Corsair Accelerator 30GB & 60GB Caching SSD Review @ [H]

If you need to make a major shift guys, just uninstall the software. Reinstalling resets the key to the new hardware config, it really is just that simple. If you forget, then you can call and they will reset.
No one has posted anywhere that they had an actually had a key invalidated. the reason for this is:
1. it will not happen if you follow the instructions, and uninstall the software if you are making changes to more than two components at the same time.
2. if you forget to uninstall, a simple email or call, and they reset the key
So, you will not lose your key due to hardware changes.
:)
 
So I can basically use this w/o reinstalling Windows?

If so, this wins over a straight SSD solution for me.

I don't want to redo 2-3TB of data. Just not worth it, my time is valuable and lacking.

But if I can drop this in on a SATA controller and it functions as a cache drive like
it appears it does.

Then I'm buying. It'll easy extend the life of my system with a 15-20% increase in
activity. Anything more than that is gravy on my biscuits
 
I agree.
End of the day, if you can afford and are able to install an SSD as your primary boot drive, I recommend that you do so!
The straight SSD wins every time in my book.
However, any limitations that would otherwise hold you back for any reason... if this solution fits better for you by all means do it! Honestly, I would without hesitation.
Caching is a hot market right now, look for more of these types of SSDs in the future, and alot of them!
also, look for the big OEMs to be releasing their own software implementations. Sandisk already is, they purchased PerfectDisk just for this. Several others are on it as well.
So right now, all consumer SSDs are using the same Nvelo Dataplex software. Look for that to switch to many different options for the caching software, and some will no doubt be better, especially once you get the Billion and Trillion dollar OEMS throwing their weight behind it!
There are predicitions by industry heavyweights (Gartner) that indicate that caching SSDs will be a bigger market than straight SSD-only sales in the very near future.
These types of market indicators have the big boys throwing cash at new cache solutions :)
 
Just after I read this very excellent review, I ordered my son a laptop for school.

I bought an IvyBridge based system with a mobile GTX680 (just in case he has time to game......)

The vendor offered a Kingston 90 GB caching SSD as an option, so I did just that and paired it with a mechanical 750 GB standard HDD.

The guy at Powernotebooks said they used the Intel (smart response) caching software, hopefully it will be as seamless as what you describe in your article. As I understand it, the Intel SRT is created from a fresh install using a RAID 0 configuration with the second drive, whereas this Corsair stuff doesn't require that......or am I missing something?

By the way, I ordered two of the Corsair 60 GB systems yesterday for my computers at home.......this sounds like a real win-win.:D
 
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"10. The following configuration(s) are not supported: - NVIDIA storage controllers"

LOL. Well they finally came out and said it. I have an nforce motherboard, and I had the OCZ cache driver earlier this year that uses the same Dataplex software. It was not a good experience. It would frequently crash for apparently no reason, and then require lengthy bootup repair sequences. I gave up and returned it. I then bought a Corsair SSD and have been happy since.

I know nforce boards are a dying breed, and maybe NVELO has updated the software some since... but I am done with them and wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Just search the Hardforum for OCZ Synapse and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Off topic, in today's Fry's ad there is a Corsair 90gb SSD for $59 after rebate. In my eyes there is just no reason for these cache drives any more. It's a product that came VERY late to market. 5 years ago these would have been much more successful I think.

Edit - Guys, you don't have to reinstall if you buy a SSD. There are many free or low cost programs that can clone and resize the boot disks over to a SSD. What I did was I uninstalled a bunch of games I wasn't currently playing (saved the savegame data if I ever go back) then cloned the drive to the SSD. Then I formatted the old HDD to be a data drive. Now, when I install I make sure it goes to the D: drive. FYI, if you have a pantload of Steam games on C: you can copy them over manually and there is a registry hack, just google it.
 
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Burticus said:
In my eyes there is just no reason for these cache drives any more. It's a product that came VERY late to market. 5 years ago these would have been much more successful I think.
Click to expand...

They came late...but for how pricey/GB SSDs are and how little capacity they have compared to a spinner they can still make lots of sense. I just spent for the 45GB model. $60 to speed up my system is waaay better than the $200+USD SSD I'd need for my OS and non-Steam apps. My OS+ Adobe CS+ProTools+Sibelius+MS Office is ~180GB right now last I checked.
 
Its a hack for people who cant afford SSD's. Adds a lot of variables and more possibilities for something to go wrong.
 
Kinks of this particular software aside, it is not the price per GB of the SSD in these systems that is amazing, is the price per GB of the "pakage".

You pair this with a $120 2TB drive and you have 2TB storage and a + 60GB SSD cache that performs like was described in this article for $120 + $75. Less than $200 bucks or about the price of a 256GB SSD. The price per GB of this "solution" is $0.10 per GB, the price of the 256GB SSD is $0.78 per GB.

Plus the convenience of not having to re-install windows if you install this in an existing system, etc.

Is definitely not just a hack for people who cant afford a SSD.
 
What am I missing here?
How can this be useful without a comparison to Intel SRT caching scheme?

This seems so obvious that I must be having brain seizure.......
 
cloning software is not always the best option for migrating from an HDD to an SSD. First, there can be alignment issues, so you will need to make sure that the utility is "4k Aware". Secondly, WIN7 will optimize itself for SSD once one is detected during installation.

A comparison to SRT is a good idea, but also bear in mind that not all systems, actually probably a very small percentage, even have the option of SRT.
For instance, over 85% of computers aren't even SATA 3 capable, let alone have the option of SRT.
 
I like the information here, great read. I wish I could get it, I have an older Nvidia chipset so no go for me. It would seem that you could do another drive if you have a SSD for your main drive and a D: drive for your apps, then you could cache that drive and have a fast system all around.
 
Z68 caching is probably the best in terms of flexibility, but if you're just adding caching to an existing setup, the myriad SSD/Dataplex caching setups are probably the easiest route and fairly cost effective too. Capturing the real performance is difficult just because of how drives are benched, but they do work and they do provide substantial benefits. If you're the type of person that can't bear to unistall games in your Steam collection, caching may be right up your alley.
 
If you have an HDD drive with two partitions, does it speed up programs in both partitions? I also have a second HDD. Do any programs on the second drive see any benefit?
 
it only speeds up the boot drive, but i am not sure if that applies to the drive itself or the partitions as well
 
Mike89 said:
If you have an HDD drive with two partitions, does it speed up programs in both partitions? I also have a second HDD. Do any programs on the second drive see any benefit?
Click to expand...

To your partitions question I don't know. Only one drive can be sped up in a system, and that drive must have OS and the MBR partition on it.

///My 45GB Accelerator should be here Monday
 
Mike89 said:
If you have an HDD drive with two partitions, does it speed up programs in both partitions? I also have a second HDD. Do any programs on the second drive see any benefit?
Click to expand...

Yup.....the only drive affected is the boot drive, and according to the instructions I've read the target drive has to have the OS on it.

I bought a 60GB for myself and I also got a 45GB for my daughter's computer.

A bunch of people must have read Hugh's review.....all of a sudden these are sold out all over the place!!!!!:eek::eek::p
 
featsdontfailme said:
Yup.....the only drive affected is the boot drive, and according to the instructions I've read the target drive has to have the OS on it.

I bought a 60GB for myself and I also got a 45GB for my daughter's computer.

A bunch of people must have read Hugh's review.....all of a sudden these are sold out all over the place!!!!!:eek::eek::p
Click to expand...

It is like lots of people pay attention to [H] reviews :D
 
featsdontfailme said:
Yup.....the only drive affected is the boot drive, and according to the instructions I've read the target drive has to have the OS on it.

I bought a 60GB for myself and I also got a 45GB for my daughter's computer.

A bunch of people must have read Hugh's review.....all of a sudden these are sold out all over the place!!!!!:eek::eek::p
Click to expand...

This is a great review but the big miss here is the comparision with Intel RST. I have an Asus Z68-V Pro with caching enabled (Intel RST) and it speeds up the volume - one disk with 2 partitions, i.e., it speeds up the boot partition(C) and the data partition(D). I have games installed in D drive and it's fast:cool:. As Intel RST can cache not only the boot drive I see it as a major advantage over Dataplex software.
 
Yeah if this doesn't speed up my second partition on the first HDD, It wouldn't make much sense to get it I think. My first partition is only 60 gigs for the OS and everything else is on the second partition.
 
Using a 500GB black drive in this test v.s. using a 3TB green drive in the other test means they aren't a good comparison. For cache misses, the green is going to be much, much worse and drag the overall score down more than the black will.
 
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I've got a laptop with two 500Gb harddrives, one for the OS and software, the other just for storage (music, movies, docs).
What would be the better setup for my computer? Cache drive + hdd, or keep it as I have and just replace the OS hdd with a normal SSD?
Thanks! :)
 
I installed my 60GB accelerator and been using it for about 2 hours, I'm simply amazed. I have NEVER upgraded a single component that has given me such a feeling of increase in speed.

Granted i'm using a 1tb WD Green drive that is not fast by any means and that is probably why i'm feeling so much of a speed increase, but still... wow.

My PC: Asus P8Z77-v pro, i7 2600 @4.2ghz, 1TB WD Green, 16gb Corsair 1333mhz ram.

I've used the PC a bit then rebooted about 4 times now and windows boot up has more than halved.

After opening and closing a few times the following games:

Diablo 3: Opening the game to log in halved, resuming a quest takes 4s flat. Most importantly for me D3 has always been video laggy when i log in and use my skills for the first time, that is completly gone now 0 lag on my skills on first use, everything feels butter smooth.

WoW: More amazing than D3 everything more than halved too, i have a LOT of addons, loading screen in org went from about 40 sec to ~12seconds.

Now i just hope i don't get the data corruption some people had and this is probably the best purchase i've made in a long time.
 
EvilAngel said:
I installed my 60GB accelerator and been using it for about 2 hours, I'm simply amazed. I have NEVER upgraded a single component that has given me such a feeling of increase in speed.

Granted i'm using a 1tb WD Green drive that is not fast by any means and that is probably why i'm feeling so much of a speed increase, but still... wow.

My PC: Asus P8Z77-v pro, i7 2600 @4.2ghz, 1TB WD Green, 16gb Corsair 1333mhz ram.

I've used the PC a bit then rebooted about 4 times now and windows boot up has more than halved.

After opening and closing a few times the following games:

Diablo 3: Opening the game to log in halved, resuming a quest takes 4s flat. Most importantly for me D3 has always been video laggy when i log in and use my skills for the first time, that is completly gone now 0 lag on my skills on first use, everything feels butter smooth.

WoW: More amazing than D3 everything more than halved too, i have a LOT of addons, loading screen in org went from about 40 sec to ~12seconds.

Now i just hope i don't get the data corruption some people had and this is probably the best purchase i've made in a long time.
Click to expand...

I threw my 45GB in yesterday accelerating my 1TB Sammy Spinpoint F3 boot drive....My F3 was one of the fastest HDDs when it came out, so the difference isn't as great as say a WD Greenie boot drive being accelerated.

-Cold boot times more than quite a bit better. Windows is now idle at the desktop before the blue spashscreen even fully renders, my cold-boot time to idle desktop is what used to be my warm-reboot time to still-loading-desktop. I was hoping for a bit better, but I do have quite a bit in my bootup folder.
-Steam always took 30 seconds to load...now it starts up in less than half the time. Was hoping for a bit better, but for the cost I can't complain
-Other regularly used apps start quickly too

What I wish for is a way to track what the SSD is doing in terms of health and loaded data...I'm very much a hater of stealth-hardware that I cannot look at in software and inspect.
 
I bought a 60GB Accelerator for the heck of it after reading the review.
Very small and barebones, but nothing you don't need and everything you do.

I think it took about 10 minutes to install.
Software installed simply after download.

I gotta say, impressively quick. :D
I have this piggybacked to a Black Western Digital SATA II 500 GB HDD and the boot and load times are wicked fast now. Pages load almost instantly as does Windows once the POST is done.

I'm in for two more of these now.
The difference is obvious and the use is just too easy.
 
Thats awesome, and exactly the experience that I personally had with this SSD. I am glad that it worked out great! its just so damn easy.
 
Hugh_Briggs said:
Thats awesome, and exactly the experience that I personally had with this SSD. I am glad that it worked out great! its just so damn easy.
Click to expand...

I kept waiting for something bad to happen......because it was just too easy to do.

This little drive is everything the article said it was.

I'm sure there are others out there that work similarly. I just bought a new Windows based laptop for my son for college, due to the article I ordered him a cache SSD.
This model is IvyBridge based so the laptop company uses Intel RST. I'm anxious to see how it compares to this Corsair unit.

Anyway, I have no hesitation recommending these cache drives to anyone who is considering them.
 
EvilAngel said:
I installed my 60GB accelerator and been using it for about 2 hours, I'm simply amazed. I have NEVER upgraded a single component that has given me such a feeling of increase in speed.

Granted i'm using a 1tb WD Green drive that is not fast by any means and that is probably why i'm feeling so much of a speed increase, but still... wow.

My PC: Asus P8Z77-v pro, i7 2600 @4.2ghz, 1TB WD Green, 16gb Corsair 1333mhz ram.

I've used the PC a bit then rebooted about 4 times now and windows boot up has more than halved.

After opening and closing a few times the following games:

Diablo 3: Opening the game to log in halved, resuming a quest takes 4s flat. Most importantly for me D3 has always been video laggy when i log in and use my skills for the first time, that is completly gone now 0 lag on my skills on first use, everything feels butter smooth.

WoW: More amazing than D3 everything more than halved too, i have a LOT of addons, loading screen in org went from about 40 sec to ~12seconds.

Now i just hope i don't get the data corruption some people had and this is probably the best purchase i've made in a long time.
Click to expand...

If you don't mind, is it possible for you to make some benchmarks in your system with Intel SRT caching and with Corsair caching as you have a Z77 motherboard and post here? Thank you in advance - please use the same ssd.
 
featsdontfailme said:
I kept waiting for something bad to happen......because it was just too easy to do.

This little drive is everything the article said it was.

I'm sure there are others out there that work similarly. I just bought a new Windows based laptop for my son for college, due to the article I ordered him a cache SSD.
This model is IvyBridge based so the laptop company uses Intel RST. I'm anxious to see how it compares to this Corsair unit.

Anyway, I have no hesitation recommending these cache drives to anyone who is considering them.
Click to expand...

I ordered a setup because of this article too. I bought the Crucial Accelerator variant of this (because 6Gb/s at same 60gb Corsair price) that uses the same Dataplex software and have it bound to my 1TB WD Black drive, and am just continually amazed at how easy it was to get such a drastic performance increase. Admittedly, I did a little more research after reading the horror stories, but I'm still waiting for something bad to happen. I'm almost expecting it, but it's still rock solid. I had never even looked into this technology and was waiting for larger capacity SSDs to come down in price even more, because I'm cheap and wanted to put off formatting. Very glad I jumped on this though.

I would absolutely recommended one of these drives to someone considering one as well.
 
N2OInferno said:
I ordered a setup because of this article too. I bought the Crucial Accelerator variant of this (because 6Gb/s at same 60gb Corsair price) that uses the same Dataplex software and have it bound to my 1TB WD Black drive, and am just continually amazed at how easy it was to get such a drastic performance increase. Admittedly, I did a little more research after reading the horror stories, but I'm still waiting for something bad to happen. I'm almost expecting it, but it's still rock solid. I had never even looked into this technology and was waiting for larger capacity SSDs to come down in price even more, because I'm cheap and wanted to put off formatting. Very glad I jumped on this though.

I would absolutely recommended one of these drives to someone considering one as well.
Click to expand...

I am in the same situation.
I was just going to sit tight and wait for the larger SSDs to drop in price, but so far this cache drive is really impressive.

My daughter saw me using my desktop after I installed the Corsair and she asked me what I did. She picked up on the speed before I even said anything.

She's getting the 45 GB model as soon as it delivers from newegg.:p
 
As a follow up......

I now have three of these SSDs.
I have two 60 GB installed on my gaming computers/work computers and a 45GB on my daughter's desktop.

I have had absolutely no problems with these.
The time from the windows logo to desktop is essentially instant, where it was anywhere from 15-30 seconds previously.
Pages on ie load nearly instantly.
I "feel" steam loading quicker.
Most games "seem" to load faster.

This was very easy and the software is unintrusive.

Highly recommended.:D
 
I'm running the Intel 311 20gb SSD as a cache drive on my Gigabyte Z68 iSSD board, which caches a pair of WD Black 1TB drives in RAID0. This PC was built October of last year, and it feels just as snappy today as when I built it.
At the time I built it, larger capacity SSDs were well out of my price range, and I didn't want any less than 150gb for my boot partition, hence the easy decision to go for the cache drive setup. True, its not as fast as a pure SSD, but it boots into Windows in 22 seconds and frequently used apps open so much faster than any mechanical drive based rig I have ever used.

I did end up buying a Kingston 128GB SSD from Staples for $57 shipped last week, so we are finally seeing major price drops on the larger capacity SSDs, but I will end up using it in my workbench rig to replace a 96GB model that is quickly filling up.
 
Pure sex.

The people who have been commenting in this thread are not lying. I got the OCZ Synapse 64GB and I honestly don't know how much of it is placebo but the computer feels snappy as hell. Easily the best $40 I've ever spent on computer hardware.
 
XacTactX said:
Pure sex.

The people who have been commenting in this thread are not lying. I got the OCZ Synapse 64GB and I honestly don't know how much of it is placebo but the computer feels snappy as hell. Easily the best $40 I've ever spent on computer hardware.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Glad to hear.

I continue to be impressed. The more I use the computer the faster it gets.
My X79 platform is by far the fastest improvement. I go fron the windows logo to ready at the desktop in a snap.
My steam loads in less than 5 seconds.
Browser is crazy fast.:D
 
But I have to put a very large * on my endorsement unfortunately.

* If your computer has a problem starting up while it is going from the BIOS ---> Windows 7 it can make your primary partition unbootable. That's what happened to me. I restarted the computer and in the BIOS screen it hanged at "loading operating system" (right before initializing W7). I had no choice but to reset the computer and it wiped out my first partition.

Now, luckily I had just formatted the computer an hour ago and there was nothing important on the primary partition, but what if this happens again in three months? If you want to use one of these caching SSDs you should have some kind of data redundancy or something because it could result in a loss of epic proportions.
 
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