PC gaming peripheral manufacturer Corsair announced the latest additions to its Vengeance line of gaming accessories at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Newly added are the K95 mechanical gaming keyboard, the Vengeance M95 and M65 precision gaming mice, and the MM600 dual-sided gaming mat.
PC component manufacturer Corsair today announced the Corsair Voyager Air, an all-in-one mobile wireless drive, home network attached storage, USB drive, and wireless hub. Media and other data stored on Voyager Air may be accessed directly from a PC or Mac, or with a free Corsair app, streamed to Android devices or Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Gaming PC maker Digital Storm has released a new range called Marauder that fills the entry level of the market. Housed in a Corsair Vengeance C70 tower, the base, Level 1, $800 model gets a quad-core, 3.6GHz AMD FX-4100 processor and a 1GB Radeon HD 7750 for graphics, along with 8GB of 1,600MHz RAM. Next up is the $1,000 Level 2, which sports a 3.1GHz AMD FX-8120 CPU and a Radeon HD 7770 graphics card.
At the PAX East show kicking off in Boston on Friday, Corsair unveiled two new products aimed at gamers. The Vengeance 2000 is a wireless 7.1-channel gaming headset while the Vengeance C70 PC case. The former is the first wireless headset from the company, and the cases are the first products of their kind for Corsair, which started off building RAM.
Corsair has now began shipping its line of PC gaming peripherals first introduced in September. The Vengeance series includes two mice, two keyboards, and three headsets. The shipping dates and prices have changed slightly since the September introduction, with some of the device prices also changing.
Corsair rolled out a new high-end Performance Pro set of solid-state drives on Thursday to target gamers and serious users that otherwise couldn't consider SSDs. The new models have a Marvell controller that has its own, internal data garbage collection, not just TRIM support. Adding the self-tuning prevents a slowdown over sustained use even on computers whose OS doesn't support TRIM, such as earlier versions of Mac OS X or some forms of Linux.
Corsair finished the week with USB 3.0 versions of its three core USB thumb drives. The regular Flash Voyager, boosted Flash Voyager GT, and ruggedized Flash Survivor all have both more theoretical and real speed gains. The Voyager GT is as much as four times faster when on USB 3.0 and can hit up to 135MB per second in read speeds and 83MB per second in writes, giving it speed closer to a dedicated solid-state drive.
Storage drive maker Corsair has just introduced two new 90GB solid state drives, the Force 3 and Force GT. They split the difference between the company's other capacities of 60GB and 120GB. The Force 3, even as the lower-end model, still has a 550MBps read speed and 500MBps write speed.
Sandforce has used the Flash Memory Summit, currently taking place in Santa Clara, to show off its SSD controller working with 24 nanometer multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology that will be used in SSD drives. For the demonstration, the company has combined its SSD-2000 controller with Toshiba's newest NAND flash to create what it sees as a a next generation storage solution.
Corsair is now recalling the 120GB versions of its recently released Force 3 SSDs due to stability issues with the product. Users are being told to stop using the drives immediately and are getting two options, including returning the drive to Corsair at its expense for an exchange unit that has the same specifications, or simply return it for a refund where they bought it. The affected drives have the CSSD-F120GB3-BK model number and Corsair says the 60GB and 240GB version is not affected.
Japan's Buffalo has just introduced a 256GB hard drive that's capable of read speeds as fast as 405MBps thanks to its 6Gbps SATA interface. Write speeds, as typical, are slightly lower, at 223MBps. The SSD-N256S/MC400 uses MLC (multi-level cell) flash memory that's denser and cheaper than single-level.
Corsair targeted the relative high end of storage upgrades Monday through its Force Series 3 solid-state drives. All of them 2.5-inch SSDs use a new SandForce SF-2281 controller that ramps up their speeds even compared to most usual SSDs. Peak read and write speeds hit 550MB and 520MB per second each, enough that it needs an SATA III (6Gbps) connection to reach its potential.
A finding in the developer preview of Mac OS X Lion has confirmed that the OS will have much needed support for auto-tuning solid-state drives. System Profiler now automatically detects SSDs with the TRIM command, and the OS now presumably uses the technique to clean up the drive. The MacGeneration investigation found that Apple's Toshiba-sourced SSD for the MacBook Air was already recognized, but third-party drives weren't yet enabled.
Corsair on Thursday said it would show off its Force Series GT solid state drives to the CeBIT show in Germany in March. The drives will use a new SandForce memory controller, the SF-2000, that supports SATA 3 (6Gbps) natively. The upgrade allows the SSDs to reach read speeds as fast as 520MB per second and write speeds of up to 500MB per second, along with as much as 60,000 random write integer operations per second.
A newly-formed SSD Form Factor Working Group has been formed, with the aim of bringing out a PCI Express-based SSD standard. Made up of promoter members Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, IBM and Intel, the group will focus on enterprise customers who need ever-higher performance storage that is cost effective and easy to use. While PCIe based SSDs are available now, they aren't simple and are usually reserved for servers, workstations and very high-end gamers.
Corsair on Wednesday said it has added three new capacities to its Force Series solid-state-drives first introduced in May. The new capacities include 40GB, 80GB and 160GB models. Each uses the same SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor, and at their best peak at 285MB per second in sequential reads and 275MB per second for writing.
Corsair has expanded its Force Series of 2.5-inch SSDs with several new models in capacities ranging from 60GB to 240GB. Each of the drives integrates a Sandforce SF-1200 SSD processor which supports 4K random write performance of 180MB/s using ATTO's benchmarking software. The drives are also claimed to sustain 15K IOPS.
Corsair today added two new drives to its Nova Series SSD family that were introduced in February in 64GB and 128GB capacities. Now, users can also purchase 32GB and 256GB Nova SSDs, with the former meant as a boot drive in basic configurations. The 256GB SSD is for higher-end systems where both high performance and more conventional storage are needed.
Corsair on Thursday introduced a new range of solid state drives with the Force Series. Both the 100GB and 200GB models have a SATA II interface and offer purportedly class-topping 280MBps peak read speeds and 260MBps write speeds. Corsair credits the speed to the use of a newer SandForce SF-1200 SSD processor to help govern traffic.
Corsair has released a new range of USB drives with the Flash Voyager GTR. Available in either 32GB, 64GB or 128GB capacities, either sports quad-channel architecture that enables up to 34MBps read speeds and 28MBps write speeds, which is near the maximum for the USB 2.0 interface. During testing, Corsair says its 128GB Voyager GTR outperformed a competitor's USB drive of the same capacity by a significant margin.
Corsair recently introduced an 8GB flash drive that is unique for Corsair in its inclusion of a keypad that lets users access their secured data by entering a PIN code. The Padlock 2 combines this with 256-bit hardware data encryption to guard against most types of data theft; without entering a PIN up to 10 numbers long, thieves are entirely locked out. The new Padlock shares its rugged construction with the Flash Voyager range and is consequently resistant to most drops and splashes.
Still better known for its power supplies and memory, Corsair has recently introduced two new lines of solid state drives, naming them Nova and Reactor. The 2.5-inch Nova drives are available in 64 and 128GB capacities, while the Reactor can be had in 60 and 120GB versions. The Reactors are faster, with a 128MB cache and read speeds of 250MBps as well as 110MBps write speeds for the 60GB model. The 120GB Reactor musters respective 250Mbps and 170MBps speeds. Reactors also have a mini USB interface in addition to the SATA 3.0Gbps connection.
The University of Antwerp has revealed what it believes is one of the fastest computers ever to fit into a regular tower chassis. Called just the Fastra II, its main processor is just a 2.66GHz Core i7 but uses many video cards to achieve performance that would normally require a cluster. It combines six dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295 cards with a single GeForce GTX 275 to provide a total of 13 GPUs in a single desktop. Since the NVIDIA cards can accelerate CUDA and other general-purpose computing tasks, the sheer parallelism lets the PC handle up to 12 teraflops of general work as well as 3D graphics.
Memory maker Corsair recently upgraded its lineup of Flash Voyager GT USB memory sticks. The rugged drives now come in capacities up to 128GB without increasing in size and also come in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants. They still center on a rubber housing that increases the resistance to shock damage and water.
Corsair today put out a new capacity leader in its Extreme Series SSDs as a bid to claim the best of both worlds. The X256 reaches 256GB of storage but will theoretically cost less than the earlier P256 through slight sacrifices in speed: it reads faster at 240MB per second but gives up a slight amount of write speed, dropping down to 170MB per second, and halves the cache to 64MB. An Indilinx Barefoot memory controller and Samsung flash memory prevent the drive from bogging down.
Corsair on Thursday added a second line to its solid-state drives tailored to performance users. The Extreme series uses a fast controler from Indilinx and multi-level cell storage from Samsung to put its speed near the top of the field. Its reading speed crests at 240MB per second and is paired with a maximum write speed of 170MB per second.
Corsair recently announced it has added two new products to its Performance Series solid state drive (SSD) family with the 128GB P128 and 64GB P64. Basically smaller capacity versions of the recently released 256GB P256, they offer the same 220MBps read speeds, with the P128 also sharing the same 200MBps write speed. The P64's write speed is rated at a lower 120MBps.
At the Computex show on Tuesday, computer memory, solid state drive and USB drive maker Corsair showed off its first PC chassis, the Obsidian Series 800D. The full tower chassis supports up to five 5.25-inch drives and six 3.5-inch drives in its steel construction, along with support for ATX, Extended ATX and micro ATX mainboards. The chassis is matte black throughout, while its faceplate is made of brushed aluminum.
Memory maker Corsair maintained on Wednesday that it has set the world record for DDR3 RAM memory frequency running on a Core i7 system. Using the triple-channel 6GB Dominator GT 2000C7 (PDF) memory, the 2533MHz record was verified and validated by using CPU-Z, a Windows PC statistics app used to identify system components and verify overclocking results. This marks the first time such a frequency has been achieved on a Core i7 system with 6GB of memory and three modules.
Corsair this afternoon said it had started shipping the P256, its fastest and also most capacious solid-state drive. The 2.5-inch SATA II drive holds its namesake 256GB thanks to multi-level cell storage but has a fast Samsung controller that lets it read data at 220MB per second and writes at an equally quick 200MB per second. A 128MB cache and native command queuing further add to the practical speed.
Corsair is set to release an ultra-fast 256GB solid state drive, according to a Tuesday HotHardWare report. The move would effectively double the company's current number of SSD offerings and would share Samsung technology. The new SSD has a new controller, however, and and integrated 64MB of cache that improves performance significantly. When the new SSD arrives in stores, it is likely to be called P256, and will sport a SATA 3.0Gbps interface and be housed in a heavy-duty aluminum enclosure.
Computer memory manufacturer Corsair recently unveiled its first solid-state drive with the S128. Meant for the mainstream user, the S128 has a 128GB capacity and relatively average read speeds of 90MBps and write speeds of 70MBps. What differs the S128 from similar drives, the company claims, is its use of a Samsung controller instead of the more common JMicron 602 controller used in MLC SSDs such as OCZ’s Core series of SSDs.
Corsair this morning claimed a minor breakthrough in flash drives courtesy of its new Flash Voyager Mini. Like the larger Voyagers, the drive is shielded in a rubber case that protects both against shocks as well as water and other natural hazards. By using a newer all-in-one board design, however, the Voyager Mini not only shrinks to just over an inch long but also frees up space for a retracting USB connector that prevents damage to the data port itself.
Computer and flash memory maker Corsair announced today the addition of high-density 2GB and 4GB DIMM kits to its Mac Memory line. Each new kit features two sticks of either 1GB or 2GB fully buffered 667MHz memory made to work in Mac Pro desktop computers. Previously, Corsair offered only 1GB, 2GB kit, 2GB and 4GB kits for the MacBook, MacBook Pro and Intel-chipped iMacs. The laptop memory chips were launched last month.
Corsair this morning released a small but important update to its Flash Voyager rugged flash drive line. A new, GT version of the Voyager offers 16GB of storage without the usual speed sacrifice associated with the extra capacity; through an advanced memory controller and hand-picked flash chips, Corsair claims an approximate four-fold speed boost over similar drives. The gain is enough to transfer just over 1MB in less than two seconds (versus five on other designs) and to transfer a full 1.6GB movie in 98 seconds compared to nearly six full minutes on older designs.
Corsair vowed a new benchmark in removable storage today with a pair of extra-high capacity jumpdrives. Both the rubberized Flash Voyager and the water-resistant Flash Survivor both now hold 32GB of data, allowing users even in harsh conditions to carry a large amount of content without fear of losing it through a sudden drop. Roughly 16 full-length movies could fit on a single drive, Corsair touts. The storage is bootable and has enough space that users can fit both a core operating system and needed apps, effectively creating a virtual computer.
