This morning, I awoke to test my computer as I had installed the OCZ Synapse Cache the night prior. My hard drive is a Samsung M8 1TB hard drive and the typical start time was just under two minutes. It started in 14 seconds!

Our review today is on the OCZ Synapse Cache SATA III 64 GB SSD and our report methodology is simply, “Can the OCZ Synapse Cache give a hard drive the performance of an SSD?” Your going to be surprised!

INTRODUCTION

Analyst predictions showed as much as a 25% increase in hard drive prices in result to the flooding in Thailand. Just this morning, our SSD Forum Moderator, Hameister, continued his investigation of rising SSD prices to demonstrate New Eggs rise of HDD prices by an amazing 300%! This is GREAT news for the SSD industry as it gives the ‘SSD First’ concept equal footing in the consumers performance vs. capacity dilemma when selecting a storage medium for their PC. But what about present day hard drive owners?

Not even three weeks have passed since our review and release of the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB PCIe SSD where the idea of performance and capacity became an affordable computer option. As great of a drive as the Hybrid is, however, the consumer searched for a similar option where they could gain the performance of a SSD yet don’t want to lose their data or use of the hard drive they have already invested in.

OCZ thinks they may have found just that in their SATA III Synapse Cache SSD. It’s release is meant to appeal to the consumer who already has a well established computer system yet would like the performance of an SSD without breaking the bank. Having just searched the internet for initial pricing of the Synapse Cache and finding the 64GB version we are testing today at $154.99, we think OCZ may be on the right track.

SPECIFICATIONS

The OCZ Synapse Cache is available in capacities of 64GB and 128GB and we immediately found their pricing to be about $155 and $229 with a bit of a comparison search. It is a SATA III SSD, fully compatible with SATA II systems and performance is listed at 550MB/s read and 490MB/s write with up to 75,000 IOPS at 4k random write disk access. The drive caches through use of the integrated Dataplex Caching software, has a standard 3 year warranty, is TRIM compliant and comes with a 2.5″ to 3.5″ desktop adapter.

SSD ARCHITECTURE

The Synapse Cache SSD has a hard plastic casing face with metal back plate which protects the printed circuit board (PCB) of the drive. To disassemble the SSD, destruction of the OCZ security sticker is necessary along with removal of four screws located on the back of the drive. Any damage of the OCZ security sticker voids your warranty. Further removal of four internal screws then release the PCB from the shell itself.

The PCB contains the SATA 3 interface, SF-2281 processor and eight pieces of Micron 25nm 8GB asynchronous NAND flash memory (29 F64G08CBAAA). There is nothing situated on the back of the PCB.

Of interest is the fact that, once formatted, the user is only left with just over 29GB of available disk space. The reason for such is that 50% of the capacity is allocated to over provisioning while the remainder is utilized for SandForce firmware needs.