OCZ Synapse 64GB Solid State Cache Review

A couple of months ago we took a look at OCZ’s RevoDrive Hybrid, a PCI-express solution incorporating 128GB of RAW flash memory and a 1TB hard drive into a single cached solution that you drop into your system. Whilst we did find it a great solution, the slight downside was the cost and the fact that the hard drive was only 5400RPM, a factor that may put a few people off considering there is a slightly cheaper alternative solution that rivals the all in one hybrid solution such as the RevoDrive Hybrid. This alternative solution is to provide solely the cache drive – typically a small 64GB SSD and alongside that the Dataplex software key that links the SSD to a hard drive giving the SSD read performance but with the hard drive capacity that everyone longs for.

We have seen recently, more so during our time at UK LAN Gaming event i47, the appeal of SSD caches is starting to grow upon the end user and their relative cost against performance gain in upgrading older systems is a major factor in this uptake. We do have to take into account that for pure all round performance that a pure SSD solution is best, but this quickly becomes an expensive option when you’re after a large amount of fast readable storage at your fingertips.