Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB Solid State Drive Review

One of the amazing things we noted with the Neutron is how light the drive is. Whilst this is not a key factor to most when buying a drive, when looking at the ultra book market, weight is a major factor and having a lighter drive only adds to the desirability and is in effect a major selling point in that region alongside its slim 7mm profile.

On the underside things are the same as well, the only difference being the change from a single warranty sticker that appeared to hold no purpose where it was positioned. Instead we find two smaller stickers that bridge the gap between the two halves of the case.

As we’ve noted before, the Neutron GTX is only a mere 7mm thick and with its ultra slim build allows for better compatibility in systems and more importantly the likes of ultra books, where space is at a premium and we find most drives not fitting.

Opening the case up, the PCB is attached by three screws to the lower half of the shell. On the lower half we can see a small thermal contact pad, which allows the controller to dissipate any heat through to the thin metal case.

Taking the PCB out of the case, when marked against the standard Neutron, this comprises of a whole new design with the vast majority of the drives major components situated on the lower half of the board.

Turning the PCB over, we find the board populated with a total of eight Toggle NAND ICs and the LAMD controller at the centre. Towards the SATA terminals, we find a smaller 256MB RAM IC which when paired with the same IC on the other side of the board, gives us a total of 512MB of DDR2 memory.

Looking a little closer at the flash ICs, we can see that for the GTX, Corsair have opted for eight of Toshiba’s 32GB 24nm Toggle Flash NAND chips. These are the same ICs that we have previously seen in the Performance Pro Series of SSDs, however only offer a total of 240GB of storage capacity as part of provisioning for the controller.