Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts
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Did you get linked to this conclusion page on accident? Click here to go to the start of our review!
PROS:
- Read and write speeds are about as fast as SATA 3Gb/sec will go!
- Write speeds faster than any SATA device tested to date.
- Standard 3.5″ enclosure may be easier to install for some.
- Architecture enables scaling to very large capacities (currently 1TB).
- No TRIM support and lack of IOPS scaling at higher queue depths.
- Firmware is not end-user upgradable.
- GC may not be aggressive enough to fully recover when under ‘power user’ use.
| Capacity
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# of controllers
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MSRP
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Cost per GB
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| 128 GB
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2
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$549.99
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$4.30
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| 256 GB
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4
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$1,014.99
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$3.96
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| 512 GB
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4
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$1,599.99
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$3.12
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| 1024 GB
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4
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$3,315.99
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$3.24
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These prices are a tad on the high side as compared with other competition currently on the market. That said, none of that competition can match the crazy high write speeds of the Colossus. In addition, nobody else is making a single SATA SSD that scales to 1TB in size. Purchase decisions should take into account the smallest model uses half the number of internal channels, which may result in lower performance.
Final Thoughts
OCZ has brought a worthy contender with their first 3.5″ SSD solution. The added space of their enclosure was well utilized by a plethora of flash chips and no less than 4 SSD controllers. While this parallelism helped the Colossus scream past the competition in write speeds, the internal RAID processors’ lack of NCQ and TRIM support hobbled its true potential. All things considered, the Colossus remains a solid solution for those wanting SSD performance in a 3.5″ form factor.
With what is essentially 4 complete Vertex SSD’s working together in a convenient package, a future revision of the Colossus sporting SATA 6Gb/sec would be a monster in this arena. Since the architecture would require only swapping to SATA 6Gb/sec capable controllers, all that needs to happen is for such a chip to be released into the wild. SATA 6Gb/sec RAID processors are likely to be released before SSD controllers can be brought up to that speed, giving the Colossus a throughput advantage provided OCZ can pull it off somewhere down the road.
