Corsair Memory, a leading supplier of advanced PC components, on Thursday introduced new solid-state drives (SSDs) with non-standard 180GB and 480GB capacities. Corsair hopes that the wider choice of SSD models will help it to better compete against rivals.

"As one of the leaders in high-performance solid state drives, we're pleased to offer a full range of SSD models to address customers' needs for high performance, high-capacity storage.", said Thi La, vice president of memory products at Corsair.

Corsair's new Force-series SSDs are based on SandForce SF-2280 controllers and use Serial ATA-600 interface. The Force 3 SSD 180GB and 480GB use asynchronous flash memory and provide out-of-box read and write speeds of up to 550MB/s read speed and 520 MB/s write speeds and up to 85K random write IOPS. The Force GT-series, designed for enthusiasts, uses ONFI synchronous flash memory and boasts read speeds of up to 555MB/s and write speeds of up to 525MB/s as well as 85K random write input/output operations per second (IOPS).

The new Force Series 3 and Force Series GT SSD models are available from authorized distributors and retailers worldwide at a suggested retail price of $249 for the Force 3 180GB, $799 for the Force 3 480GB, and $999 for the Force GT 480GB.

Although Corsair claims that the non-standard solid-state drives have substantial price advantage over other SSDs, their per-gigabyte pricing is similar to traditional counterparts. As a result, the non-standard capacity provides relative advantages in terms of pricing or performance.

Tags: Corsair, Force, SSD, NAND, Flash