[PcPer] OCZ Colossus 3.5-in Solid State Drive Review

1283 Views 17 Replies 12 Participants Last post by n00biE5200, Nov 24, 2009

BounouGod

Discussion Starter · Nov 23, 2009

It's been a bumpy road for the OCZ Colossus. We caught our first glimpse of it back in June, and posted up some exclusive early testing data and pricing back in July. Samples arrived at our storage lab a few months back and we've spent much time evaluating firmware performance. Shipping firmware arrived on another unit and we've been evaluating it for the last few weeks.

The Colossus is OCZ's first 3.5" form factor SSD. It consists of 4 (!) Indilinx controllers ganged together by a network of Silicon Image RAID processors. These are only 2-channel controllers, so they link the Indilinx controllers to a single SATA link in a 4-2-1 channel configuration consisting of 3 SI 5923 chips.

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1 - 18 of 18 Posts

Rothen

· #2 · Nov 23, 2009

Interesting, I like the word Colossus, but I certainly don't think 32GB is colossal.

At least its very fast!

Bazmecc

· #3 · Nov 23, 2009

is this their first SLC SSD?

edit: lol...I looked at the test system specs, and saw 32GB SLC...but that's a G.Skill

the previous post mentioning 32GB didn't help

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Murlocke

· #4 · Nov 23, 2009

Uhh... the X25-M G2 on that is so far off compared to mine. Seems like they had the OS doing something else during that test. Makes me question the reliablity of the rest of the tests.

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Bazmecc

· #5 · Nov 23, 2009

^seperately or in RAID0

is there a difference for you there?

Murlocke

· #6 · Nov 23, 2009

2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazmecc

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^seperately or in RAID0

is there a difference for you there?

Single SSD of course. The 160GB model is faster than the 80GB models.. so it should be beating my scores, however theirs is lower than mine by a good 60-70MB/s.

They show the 80GB G1 at 39MB/s faster than the 160GB G2 in burst reads.

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Bazmecc

· #7 · Nov 23, 2009

slightly OT, what's your RAID burst with those?

Murlocke

· #8 · Nov 23, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazmecc

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slightly OT, what's your RAID burst with those?

I have write cache enabled so my tests are showing like 2500MB/s in HDTach, which is completely false. However, I don't have the intel program installed to disable write caching to test it again, so I can't give you an exact number.

It was over 500MB/s burst when they were brand new out of the box. Probably about 10% lower now due to drivers not supporting TRIM in RAID 0.

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justarealguy

· #9 · Nov 23, 2009

Wow those Vraptors really hold their own.

Go spinning platter!

Murlocke

· #10 · Nov 23, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazmecc

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slightly OT, what's your RAID burst with those?

I just found my old screenshots.

Brand new 1x 80GB X25-M G2:
228MB/s Burst Read

Brand new 2x 80GB X25-M G2 Raid 0 128MB Stripe:
462MB/s Burst Read

Way higher than what they show on those benchies.

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Bazmecc

· #11 · Nov 23, 2009

hmmm...maybe it was a bad sample or something...oh well, something wrong anyway

Diabolical999

· #12 · Nov 23, 2009

Cons:

Quote:

No TRIM support.

Quote:

Firmware is not end-user upgradable.

Cool story, brah. I'll pass.

awdrifter

· #13 · Nov 24, 2009

It's an internal RAID structure. So far non of the internal RAID SSDs could have user upgradable firmware. Their older Apex was like that, and G.Skill's Titan was also like that.

Blameless

· #14 · Nov 24, 2009

No NCQ is as much, or more, of an issue than lack of TRIM, IMO.

Could be good for sequential write tasks, like video recording, but then again, conventional RAID arrays of rotating platter drives could do even better for much less.

ErBall

· #15 · Nov 24, 2009

I would assume that the low g2 scores tie directly into the fact that Intel had issues with the initial TRIM firmware update. Many of the updates actually bricked the drives themselves.

The newest update is supposed to be out soon, but I'm tentative about updating my SSD.

Zerkk

· #16 · Nov 24, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diabolical999

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Cons:

Cool story, brah. I'll pass.

My thoughts exactly.

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RonindeBeatrice

· #17 · Nov 24, 2009

I , for one, would just like to see the 3.5" SSD disappear. There's no cause for this form factor.

n00biE5200

· #18 · Nov 24, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rothen

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Interesting, I like the word Colossus, but I certainly don't think 32GB is colossal.

At least its very fast!

the colossus goes up to 1TB! thats huge for SSD and large for a HDD

PS click on 1TB!
PPSS the cost is in the thousands $2-4k i cant remember

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