G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD Review

First Impressions

As with the Titan SSD, the Falcon is wrapped in an all black metal body. Also like the Titan the “top” of this drive is denude of any goo-gaws, glow in the dark decals, or the most unholy of unholies the holographic sticker. The only thing on the top of this drive is a large sticker which is for all intents and purposes a clone of the packaging box colour and logo scheme. In a nut shell, it tells you what this drive is, who makes it and the size and form factor of the drive; no extraneous boasts or claims, just pure information in a low key sticker. In many ways the white and black colour works better than the black and red of the titan as the Falcon’s does stand out more. In either case, we like and respect its simplicity and quickly ignored it once we absorbed its information….just like any properly designed sticker should be!


The back label is your fairly typical, standard fare with its white background and black lettering. As with all SSDs, including the Falcon, this label is crammed full of useful information. The biggest of these is the 64MB onboard cache listed. This right here is one of the things we have been looking for in SSDs and so far only Intel, Samsung and OCZ have delivered. The inclusion of all that beautiful cache should darn near ensure a stutter free experience, assuming previous experiences are anything to go by.


The only other noticeable feature of the Falcon is located adjacent the SATA data and power ports. As we mentioned in the accessories section this particular drive has completely upgradeable firmware.

To perform a firmware upgrade you use the included jumper to jump these two small pins allowing it to go into its updateable mode. Its a fast and simple yet darn near idiot proof way of doing this…and as a bonus if you don’t know what those jumpers are, its very unlikely you will ever mess with it. The only downside to setting a jumper to flash the FW is if an end-user “has enough information to be dangerous” and is used to PATA drives. There is the possibility they will think this is the jumper to turn their SATA drive into a “slave” drive. If you are giving this drive as a gift, or setting up a system for a less knowledgeable user…either don’t tell them about this all together or explain that “bad things happen” if they do try it without you. In all honesty we are glad to see the jumper abilities on the Falcon and think this setup is the best compromise possible.

All in all we walked away with a very, very, VERY good first impression of the Falcon. It looks good, is well protected and G.Skill has obviously put a lot of time and effort into the packaging of this monster machine. However, one question does push its way to the fore: Will the Falcon soar and live up to our lofty expectations or will it on closer examination turn into a grounded turkey? Before we get to performance however, let’s take a close look at it and then crack it open like a lobster to get to the good bits.