OCZ Vertex 3 Series

Strong incompressible performance ; Learned from Vertex 3 reliability issues ; More IOPS than original Vertex 3

No real extra bang for your buck

Stunning read/write performance ; Almost 2x speed of previous gen ; Close to the limits of SATA 6Gbps

Rather pricey

Memory controllers are the super-model components of the SSD world, and OCZ is dropping the fastest consumer SandForce SATA 6Gbps controller on the planet with this the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB.

Quite fast ; Completely silent ; Looks great ; Long lived MLC flash

A little bit more expensive than the competition ; A little bit slower than the competition

As we've seen the performance is quite good. Compared to the old Vertex 3 it is very impressive indeed.

Fantastic price point ; good all round performance ; 3 year warranty

write performance suffers when dealing with incompressible data ; faces a lot of competition ; Sandforce 2281 reputation has taken a few knocks over the years

Kitguru says: A good performance, high value for money Solid State Drive.

Silky smooth operation as a system drive (during the test period)., Phenomenal reading and writing performance., Incredible 4K random I/O performance., SATA 6Gbps support., Outstanding multitasking potential., TRIM support under Windows 7., Lightning...

Slight possibility of stability issues on some Intel chipset motherboards.

Let us summarise the most important positive and negative points below: The OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD has the fastest reading and writing speeds from a single SATA drive that we have ever tested here at MyCE.com. 4K random IOP performance is incredible...

Very Fast ; Fits 3.5" bays without need for adapters ; Minimal performance drop from installing Windows ; Silent, very low power consumption

Won't fit in a laptop ; Value could be better, ideally the price will come down to the levels of the 2.5" flavor

The OCZ Vertex 3 3.5" 120GB SSD has a MSRP of $160, that's decent value wise though not spectacular. The 2.5" version can be found for less, though you need to include the cost of adapters and such.

Very fast, especially at the various 4K read tests ; Totally silent, being a SSD ; Very nice black/chrome styling ; Comes with a 3.5" bay adapter and mounting screws ; Firmware updating software extremely simple and easy to use

Not cheap ; Write speeds slower than some drives in it's price range ; Needing to update the firmware is a drag (you don't have to, but it's a good idea)

Let me lead off this section by saying that I am impressed. With that out of the way, lets look at the high and low points!

The Vertex 3 has always been a favourite of ours, due to the internals used, SandForce controller and the sheer performance that the drive offers. The Max IOPS offers the same blistering fast performance, but with a difference. Due to the fact of the...

We mentioned that OCZ are typically the best around, they have the client base, they have the background and they have the right recipe for a fantastic Solid State Drive. Building off of the success of the original Vertex and Vertex 2 series of drives,...

The Vertex 3 Max IOPS is a classic example of what can be accomplished when a company thinks outside the box. OCZ took a step back from the