OCZ RevoDrive 3 120GB PCIe SSD

Product: OCZ RevoDrive 3 120GB PCIe SSD
Provided By: OCZ Technology
Price: Find Lowest Price Online

Introduction:

Solid State Drives have come a long way over the past few years and OCZ has actually been one of the companies that have constantly pushed the boundaries of "standard" SSDs into sometime different.  They don't settle for technology that has limitations; instead they try to find ways around, over or through limitations that are still plaguing this early stage of solid-state storage.  While you may argue that SSDs aren't all that new, the technology is changing so fast with new NAND flash chips and different controllers, algorithms for data correction, garbage collection and wear leveling that this whole industry is still relatively new and has a few growing pains.

Today we will be taking a look at the "Workstation" oriented RevoDrive 3 120GB SSD.  We are looking at the RevoDrive x2 160GB drive.  The price of these PCIe SSDs has dropped dramatically, and you can now find one of these units for a mere $249.  Keep in mind that when we reviewed the 160GB RevoDrive X2, that unit was price around $500.  Pricing on these drives keeps falling and this is great news.

Although the RevoDrive series from OCZ is not made for every platform, desktop and workstation users that need some extra performance can benefit from the 4x RAID 0 stripe created by the RevoDrive 3.  This is why the performance of this product is rated so high.  On one little board, we are sitting with a quad-drive RAID 0 array.  This stripe should be pretty fast.

Box Front

Box Back

Bundle & First Look:

When I received the OCZ RevoDrive 3, I had realized that I wouldn't be getting a lot of extras.  The bundle on these units is pretty plain, and I guess that is to be expected.  You do get a sticker and the RevoDrive 3.  The image below shows you the entire bundle that comes with the RevoDrive 3.

Bundle

If you plan on installing the RevoDrive 3 as a bootable drive, you'll need to head on over to OCZ's site and snag the latest drivers that will allow Windows to even see the device as a bootable device.  Once that is done, you're good to go.  It would be nice if they included some drives on a CD - or even a small USB stick, but I guess when you have to download them, you should always get the latest version.

The 120GB version has enough room on the main PCB for all of the NAND chips to fit with lots of room to spare.  The RevoDrive 3 uses high-density NAND flash than the original RevoDrive did and it looks like OCZ could in fact put a 240GB model on this same board.

Board Front

Board Back

One thing you may notice is that the RevoDrive 3 has a pair of SandForce SF-2251VB1-SDC controllers on-board.  As previously mentioned, this is because the RevoDrive 3 actually has a pre-configured RAID 0 array built in for enhanced performance.  This is one of the things that adds extra expense to the unit as the controller chips themselves are not cheap.

Profile

On the next page we'll take a look at the features and the specifications of the RevoDrive 3 120GB unit before we take a closer look and then jump into testing.