OCZ Apex 120GB SSD Review

Internal Impressions

Please remember that opening you SSD will void your warranty.


Just as with every other SSD we have worked with, opening the Apex up to look inside is as easy as removing four corner screws.


As we have said in the past if you plan on doing this, please make sure you are grounded. Taking the top off may not ruin your SSD like it will a regular drive (unless you are in a clean room, in which case your spindle drive may just survive) but a errant static charge can and will fry your precious data into paper weight uselessness. Trust us, you don’t want to hear that zapping sound.


The board layout is exactly the same as the one found on the G.Skill Titan. At one end you have your SATA power and data connectors, with the small raid controller followed closely by the dual I/O controller chips and then two rows of four NAND MLC flash chips. The other side of this PCB has another 8 chips soldered to it (also in two rows of 4); making it for a grand total 16 NAND flash chips


Also like the Titan, the I/O controller chips are JMicron model 602s. As we have said in the past it really is amazing that these companies figured out a way to cram two full working SSDs into such a small 2.5” form factor package. We really would have liked to have seen something else besides an updated and improved JMicron 602 used in the Apex, but the Titan did show that this is a decent and fairly potent combination.


Also like the Titan the RAID controller chip (shown above) is the JMB390 controller chip by JMicron. This controller is a one-lane PCI Express to one-port Serial ATA II Host Controller which supports SATA II Gen2i and Gen2m, as well as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and Hot Plugging. All in all it is small, low power RAID controller which is a very good fit for devices such as SSDs.


As you can see the NAND chips used in the Apex are same ones as used in the Patriot Warp v2. To be precise they are Samsung K9HCG08U5M-PCB0 which are 48 pin MLC Quad Die Package, 1st gen lead free (ROHS compliant), 2.7V ~ 3.6V, 25 nanosecond NAND chips which have Dual nCE (Dual Chipe Enable control) & Dual R/nB (Dual Ready/Busy Output). This model is rated at a density of 64Gbits or 8GB per chip. Above the model number we can see these were made in the 1st week of 2009 and below it we can see the batch number YCK8D6Q1 (or at least what we assume is the batch number but is described by vaguely Samsung as “Customer List Reference” only).

When looking at these chips we are sure the biggest question on your mind is: “Why is the total capacity rated for only 120GB and not its true 128GB?” We assume the difference is for enhanced endurance as even when this drive is “full” it will still have 8GB of space for the wear level algorithms to work with. To us, losing 8GB for the chance of increased durability and possibly peed is a good trade off.

All in all, OCZ has gone for a completely reference design for the APEX. If you were to place the G. Skill Titan’s PCB along side the OCZ Apex’s PCB you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. The only distinctive characteristic of the OCZ is the QA sticker on the back of the PCB. Of course, you could also tell them apart by the size of the NAND chips used, but we are positive if we had access to a "250GB" OCZ Apex that it would be identical. It is interesting that OCZ only rates their Apex drives for 120 and 250GB when they are obviously 128GB and 256GB. We are also puzzled how OCZ can claim a faster speed for their Apex drives vs. the G.Skill Titan line when they are for all intents the same. For now we are going to give OCZ the benefit of the doubt and assume the difference has to do with custom firmware which squeezes more power from the components. This does make sense as OCZ has shown to have a lot of experience with SSDs and their capabilities.