OCZ 30GB Agility SSD Review

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Product: 30GB Agility
Manufacturer: OCZ
Supplied by: OCZ
Price: 147USD/RM499
Launch Date: June 2009

OCZ is a well known brand for most of the computer peripherals such as computer memory, power supply, SSD, flash drive and so on. Today we are not going to talk about OCZ primary product; memory but their SSD. Let us have a quick look on OCZ's mainstream SSD product; 30GB Agility.

Company Profile

OCZ Technology Group, a member of JEDEC, designs, develops, and manufactures ground-breaking, high performance memory and premium computer components. OCZ products are the first choice for users needing high-reliability, enthusiast-grade solutions. OCZ continually invests in R&D to push the limits of performance, speed, and value for consumers, system integrators, and OEM clients.

At OCZ we have one primary goal, and it is to make sure that every customer is 110% satisfied. Every employee at OCZ is dedicated to accomplishing this goal. Our engineers are constantly developing the fastest and best performing products.

Features

- Offering the incredible performance of flash-based storage
- Delivers performance & reliability of SSDs at a lower price per GB
- Latest breakthroughs in SSD technology; new architecture, controller design, blazing read/write speeds & 64MB of onboard cache.
- Perfect for notebooks and desktops alike
- Ideal for energy-efficient mobile computing to extend battery life
- Increase the access time & provide a durable alternative to conventional HDD
- Superior shock resistance
- High capacities & low power consuming NAND flash technology
- Provide performance & battery life boosts
- Feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing
- The drives are more rugged than traditional HDD
- Designed for ultimate reliability
- Have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF)
- Come backed a three year warranty, legendary service & support

Specifications

Package & Contents

OCZ Agility SSD comes with a pretty attractive green packaging box which is fully sealed by a wrapping plastic. Some important features and product description of OCZ Agility SSD are stated on the box clearly and some of them are even explained in multi-languages.

Besides the outer green box, OCZ Agility SSD is stored inside a compact foam box to ensure it is fully protected well although SSD is not as sensitive as conventional HDD. The user's manual is a short note since SSD is a simple device, no rocket science application knowledge is required.

A Closer Look: OCZ 30GB Agility SDD

Most of us will assume that all SSD is in 2.5" form factor but actually it is not as OCZ has plenty of SSD products in other form factors such as PCI-E, mini PCI-E and 3.5" drive as well. Anyway among OCZ 2.5" SSDs, there are couple of categories; Vertex EX, Agility EX, Vertex Turbo, Vertex, Summit, Agility and Solid 2 (from high end/expensive to low end/budget).

Agility SSD is one of the OCZ mainstream SSD where there are total three capacities; 30GB, 60GB and 120GB. In term of dimension and weight, OCZ Agility SSD is exactly same with other traditional 2.5" HDDs but its weight is definitely much lighter with only 77g. The read & write speeds for 30GB are different from 60GB & 120GB where 185MB/s vs 230MB/s (read) and 100MB/s vs 135MB/s (write).

Here are the back views of OCZ Agility SSD where the SSD's base is constructed by a piece of alloy sheet for better heat dissipation purpose since heat is still one of the major concerns for SSD device. Besides that some important specifications of OCZ Agility SSD are 64MB onboard cache, 1.5 million MTBF, 1500G shock resistant and less than 1ms seek time.

In term of the physical design of OCZ Agility SSD, everything will be same with standard 2.5" HDD including connectors and mounting holes except the bottom aluminum panel and without the PCB panel. Unlike some of the other SSD, OCZ Agility SSD doesn't come with USB mini-B connector else the SSD can be used straightaway without a 2.5" external HDD enclosure.

If you notice, right beside the SATA connector there are 2 pins for firmware update purpose. For better understanding about OCZ Agility SSD, we have opened up the bottom alloy panel by removing four screws. Inside the OCZ Agility SSD, there is only a piece of PCB which is fully soldered by plenty of memory chips and the whole PCB is secured on the casing by another set of screw.

Indilink is a 90nm Barefoot controller and when pairing with SLC/MLC NAND flash device, it is capable of reading data up to 170MB/s and 230MB/s while 160MB/s and 200MB/s in data writing. Besides that Indilink IDX110M00-FC is supported by 64MB cache to improve the transfer performance and respond time. Elpida is a 512M bit SDRAM (equal to 64MB) cache memory and there are total sixteen Toshiba memory chips; total 30GB capacity.

Before we move to the testing and performance about OCZ Agility SSD, let us touch a little bit about its functionality. There are two type of SSDs; SLC and MLC where MLC is the cheaper version than SLC with slower speed, less reliable as well as shorter life span. Most of the MLC SSD will only come with approximate 1000 to 10000 write cycles but OCZ Agility SSD can last around 1.5 million life cycles.

Installation, Testing & Performance

Test Bed:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 (Gigabyte G31M-ES2L)
Heatsink: Noctua NH-C12P
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate, OCZ 30GB Agility
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX260+
Casing: In Win Maelstrom
PSU: Aerocool V12XT-800
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2/Vista Home Premium
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

To test out OCZ Agility SSD, we have setup this drive as the primary drive of our rig and install a fresh new Window Vista Home Premium on it. For the benchmarking software, we have tested OCZ Agility SSD with CrystalDiskMark, HDTach, Everest and Sisoftsandra; which are pretty popular tools to benchmark out a drive.

With the results that we obtained at above, OCZ Agility SSD is a truly great performance SSD although it is not as good as its brothers; 60 & 120GB Agility SSDs. Both of the read and write speeds of OCZ Agility SSD are pretty promising with what OCZ has stated in the web.

Verdicts

Overall we are pretty satisfied with OCZ 30GB Agility SSD with its impressive performance; greater read/write speeds than traditional mechanical HDDs and some SSDs too. Besides that with its 64MB onboard cache, the whole SSD performance is boost up and the overall system response times is increased in most of the applications too. Other great features of OCZ 30GB Agility SSD are 3 years warranty, 1.5 million MTBF and etc. However the MSRP for this 30GB SSD is not cheap at all but if you are looking for a budget SSD and have no issue with a 30GB capacity drive then OCZ 30GB Agility SSD is not a bad choice at all.

Pros:

+ 185MB/s read, 100MB/s write
+ 64MB onboard cache
+ 3 years warranty
+ Durable lightweight alloy housing
+ 1.5 million hour MTBF
+ Low power consuming
+ Superior shock resistance

Cons:

- Not cheap compare with standard mechanical HDD
- If USB2.0 mini-B connector is included then it will be perfect

Thanks to OCZ for providing this sample for us to review.