We found a lot to love about Corsair's SandForce-powered Force Series SSDs, with the obvious exception of the high cost of entry. The drives may not be getting drastically cheaper, but now they should give you a bit better value for money following the introduction of two new drives.
The new additions to the Force Series will come in 90GB and 180GB capacities and - we assume - will be replacing the older 80GB and 160GB models.
In terms of specs, you can expect exactly the same performance as the company's other SandForce SF-1200-based SSDs. This means sequential read and write speeds of 285MB/s and 275MB/s, respectively, 4k random write throughput of 50,000 IOPS and support for the all important TRIM command under Windows 7.
In terms of performance not a lot has changed, but Corsair has made some real progress when it comes to value for money. The F90 will cost around £144 inc VAT, which is almost the exact same price as the older F80, dropping the cost-per-gigabyte down to around £1.60/GB. The F180 is an even better deal at around £274, which works out to a relatively palatable £1.52/GB.
Obviously at the current prices the older F80 and F160 drives don't make much sense, so with any luck they'll be discounted soon to clear out any lingering stock.
The F90 and F180 should be available immediately and Scan has both models in stock and ready to ship today.