When we see the name Intel come about, the first thing that rightly comes to mind is their supreme processor department, but what some people may not know is that this is not all they now produce. Along with their many lines of processors, they also produce motherboards and Solid State Drives.

With the technological abilities they have to produce the high end components, it comes as no surprise that our initial expectations of this drive when it came in were very high especially from what we’ve seen of their 320 series SATA II and 510 Series drives in the past.

The 520 series drives are designed to bring a whole new level of performance to the market with drives that can give a random read performance of up to 50,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and a sequential read of upto 550MB/s. The impressive read speeds are paired with random writes up to 80,000 IOPS and a sequential write of upto 520MB/s. Speed is not the only thing this drive has to offer, data security and integrity is another key feature and with the drive offering a pre-configured 256-bit AES along with End to End Data Protection, you can be rest assured your data is safe and secure.

You may remember that back in October, we took a look at the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD, which simply blew us away in terms of the performance that was on offer with lightning fast speeds and a decent set of internals featuring a SandForce controller.

Working on the success of that drive, OCZ have developed the Max IOPS version with a few minor touches from themselves. The development on the Max IOPS has had a bit of a revamp in terms of the PCB, the NAND used with Toshiba Toggle Flash being used opposed to IMFT flash as seen on the original Vertex 3. These little touches allow the Vertex 3 Max IOPS to deliver more when it comes to the overall I/O operations per second, which is the whole purpose of this drive.

OCZ always quote their 4KB Random Write Aligned IOPS through use of IOMeter 2008 and with the standard Vertex 3 coming in at 60,000 write, we find the Max IOPS boasting a massive 75,000 IOPs. An impressive figure to say the least, but we all know that sales hype can sometimes be exactly that.

It’s drives like this that we’re really keen to look at as they offer something different to the norm and get our enthusiast blood pumping again, so let’s get straight into it by starting off with what comes included, as we all know OCZ always like to bundle a nice package together.

No matter who you are, you should be more than aware of SanDisk, whether you have a camera or a mobile phone that takes a memory card, you would have most likely used a SanDisk memory card at some point. What you may not know is that SanDisk were one of the first to release an SSD to the general market with the U5000 32GB SSD back in 2007.

Since this time, SanDisk went a bit quiet on the SSD front and have had their focus on other areas of the market, mainly with mass producing memory cards and similar based products. 2011 however, we see them returning to the SSD market with the SanDisk Ultra SATA II Solid State Drive.

The Ultra may not jump out at you when you hear that it utilises a SATA II interface, but it’s worth noting that the average user out there doesn’t even know what SATA III is, let alone having it on their system. The cold hard truth is that the majority of computers in the mass market only have SATA II capabilities, so why flood the market?

With that out the way, it’s worth looking at the main area of this drive, which is all about the internals as you’d expect. Not only does this drive feature the famous Sandforce controller, but also includes SanDisks very own asynchronous NAND flash memory, which is quite a big acomplishment in its own right.

An exciting time is upon us when we see a new set of memory chips come on the market, and we’re interested to see how they perform when we get down to it, but first we should have a look at what you get included when you buy this brand new product from SanDisk.

Patriot are a brand that are getting more and more recognition lately, but still not as much as we think they should. They have started to focus more on Solid State Drives opposed to memory, and this is a good move, if you have the right products in your catalogue, and simply put, Patriot do.

You may remember that we looked at the Pyro 120GB SSD from them a little while ago, and we honestly thought it was a great product that offered performance to the general consumer and at a good price point too. If you can offer a product that has great performance and is cost-effective, then you simply have a great all-round pitch.

Whilst the Pyro is a great SSD, for the enthusiast, there was a slight let-down in the fact that it uses asynchronous flash memory, which can hinder performance, mainly in benchmarks which is what an enthusiast user is focussed on, though for real-world usage, you are unlikely to see much of a difference at all, if any.

With this in mind, Patriot has released a new product onto the market, with the Pyro SE. The Pyro SE is the Second Edition, hence the name, and still has its focus on the price conscious but with a slight change. The Pyro SE has the added performance of synchronous NAND Flash memory, which allows for a whole host of new features that the SandForce SF-2281 controller can now deal with. This allows the Pyro SE to offer the very best read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/s read and up to 520 MB/s write as well as allowing TRIM support, DuraClass technology and DuraWrite technology.

With these features in mind, it allows the Pyro SE to deal much better with large file transfers whilst not skimping in other areas, apart from the price. Patriot back this product so much that they believe price shouldn’t even come into the equation due to how competative it is.

If we take a quick step into the eTeknix time machine and rewind about a year ago, we can see that Solid State Drives were still very expensive and that was down to one reason really, and it wasn’t the fact of how much they cost to make, but more down to the lack of competition out there. We saw the likes of OCZ and a very select few companies similar to them offering expensive SSDs because they could.

SandForce became the way forward and was quickly adopted by these very few companies and offered faster speeds and extra stability where needed the most. Things were good for them but still saw the general public paying more than they’d hoped originally. Things changed quite quickly when the likes of Patriot and G.Skill also decided to adopt the SandForce drive technology into their own products which means that a healthy competition was started to unfold between the different brands.

Patriot have always been known for their memory based products, so SSDs seemed to be the next logical step for them and this worked hand in hand with the SandForce controller. When looking at how simple it is, Patriot wanted to build their brand in terms of Solid State Drives and what better way to do it, than with a stable, reliable product that can rival the competition on a performance and price basis.

This is where the Patriot Wildfire comes into play with its Toshiba Toggle Flash memory wcome in a variety of sizes and from a plethora of manufacturer’s but when we focus on what the consumer actually needs, it’s all quite simple. They are after a SSD that is quick, cost effective and has the capacity that they need. For the mass market, 240GB upwards is still overkill, and the 60-96GB market isn’t quite large enough, so for a company to offer 128GB capacities can only mean good things, as it offers an ample amount of space for your operating system and in most cases, for your favourite games.

Solid State Drives come in a variety of sizes and from a plethora of manufacturer’s but when we focus on what the consumer actually needs, it’s all quite simple. They are after a SSD that is quick, cost effective and has the capacity that they need. For the mass market, 240GB upwards is still overkill, and the 60-96GB market isn’t quite large enough, so for a company to offer 128GB capacities can only mean good things, as it offers an ample amount of space for your operating system and in most cases, for your favourite games.

Now we’ve seen an array of SSDs from the likes of OCZ and Patriot to name a few, but today we had the M4 from Crucial land at our desk. Being something new for us always gets us excited, especially when it’s an SSD and it’s from the likes of Crucial. We say this, because as we know, Crucial were one of the first to jump onto the SATA III interface with the C300 range of SSDs, even if the technology to support it wasn’t quite there yet.

These days, we’re seeing SATA III based SSDs everywhere, from a variety of brands including some lesser known names, but it all adds into the competition and if you can offer something unique or better whilst remaining cost effective, then you can’t lose, right?

Crucial believe that they have the complete package with the M4 and with their trusted branding and reputation behind them, we can only hold high hopes for this particular SSD, so lets see what it can do as we take a closer look.

A lot of talk has been about solid state drives lately and rightly so as they are one of the most beneficial components into a system that money can buy. By the addition of a SSD, a system can be boosted but it comes at a cost and sadly doesn’t offer much in terms of price per Gigabyte.

What a lot of users are tending to go for these days is a smaller size solid state drive to simply run their operating system whilst their games and storage is moved over to a large mechanical style drive and with more companies than ever before offering drives with higher capacities per platter, it’s an easy decision to make if needing a lot of storage.

Casting your mind back to this time last year, the 750GB per platter boundary was broken and were quickly implemented into drives and sold by the truck load but ended up being quite costly, used a lot of power and in turn generated a mass amount of heat. This clearly wasn’t a viable option, though the likes of Seagate and other well-known brands continued to sell these drives in succession, whilst the likes of Western Digital sat back to admire what was about to come.

Moving forward ever so slightly and Western Digital brought their 3TB Caviar Green drive to market which only uses four platters, opposed to five which means less heat, less power and also brings the price down for the consumers which is a typical win, win, win situation for everyone involved and will also give that slight edge to them over the competition.

Today we’re taking a look at that very drive to see if performance is hindered in any way or whether this drive really can do it all whilst offering a huge capacity for space at the same time.

This has definitely been the year for SandForce as a lot of companies have plumped for the inclusion of the famous controllers on their latest solid state drives. Among these companies were market leader OCZ who have been at the top of the market for quite some time now and for a company whose knowledge was led by memory based products, it seemed to give OCZ a logical step in the right direction when producing SSD’s.

When it comes to other brands, it seems that OCZ and their Vertex range of drives act as a measuring stick in terms of performance and are idolised as the clear benchmark for competing against. With this in mind, OCZ produced higher capacities within the Vertex range and broadened the lineup quite nicely. After a while, a new product was born with the Vertex 2 which we looked at a little while ago and was extremely pleased with and wondered what was next for the market leader

Of course the answer was simple, and therefore the Vertex 3 range of drives were due to come out sporting an improved set of internals, the latest SandForce technology and of course faster speeds thanks to those wonderful internals and the inclusion of running on the SATA III interface. The new measuring stick was in town and it made quite a footprint when it was launched with sequential transfer speeds of 500MB/s + read and write and TRIM support which as we know a lot of drives on the market still don’t offer.

Let’s take a look at the Vertex 3 240GB SSD to see how OCZ have moved on from the success of their previous models and if they’ve kept it up with this one.

Patriot have been a big contender in the memory market for quite some time and are regarded by consumers to have some of the best memory kits on the market, and with this in mind, it was only right that they would branch out into other market areas and see what the water was like. With the knowledge of memory based products behind them, Solid State Drives would seem to be the next logical step in their plan.

With a market that has so much choice in terms of speed, capacity or a mixture of both, it’s a very tough market to crack but Patriot believe they can do it by offering a drive to rival the rest, with one key factor in mind; the price.

Patriot have released a few drives onto their portfolio of products including the Inferno, Torqx 2 and PS-100, though with speed being everything in this day and age, the SATA II interface wasn’t strong enough, and this is where the drawing board came back out to develop the next generation of drives, which includes the Wildfire and Pyro. While both drives are based around the SandForce SF-2200 series controller and some of the latest MLC NAND flash memory on the market, some distinct differences can be noticed between the two product ranges. We’re not talking about the speed as the difference in that area is very minor, but instead the Pyro is marketed at what’s important to the mass market, and that simply comes down to the price.

Finding a drive that can offer a healthy balance of performance and value is always hard to find, and that’s the same with any type of product in today’s day and age, but Patriot believe the Pyro can keep up with the big boys and do it for a fraction of the cost, so of course, we were keen to get our grubby little mitts on this particular SSD to see if it really can do what it’s set out to do.

There are so many advantages to fitting the latest SSD into your laptop, including greatly improved battery life and performance, but the prices are still astronomical for any capacity compared to their mechanical counterparts. For instance, most people have at least 160 GB storage in their laptop when purchased, and the cost of an SSD replacement for this small capacity will cost you the best part of £200, which is a good share of the price of a new laptop.

There is however several alternatives to this problem, most people have resorted to fitting a more modest 60 GB or 96 GB SSD and then using either Network Attached Storage, Portable Drives or External Desktop Drives to expand their storage capabilities. This is still not a cheap solution and is a large compromise when you want to take your laptop places.

The alternative that we are looking at today however, is a combination of a Mechanical Drive and a Solid State Drive and I do mean this quite literally. You would expect that is the perfect compromise, up to 500 GB of total storage with the performance of an SSD, we certainly hope this is the case.

With the fast increasing amount of digital data being stored on home PCs and laptops its easy to feel restricted when using it on your PC or laptop. Its therefore important to consider options which allow you to access your data more easily to allow it to be shared and accessed as it was intended to be.

There are many options to consider when looking at ways to access your digital content around your home. You could consider building a media centre which could then be used as a PVR as well or you could look to purchase a media player to connect to your PCs shared content. Alternatively you could consider to upgrade your TV to one of the new generation which supports connecting to your home network and allowing you to access your data.

We take a look at the PBO (Patriot Box Office) Core Media Player from Patriot which are more widely known for there high performance memory. The Patriot Box Office opens up options to allow movies / video, music and pictures to be accessed on the family TV allowing all the family to take advantage of the digital content from multiple sources.

OCZ have always been a well respected brand in the SSD community and tend to offer up products available to the high-end market. This came in the likes of the Vertex range of drives with the Vertex 2 and Vertex 3 giving lightning fast performance but a big price tag comes attached as well.

For users wanting a balance of performance and value, it seemed they would have to look elsewhere, until OCZ launched their SandForce SF-2281 based Agility 3 drive. The Agility range of drives offer the blistering fast performance that we expect, but with a respectable price tag and some funky styling too.

When looking at how the Agility 3 and Vertex 3 compare, not a lot is in it, when taking a look on paper and by using a lot of the same internals, that’s no surprise. We find the same SandForce SF-2281 controller and very similar firmware, so what’s different? The Agility 3 features asynchronous flash memory which as you may or may not know isn’t as good as synchronous. Whilst on paper they both look very similar, the proof lays within real-word tasks and sadly asynchronous lets it all down a bit, but the OCZ custom firmware should allow for some improvements in this area, especially compared to other drives of a similar nature who plump for a basic firmware that doesn’t offer anything new.

Keeping all this in mind, the Agility 3 isn’t aimed at the high-end market, and therefore we are expecting some different results to what the Vertex 3 shows on paper, but we aren’t writing this review to pit the two drives against each other, but instead want to show where the Agility 3 has its merits and also its pitfalls.

While you may be very familiar with enclosures, adapters are in lots of ways much simpler, easier to use and much more compact making them brilliant if you want to be able to pack them away in between uses. The Akasa Flexstor DiskLink is certainly no exception with rather tiny dimensions of 68.5 (W) x 42.6 (H) x 14.3 (D) mm, maybe its even the smallest device we have ever taken a look at.

Of course this Akasa Flexstor DiskLink takes advantage of the USB 3.0 Super Speed interface and as such should be able to deliver up to 10* the speed of USB 2.0 making it much better for file transfers and backing-up large amounts of data.