President of Memory Products at Corsair. "They are ideal for PC users and enthusiasts who want to improve their computer's speed without the hassle and expense of a full system upgrade."

Accelerator Series solid-state cache drives support Micosoft Windows 7, with Windows 8 support planned, and are compatible with SATA 2 and SATA 3 ports.

Pricing and Availability

Accelerator Series solid-state cache drives are backed by a three-year warranty and available now from Corsair's worldwide network of authorized retailers and distributors at a US suggested retail price of $99 USD for the 60 GB model, $84 USD for the 45 GB model, and $69 USD for the 30 GB model. Note that stated capacities are unformatted.

For more information on Accelerator Series solid-state cache drives, please visit:
http://www.corsair.com/ssd/accelerator-series-ssd-cache-drive.html

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[1Kurgan1]

Interesting, I was thinking it would be solely on chipsets to implement this feature (like Z68), but they can do it by software as well? Thats great, how does the performance of this vary vs a chipset with this feature?

 

[Norton]

I'll await some reviews to see if they got it right.... there are already a couple of products out there that have tried similar (e. Silverstone's HDD Boost unit)

 

[TheOne]

Interesting, I was thinking it would be solely on chipsets to implement this feature (like Z68), but they can do it by software as well? Thats great, how does the performance of this vary vs a chipset with this feature?

I'll await some reviews to see if they got it right.... there are already a couple of products out there that have tried similar (e. Silverstone's HDD Boost unit)

It would seem, at least according to Corsair's website, that they have bumped the prices, their site list the 30GB for $80, the 45GB for $105, and the 60GB for $125.

Also OCZ released their own line of Caching SSD's using the Dataplex software back in October, the Synapse series comes in two sizes 64GB (32GB) and 128GB (64GB), the main differences between the Accelerator and Synapse series is that the Synapse uses a SATAIII controller, but cuts the drive in half for overprovisioning, and the Accelerator uses a SATAII controller, but doesn't seem to use half of the drive for overprovisioning, possibly leaving the option open of using the drive just as an SSD.

The Synapse drives run for about $155 for the 64GB (32GB) and $255 for the 128GB (64GB) MSRP, though Newegg is currently selling them for $145 ($125 after MIR) for the 64GB and $255 ($225 after MIR) for the 128GB.

 

[Fitseries3]

nvelo states on their site that you need a minimum of 64gb drive to use their software.... did corsair miss that?

 

[TheOne]

nvelo states on their site that you need a minimum of 64gb drive to use their software.... did corsair miss that?

Generally with Caching to an SSD the max recommended capacity is about 60GB, as for NVELO's software they recommend a 32GB to 128GB SSD for Desktop's, and as low as 16GB for Notebooks and Tablets.

NVELO offers two Dataplex options for use in client computing. For professional video and graphics production, software development, CAD/CAM, and gaming, Dataplex utilizes a “Write-Back” caching policy to deliver maximum performance and endurance for heavy end-user workloads. In this mode, both system Reads and Writes are cached, and the ideal MLC or SLC-based cache SSD would typically be in the range of 32GB to 128GB depending upon specific use cases.

For notebooks and tablet computing, Dataplex uses a “Write-Around” caching policy which caches system Reads, and can utilize MLC-based SSD’s with as little as 16GB capacity for cost reduction, while still delivering 4-5x performance over HDD’s, and maintaining multi-year endurance requirements.