Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The Corsair Force 3 is available now in two capacity sizes; 120GB and 240GB. The specifications above were taken from the 120GB product page on Corsair's website. The maximum read speed for the 120GB drive is 550MB/s and the maximum write speed is 510MB/s. For you to achieve these speeds you will need a motherboard with native SATA III or a high quality PCIe add-on controller. Many enthusiasts, power users and gamers with an X58 chipset / Marvell SATA III have chosen to forgo P67 and Z68 and are holding out for X79. Your X58 board will not allow the Corsair Force 3 to reach maximum performance, but you can use the drive in your current system and take it with you into X79 at the end of the year.

There was one area on Corsair's specification sheet that caught me off guard. Under the Dimension heading the spec reads NO. That's all, just NO. Corsair is pleading the 5th (Amendment of the US Constitution). With the OCZ drive fiasco I don't blame them, but I would just change it to Proper 2.5" form factor that will work in your notebook. We'll verify this later since Corsair wants to be shy.

The Corsair Force 3 is a budget minded SandForce SF-2281 controlled solid state drive. In order to reduce the cost, Corsair used IMFT 25nm asynchronous flash. At the time of writing the Force 3 120GB that we're reviewing here today is listed at Newegg for 179.99 USD after a 30 Dollar mail in rebate. Just a few weeks ago we were excited about seeing 120GB SF-1200 drives listed at 200 USD, so the price is really amazing. The 240GB Force 3 was listed at Newegg for 449.99 at the time of writing. The 240GB model is priced on par with the OCZ Agility 3, but the 120GB drive undercuts the OCZ price by 15 USD.

Unlike the Agility 3, the Corsair Force 3 ships with a standard 2.5" to 3.5" desktop adapter bracket. With so few SATA III enabled notebooks on the market, I feel many of these drives will be headed to desktop systems and most of these systems will need an adapter bracket. Also standard with the Corsair Force 3 is a three year warranty.