OCZ Vertex 4 256 GB Solid State Drive Review

A Closer Look

OCZ has chosen to use a combination of plastic and metal to form the casing of the Vertex 4. This helps to keep weight down to a minimum without compromising the protection and durability of the casing.

 Figure 2: The OCZ Vertex 4 SSD 256 GB

Removing the top portion of the case exposes the component side of the printed circuit board, which contains eight OCZ-branded M2502128T048SX22 memory chips alongside the Indilinx Everest 2 controller and Hynix H5TQ2G63BFR 256 MB cache chip.

Figure 3: The OCZ Vertex 4 256 GB printed circuit board (top)

The PCB can then be removed from the bottom section of the casing, revealing eight more OCZ M2502128T048SX22 memory chips on the solder side, alongside another Hynix H5TQ2G63BFR 256 MB cache chip.  

Figure 4: The OCZ Vertex 4 256 printed circuit board (bottom)

Each of the memory chips has a capacity of 16 GB, resulting in a total capacity of 256 GB. The Indilinx Everest 2 controller doesn’t use overprovisioning, so the whole 256 GB capacity is available to use. This translates into about 238 GB of usable space when the drive is formatted in Windows.