Corsair Reactor R60 SSD Review
The Corsair Reactor SSD is poised to be set into a very crowded section of the market. Priced in the $130 range, it has to compete with the likes of the OCZ Agility, Vertex, and even others within the Corsair Extreme Series. Using the JMF612 controller from JMicron with 128MB of DDR2 for stutter free performance, the Corsair Reactor CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT is built to right all of the wrongs from the original JMF601 and JMF602 controllers.
The Corsair Reactor R60 is able to perform well in its price range with 250MB/s sequential read speed and a 110MB/s sequential write. The big question is does it suffer the same stuttering issues as the original drives with JMicron controllers? Hopefully, the 128MB of DDR2 cache will help, but only thorough testing will actually show if this major problem has finally been overcome.
Although only acting as a major player in the enthusiast market for a couple of years, the SSD storage device has really changed the way people have looked at computing. Boot times of 10-15 seconds or less are realistic. Now SSD's are finally starting to enter mainstream, and Corsair is attempting to capture the market with its well priced Reactor Series.
Why Use a Solid State Drive?
Computers have quickly become more and more powerful with CPU's growing ability to perform more than 100Gflop/s and GPU's speeding past the 2Tflop/s range. On the other hand, traditional storage has become larger but not enough to compete up with the speeds of other technologies. The reason for this is that traditional spinning disc storage still relies on physical media, and because physical media uses a moving head to read and write, speed is lost.
Where the SSD really stands out is the access times and I/O performance. Hard Drives areal density has been increasing which does help with sequential read and write, but random speeds, access times, and I/O performance are still incredibly slow. The sequential read speeds of even the fastest 15,000 RPM hard disk maxes out at 195MBp/s. A 15,000 RPM hard disk is only looking at an average of 356 I/O operations per second with a access time of 5.6 ms. Compare these with some of the best SSD which can do upwards of 50,000 I/O operation per second with a access time under 0.1 ms.
About Corsair Memory, Inc.
Founded in 1994, Corsair specializes in premium, high-performance peripherals and components for personal computers. Corsair's award-winning products are the delight of the world's most demanding hardware enthusiasts.
Corsair has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high-speed modules since 1994. Our focus has always been on supporting the special demands of mission-critical servers and high-end workstations, as well as the performance demands of extreme gamers. While maintaining this core focus, in recent years, we've also brought our expertise, technology leadership and legendary quality and reliability to memory and other technology products for the more mainstream consumer.
With more high-speed experience than anyone in the industry, we know the importance of design features like tightly-controlled trace lengths, controlled impedances, clock trace design, unbroken power and ground planes, and selectively plated gold. Corsair has developed an industry-wide reputation for quality, compatibility and performance.
Corsair's Reactor Series is the perfect balance of performance and value for your computing needs. Its 128MB on-board cache ensures smooth, stutter-free operation and read speeds up to 250MB/second and write speeds up to 170MB/second, deliver outstanding. With storage capacities up to 120GB, a Reactor Series model exists for all your storage and performance needs.
- Corsair's Reactor Series is the perfect balance of performance and value for your computing needs. Its 128MB on-board cache ensures smooth, stutter-free operation and read speeds up to 250MB/second and write speeds up to 170MB/second, deliver outstanding. With storage capacities up to 120GB, a Reactor Series model exists for all your storage and performance needs.
- Fast Performance—Games, applications, and files load faster
- Stutter Free—Latest generation JMicron controller with integrated 128MB onboard cache, ensures smooth operation, unlike other less expensive SSDs
- Flexible Use—2.5" form factor compatability for your notebook or netbook needs, or use with included 3.5" bracket for your desktop computer
- Silent Operation—No moving parts means zero noise and high reliability
- Low Power—Extend battery life for notebook and netbook users
- Connectivity—Internal SATA II or USB 2.0 connectivity
- Reliable—Over 1,000,000 hours mean time between failures
- Backed by Corsair—A respected name with a passion for great service and support
Corsair Reactor R60 Features
- Maximum sequential read speed 250MB/s
- Maximum sequential write speed 170MB/s
- Latest generation JMicron JMF612 controller and MLC NAND flash for fast performance.
- 128MB DRAM cache for stutter-free performance
- Internal SATA II connectivity
- USB 2.0 connectivity for disk cloning or for use as external drive
- TRIM support (O/S support required)
- No moving parts for increased durability and reliability and quieter operations over standard hard disk drives
- Decreased power usage for increased notebook or netbook battery life
- 2.5” form factor for your portable computer needs
- Included 2.5" to 3.5" bracket for installation on your desktop computer
- Three year warranty
CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT Specifications
| Model |
CSSD-R120GB2-BRKT |
CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT |
| Technology |
High-reliability Intel MLC NAND flash |
High-reliability Intel MLC NAND flash |
| Form factor |
2.5 inch |
2.5 inch |
| Unformatted capacity |
120GB ‡ |
60GB ‡ |
| Interface |
SATA II (3.0Gb/s)
Backward compatible with SATA I
USB 2.0
|
SATA II (3.0Gb/s)
Backward compatible with SATA I
USB 2.0
|
| Performance |
250 MB/s sequential read
170 MB/s sequential write |
250 MB/s sequential read
110 MB/s sequential write |
| DRAM cache memory |
128MB |
128MB |
| Weight |
80g |
80g |
Electrical and Power Characteristics |
| Voltage |
5V ±5% |
5V ±5% |
Power consumption
(active) |
2.0W Max |
2.0W Max |
Power consumption
(idle/standby/sleep) |
0.5W Max |
0.5W Max |
Reliability |
| S.M.A.R.T. support |
Yes |
Yes |
| MTBF |
1,000,000 hours |
1,000,000 hours |
| Shock |
40G |
40G |
| Warranty |
Three Years |
Three Years |
Closer Look: Corsair Reactor R60
Adding yet another line of SSD drives to their lineup, Corsair introduced the Reactor SD Series. The 60GB CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT model uses a JMF612 controller from JMicron with 128MB of DDR2 for stutter free performance along with Intel MLC NAND flash. This drive boasts a read speed of 250MB/s and a write speed of 110MB/s and is well suited for those wanting to move into the SSD market without forking out large sums of money for faster drives.
Designed for the mainstream market, the Corsair Reactor R60 is well priced at $130, and yet still is leaps and bounds faster than any conventional HDD. For systems that may have felt sluggish before, it will breathe new life into them.
Built in a 2.5" form factor, this drive will easily fit in any laptop or desktop (designed to natively take 2.5" drives) with its pre-drilled holes. Alternately, Corsair has included a 2.5" to 3.5" conversion kit for easy installation into desktops designed for 3.5" drives.
Clad in beautifully dark brushed aluminum, this drive looks like it was designed to run inside the Corsair 800D. The integrated USB Mini-B port makes for easy drive cloning or, even in a pinch, a very durable USB drive.
Using Intel MLC NAND chips, the Corsair Reactor series is not reaching for the fastest possible speed but rather a mix of speed and price in hopes to encourage customers who previously considered the SSD market to be too expensive to justify the sizes of the drives.
JMF612 Detailed Features
The Corsair Reactor series uses the JMicron JMF612 controller. This controller is also used on the Western Digital Silicon-Edge Blue drive. It supports both the Sata 3.0Gbps standard and the USB 2.0 standard for easy drive cloning and backup. In addition, it supports error correction code that can repair 24 random bit errors in 1024 bytes and wear-leveling. It is designed to be a cheaper alternative to the higher performing but more expensive controllers on the market such as the Sandforce-1200.
Here is the JMF612 controller. This controller was designed to get over the struggles that the original JMF602 Controllers had, namely the stuttering problems during random writes. Although JMicron brought out the JMF602B which had twice the cache, it still had many problems and was quickly surpassed by the Indillinx Barefoot controller. JMicron's answer to this is the JMF612 controller. The JMF612 uses an ARM9 embedded processor with 128KB of RAM and 32KB of ROM. ROM can also be flashed using the USB2.0 interface providing the ability for manufactures to push out updates if incompatibilities or problems are found. It supports NCQ (Native Command Queuing), SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), and wear-leveling to increase the longevity of the drive.
Advertised to help make this drive have stutter free performance when performing large amounts of random writes, Corsair used a single 128MB of Hynix H5PS1G64EFR-S6C DDR2 RAM chip with a speed of 800Mhz (CL3-3-3).
Like many other SSD's out at this time, the Corsair Reactor R60 uses Intel's 29F64G08CAMDB NAND chips. These chips are made using the 34nm manufacturing processes and are each 64Gigabit (8GB) in size. To reach its intended size of 60GB, Corsair uses 8 of these chips to make up 64GB total. The missing 4 GB of space most likely is used by a form of wear-leveling so that the drive is always working in the most efficient manner it can when full or nearly full.
The question is: will this new controller with its large 128MB cache help fix the problems that the previous JMF602 controllers had? Hopefully the testing will support the claims made by JMicron.
SSD Testing Methodology
Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDDs has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed".
However the benefits inherent to SSDs have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed.
Comparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even if you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be many times faster in response (SSDs), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth(HDDs). Additionally, there are certain factors which can affect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid.
SSD Testing Disclaimer
Early on in our SSD coverage, Benchmark Reviews published an article which detailed Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.
Our test results were obtained after each SSD had been prepared using DISKPART or Sanitary Erase tools. As a word of caution, applications such as these offer immediate but temporary restoration of original 'pristine' performance levels. In our tests, we discovered that the maximum performance results (charted) would decay as subsequent tests were performed. SSDs attached to TRIM enabled Operating Systems will benefit from continuously refreshed performance, whereas older O/S's will require a garbage collection (GC) tool to avoid 'dirty NAND' performance degradation.
It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and PCMark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.
Test System
-
Motherboard: Foxconn ELA P45
-
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
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Ghz
-
System Memory: 4GB dual channel DDR 1066
-
SATA 3Gb/s Storage HBA: Integrated Intel ICH10R SATA-3.0 Gbps Controller
-
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64-Bit (AHCI mode)
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
Test Tools
- AS SSD Benchmark 1.4.3704.27281: Multi-purpose speed and operational performance test
-
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34: Spot-tests static file size chunks for basic I/O bandwidth
- Iometer 2008.06.28 by Intel Corporation: Tests IOPS performance and I/O response time
-
Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition 5.50: Disk Benchmark component tests linear read and write bandwidth speeds
-
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.0b by Crystal Dew World: Sequential speed benchmark spot-tests various file size chunks
Test Results Disclaimer
This article utilizes benchmark software tools to produce operational IOPS performance and bandwidth speed results. Each test was conducted in a specific fashion, and repeated for all products. These test results are not comparable to any other benchmark application, neither on this website or another, regardless of similar IOPS or MB/s terminology in the scores. The test results in this project are only intended to be compared to the other test results conducted in identical fashion for this article.
AS-SSD Benchmark
Alex Schepeljanski of Alex Intelligent Software develops the free AS SSD Benchmark utility for testing storage devices. The AS SSD Benchmark tests sequential read and write speeds, input/output operational performance, and response times. Because this software receives frequent updates, Benchmark Reviews recommends that you compare results only within the same version family.
When you look at the performance from a purely sequential point of view, the Corsair Reactor R60 performs admirably for the price you pay - 225.46MB/s read speed and 106.53MB/s sequential write speed. Sadly, once you start looking at 4k and 4k 64 thread, these numbers diminish greatly.
Compared with the results of other drives, you start to see the importance that a controller can have on a system. The Corsair Reactor uses the JMF612 controller and, although leaps and bounds better then traditional storage, is still at the bottom of the list when it comes to 64-thread 4k IOPS.
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
ATTO Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth speed performance indicators.
Yet again, we see sequential read speeds of the drive hold it ahead of the traditional storage at 243MB/s. Unfortunately, not only is it at the bottom of the SSD pack for write speed, it even is below the slowest of the traditional storage at 105MB/s. Rated by the manufacturer at 110MB/s, the tests results agree with this claim.
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our test results chart below, the 4KB 32-Queue Depth read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB space. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and all drives are formatted with NTFS on the Intel ICH10 controller set to AHCI-mode. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads. In addition to our other tests, this benchmark allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load.
The sequential read speed of 230MB/s is admirable for what you pay but sequential write speed is quite low at 103MB/s. The 4k speeds, although much better than traditional storage, remains at the bottom of the pack for SSD's. When you look at this, you see that the JMF612 controller really doesnt scale well with more Queue Depth; especially when you compare it to the top performing SandForce drives, the difference becomes clear.
With 4k QD32 read speeds of 19.4MB/s and write speeds of 16.83MB/s, the best performing Sandforce drive is still looking at nearly 7x better 4k QD32 performance. But then again, there is the price difference of more than double.
Displayed in the chart below, the maximum 4KB Queue Depth 32 IOPS performance results for several enthusiast-level storage products illustrate which products offer the best operation under load:
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
EVEREST Disk Benchmark
Many enthusiasts are familiar with the Lavalys EVEREST benchmark suite, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. However, Hard Disk Drive products suffer a lower average bandwidth as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. EVEREST Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting.
In the linear read test, this drive bumps right up against where Corsair says it should be. Corsair claims a max sequential read speed of 250MBp/s while this drives averages 241 MB/s while connected to the ICH10R controller in my Foxconn ELA P45 Motherboard. Next, lets look at the linear read side of things.
The Corsair Reactor R60 is rated for a sequential read speed of 110MB/s and it averages at 108.3MB/s - right on mark for where it should be.
The Corsair Reactor R60 does very well on sequential read, keeping up with and even surpassing a couple other SSDs. As for the sequential write speed, notice the large discrepancy between sequential read and write leaving much to be wanted with it being outperformed by everything but the single WD VelociRaptor.
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
IOmeter Benchmark
Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer's I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as "Galileo". Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL).
Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.
To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution at a queue depth of 32 outstanding I/O's per target. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. While this pattern may not match traditional 'server' or 'workstation' profiles, it illustrates a single point of reference relative to our product field.
Our charts show the random Read and Write IOPS performance over a 120-second Iometer test phase, with the average displayed in our benchmark results where high I/O is preferred:
The Corsair Reactor remains panting at the bottom of the SSD pack when it comes to 4k Random performance with a Queue Depth of 30, but it still shows that one of the slowest SSDs (5152/2383) still out paces one of the faster consumer HDD by a good margin. One thing I could never explain during the test was the fact that there is such a large gap between the clean and dirty NAND (46%). After running the test multiple times, I received a score of ~2400 after using Diskpart Clean All and a substantially higher score of ~5000 after I did not use the Diskpart Clean All the second time .
Even with the odd test results, the Corsair Reactor R60 could not keep up with the with the drives using SandForce SF-1200, but Corsairs Force F100 lead the pack using its custom firmware (42533/42482). This is due to the fact that the firmware used on the Corsair Force is not crippled. This is because when Sandforce was releasing beta firmware version 3.0.1, drive performance was not artificially limited to the 10k IOPs that the final revision of the SF-1200 firmware had. Corsair modified this into version 3.0.2, making for a drive that had the highest IOPs performance without the cost of a SF-1500 Drive.
This test shows the importance of drives being able to efficiently use NCQ. The SandForce drives efficiently use the parallel requests to help increase speeds. Unfortunately, for the Corsair Reactor JMF612 controller does not handle these requests quite so well, scoring 8x less IOP/s.
Reactor Final Thoughts
The Corsair Reactor R60 has the makings to be a very solid entry level drive for a very low price. Currently, some retailers are selling this drive for $104 with Mail-in-rebates, or $134 without. It still outperforms contemporary drives without breaking the bank, helping SSDs finally ease into the lower price segments of the market where they can keep dropping prices and increasing performance.
This "solid entry level" SSD also has its share of problems. Many users complain of the drives not showing up in BIOS or disappearing after restarts and requiring multiple shutdowns to be seen again. Others users accuse the Corsair Reactor of silent data corruption; this includes myself. The first drive I received slowly corrupted data, eventually damaging my Windows partition beyond repair. What is worse is that this problem is difficult to diagnose due to its already mentioned silence. Even on CHKDSK or in the S.M.A.R.T. data, errors refuse to reveal themselves. The signs I received were programs not starting and requiring re-installation, BSoD's, Windows needing repair, and documents no longer opening or having massive errors in them.
Corsair R60 Conclusion
For the price, the performance is good. It may not keep up with the likes of the SandForce controller, but even the cheapest of those drives starts at a price $70-80 above the Corsair Reactor R60. And yet this drive still outperforms the traditional storage in random reads and writes by a good amount with 4K reads in the 17MB/s range and writes in 15MB/s range. This drive has quite good sequential read speeds at 240MB/s, and its sequential write speeds at 108MB/s. This leaves things to be desired, but who can complain with that price?
I find the appearance to be a moot point as this drive will be going inside your system hopefully never to see the light of day until it is replaced, but I really do enjoy the dark brushed aluminum look they gave this drive. It's not too flashy and would fit perfectly inside of a Corsair 800D case.
With no moving parts that can be damaged by drops, the metals used to encase it can be thinner and therefore lighter. For those of us used to dealing with Traditional hard drives, they may feel flimsy, but in my time dealing with it, I found it to be very sturdy. If problems do arise, Corsair has quick and efficient customer service on both its website and forums that will take care of you and your drive throughout its 3 year warranty. If you prefer to deal directly with real people, you can even call their customer service (888-222-4346), and they will gladly help you resolve your problems.
Functionality is as it should be: it provides extra performance in day-to-day life over traditional storage but is priced to fit in the mainstream market.
The value of this drive at its current price of $134.00 ($104 after rebate for a limited time) makes this a great entry level drive, but its flaws with silent data corruption and not being able to be detected by the BIOS really hurts it. One of the positive things is that the Corsair kit includes a 2.5" to 3.5" conversion system so that it is easy to mount in your existing 3.5" drive bays without spending extra money.
If Corsair releases new firmware that corrects the data corruption issues and helps with the data disappearance act this drive does, then it really could have an entry level winner on its hands, priced aggressively, and hopefully bringing Solid State Drives to the masses at last.
Pros:
+ Inexpensive Price
+ Good Sequential Read Speeds
+ Good Customer Service and Technical Support
Cons:
- Data Corruption
- Lackluster Sequential Performance
- Low 4K Random IOPS Performance
Ratings:
-
Performance: 6.75
-
Appearance: 9.00
-
Construction: 8.00
-
Functionality: 5.25
-
Value: 6.00
Final Score: 7.0 out of 10
Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.
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Comments
On the Cons you mentioned low 4k speed, and I think for whoever wants to buy a SSD for OS, 4k read/write performance is the key to achieve better speeds.
At the value, you gave a 6.0, but in the conclusions it says it has a pretty good entry cost. Shouldn't the BIOS and performance issues affect directly on the performance and functionality scores? Or why did you put a 6 on value?
May I recommend you also test both the OCZ Vertex LE (Limited Edition) and the Vertex 2 ?
thanks
if it is not asking too much could you also test in parallel the Vertex LE (Limited Edition)?
This because there are many confusion around the web and although they seems to perform similar it would be nice for the customer to understand which one of these two is the fastest!
I trust Benchmarkreviews!!
thanks!
Also.... a hard drive that corrupts your data? How does that deserve a 7? Did you contact Corsair about that? What did they say?
The Corsair Reactor R60 SSD is definitely unable to work in a professional environment. I had one and only got problems with the non-detection by BIOS after reboot bug. After readings this article, i know that i had the data destruction, too. I didn´t recognized it, i always thought the errors i got were Windows or Software bugs. An ureliable hard drive is a piece of very expensive junk.
A rating of 0-1 would be adequate, until Corsair admits the bugs and fix them with a firmware update or callback of the defective drives.