Intel SSD 660p: 512GB Of NVMe Storage For $99 USD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel SSD 660p: 512GB Of NVMe SSD Storage For $99 USD

If you have held off on switching over to NVMe solid-state storage due to the associated costs, times are certainly changing. This week Intel introduced their 660p SSD series that yields 512GB of NVMe storage for $99 USD or 1TB for $200 USD.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=26672

[nadro]

Performance of this SSD is terrible when there is no much free space left on the disk.

[torsionbar28]

"If you have held off on switching over to NVMe solid-state storage due to the associated costs..."

I'm still on HDD's due to the associated costs, LOL. These HGST He8 drives perform well, can be had used at online auction for $189, and provide 8 TB of enterprise grade storage. Every time I price out what it would cost for 8 TB of mirrored (i.e. 16 TB raw) of SSD costs, I quickly decide that my He8 drives will be here for quite a while longer yet.

[kenjitamura]

"If you have held off on switching over to NVMe solid-state storage due to the associated costs..."

I'm still on HDD's due to the associated costs, LOL. These HGST He8 drives perform well, can be had used at online auction for $189, and provide 8 TB of enterprise grade storage. Every time I price out what it would cost for 8 TB of mirrored (i.e. 16 TB raw) of SSD costs, I quickly decide that my He8 drives will be here for quite a while longer yet.

You're still using an SSD for boot, OS, and important app installations though right? To not do at least that much in this day and age would be kind of silly.

[kobblestown]

Performance of this SSD is terrible when there is no much free space left on the disk.

In some other review I read that the drive operates in SLC mode to the extent to which this is possible. This means up to a quarter of the drive. Then it needs to compact into QLC space which takes time. I guess in real life it would perform well enough because you don't hammer the drive for long periods of time - for desktop workloads you'd rather have bursts followed by inactivity. It should be a good choice for most "regular users". Although the questions of endurance and retention remain unanswered at this point.

[tildearrow]

QLC? I fear this drive may fail really really soon...

[tildearrow]

Typo:

The sequential read performance with a 2MB block size was comign in at 1641MB/s,

[torsionbar28]

You're still using an SSD for boot, OS, and important app installations though right? To not do at least that much in this day and age would be kind of silly.

Why do you think that? Using an SSD for a boot/OS disk is kind of silly. Paying hundreds of dollars to make your PC boot up in 12 seconds instead of 16 seconds is not a good investment. I can see using an SSD in a laptop for extra durability + battery life, but there's really zero benefit in a desktop. I have a desktop, not a laptop. FWIW my OS is on a mirrored pair of 300 GB WD Velociraptors, and my /home filesystem is on a mirrored pair of HGST He8's. It works really well. Putting /home on SSD would be a nice performance boost for the Steam games, Virtualbox VM's, and a few other apps, but the $thousands that would cost today isn't worth it.

[perpetually high]

Why do you think that? Using an SSD for a boot/OS disk is kind of silly. Paying hundreds of dollars to make your PC boot up in 12 seconds instead of 16 seconds is not a good investment. I can see using an SSD in a laptop for extra durability + battery life, but there's really zero benefit in a desktop. I have a desktop, not a laptop. FWIW my OS is on a mirrored pair of 300 GB WD Velociraptors, and my /home filesystem is on a mirrored pair of HGST He8's. It works really well. Putting /home on SSD would be a nice performance boost for the Steam games, Virtualbox VM's, and a few other apps, but the $thousands that would cost today isn't worth it.

I think the performance gains from SSDs speaks for itself. If we remove money from the equation, an upgrade doesn't seem so silly. But if *you're* happy with the performance of your PC, which is sounds like you know what you're doing, then it shouldn't matter to any of us.

I just upgraded two days ago from an 840 Pro 256GB (gave it to my dad), and picked up a 500GB 860 EVO (used, like new on Amazon) for $106 shipped and everything. I'm ecstatic about the extra storage, and the 860 has some decent performance gains (though minor in the grand scheme of things) over the 840 Pro.

[Vistaus]

Why do you think that? Using an SSD for a boot/OS disk is kind of silly. Paying hundreds of dollars to make your PC boot up in 12 seconds instead of 16 seconds is not a good investment. I can see using an SSD in a laptop for extra durability + battery life, but there's really zero benefit in a desktop. I have a desktop, not a laptop. FWIW my OS is on a mirrored pair of 300 GB WD Velociraptors, and my /home filesystem is on a mirrored pair of HGST He8's. It works really well. Putting /home on SSD would be a nice performance boost for the Steam games, Virtualbox VM's, and a few other apps, but the $thousands that would cost today isn't worth it.

My laptop boots in 7 seconds with an SSD, so 7 seconds vs 16 seconds is a major difference. Maybe not major enough for you, but definitely more than the 4 second difference you mentioned.