Pictures and Breakdown
The Vertex 450 has the same aluminum shell that I loved on the Vector. The reason it stands out over most other drives is the aluminum is machined out with rounded corners rather than the thin sheet metal shells that most manufactures go with. The side effect of this design is how strong it makes the Vertex 450, I really think you could beat someone with this drive and then put it in your system without worries. Much like the packaging, the Vertex 450 shares the same theme as the Vector other than the color that OCZ went with. For the Vertex 450 they stuck with the black and silver look that the Vertex drives always have. The black styling really makes the Vertex 450 logo stand out. All in all the Vertex 450 is going to look great in any build because black works in nearly every build and frankly with the way the drive looks I would want to show it off.
On the back of the drive you will find a sticker with all of the needed information like the serial number and all of the required RoHS and CE logos. The Vertex 450 has mounting points on both the bottom and on its sides. This should make sure you can install the drive in both a full PC as well as most laptops that support 2.5 inch drives. In fact the 7mm thickness means it will support even more laptops.
Here we can see the 7mm thickness as well as the SATA data and power connections. Nothing is out of the ordinary here.
Breaking into the vertex 450 requires removing the warranty sticker off the drive then four screws to get inside of the casing. Once inside, four more screws will get the drive completely out of its shell.
Our Vertex 450 features its Barefoot Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller right in the center. This is similar to the controller in the Vector but the Vector’s Barefoot Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller had a stepping of M100 while the Vertex 450 has a M10 stepping. In you look closely you will see the two Micron DRAM buffer chips that give the Vertex 450 a combined buffer of 512MB there is also a spot for a third that isn’t being used at this time. Also on the PCB are the 20nm NAND chips. You get a total of 16 NANDs at 16 gigs each to reach our 256 GB capacity.
