Introduction

The Korean company ZALMAN is usually most well known for its coolers, cases and power supplies. A few months ago we were surprised by their announcement that they would be entering the SSD market. Now their first product has reached us in form of the ZALMAN N128 SSD. It comes equipped with Sandforce's industry-leading SF-1222 controller and 128 GB capacity. Like on all Sandforce drives, there is some space allocated to the controller's overprovisioning area, in this case 8 GB.

Packaging

Zalman's SSD comes in an appropriately sized cardboard box. The important product highlights like capacity and warranty are immediately visible on the front. Additional product details can be found in smaller print on the front and back.


You will receive:

• The SSD
• Quick Guide

The Drive

The drive conforms to the dimensions set forth by the 2.5" form factor. Unlike many other SSDs, the N128 comes in a rugged metal casing that feels extremely solid and high quality.


Like all other Sandforce drives, the Mach Xtreme SSD uses a SATA II (3 Gb/s) interface which is able to handle speeds of up to 300 MB/s. It is compatible with any other SATA standard.


Mach Xtreme is using 16 flash chips and the Sandforce flash controller, which is located in the middle of the PCB. An additional DRAM cache chip, like other SSDs use for additional caching, is not available.


As controller the well-known Sandforce SF-1222 is used.


The flash chips are made by Intel and have a capacity of 8 GB each, they are produced on Intel's 34 nm process node.