Corsair P256 SSD with 128 MB cache

A few days ago Corsair brought some fresh air on solid-state drive market by releasing their new fast 256 GB SSD based on multi-level cell and featuring read and write speeds of up to 200 MB/s. New Corsair is going to directly compete with A-DATA XPG both on price and speed range.

One thing Corsair can not be proud of is its usage of jMicron controller which caused performance issues regarding random write speeds of small data, 4KB and 16KB in the past and for that I strongly suggested to avoid any SSD using jMicron controller.

Corsair tried to bridge this issue by allocating a hefty 128 MB of fast memory onboard cache which can indeed solve some bottleneck performance troubles jMicron controller is bringing.


Though jMicron controller saw upgrade to versing B and taking in account that XPG specs are appealing the price of $699 will detract many users, though for your comfort it is being sold in all major online stores in smaller capacities of 128 GB and 64 GB respectively which reduces price dramatically.

For the end keep in mind that buying such drive is not rushing into the first store but rather think twice before choosing the right one.

Prerequisite for me when buying solid state drive is at least jMicron 602B version with 64MB of onboard cache if not Samsung controller. Unfortunately anything else than implementing jMicron controller raises price by factor 2 so it is difficult for manufacturers to built such mainstream device for a reasonable price. For this we will have to wait a bit longer.

Features:
Technology: Reliability selected MLC NAND
Interface: SATA 3.0Gb/s
Width: 2.5” (69.85 mm)
Height: 2.5”0.37” (9.5 mm)
Weight: 72g
User-Addressable Sectors: 250,069,680
Bytes per Sector: 512
Voltage: 5V
Read/Write: 0.48W/0.46W
Idel, Standby, Sleep: 0.2W
S.M.A.R.T Suppot: Yes
MTBF: 1,000,000 Hours (114+ years)
Shock: 1500G (0.5msec half sine wave)

Corsair P256 SSD with 128 MB cache