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

[perpetually high]

Pretty sure endurance/longevity is what he's talking about. Performance will continue to increase, but TBW is getting worse, at least on many consumer products. I have a pile of some old intel X25-E ssd's at work. They're SLC. Only 64 GB in size, but with 1 Petabyte of endurance. It's remarkable how many write cycles those SLC chips can endure compared with the cheapo TLC being churned out today.

I hear you but for regular consumers like myself an EVO makes tons of sense now, where as before a PRO was the go to. If I'm good for at least five years on this drive, hasn't it served its purpose? If I was looking for 10 years, then I purchased the wrong drive and should've shelled out a little more dough for the 860 PRO.

It's similar to battery tech in electric cars; sure they're going to get better overtime, so how long should you invest in one that you plan on holding on to for a long time vs leasing a car that you won't have to worry about that.

[Zan Lynx]

A concern, of course. Also the drive writes per 512GB (100, i.e., 1 TB drive can survive 200 full drive writes) is very low compared to Intel's TLC.

Still, how many TB have you written as a consumer to an SSD in your life?.

I have a 250 GB Samsung 960 EVO as a boot, OS and swap drive on a file server I built last year when the Ryzen 1700X was just released. Here's from its SMART data:

Data Units Read: 16,740,471 [8.57 TB]
Data Units Written: 17,741,551 [9.08 TB]

That's just regular use, logging, a little bit of swapping (it's a 32 GB machine), and OS updates.

[M@GOid]

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 other guys did not talk about the biggest benefit of a SSD: simultaneous read/write of files. Forget about loading OS times, you probably do it only once or twice a day.

But is after you boot the system that you see what a SSD is all about. Almost instantaneous system upgrades, opening a program while you copy large file only takes a second, reading a directory with thousands of files unbelievably fast, etc etc.

To me, SSDs are to files what a multicore CPUs are to programs: it enables you to really multitask. Give it a shot, a cheap 120GB one is enough to show you what people are talking about SSDs.

[M@yeulC]

My PSU, GPU and CPU create enough BTU's as it is. Not using magnetic hard drives lowers internal temps and reduces the need for yet more fans.

I only use large magnetics for archival or retention purposes, many times in a off box NAS to separate it from the thermal domain of the desktop.

FWIW: Intel also shipped their first ruler based storage this week.

32Tb in a single "ruler". Dell, HP or Lenovo are reportedly working on their own high density storage format.

One form factor to rule them all? :P Intel certainly seems to be making bold claims with this one, but it certainly has some value: better space usage, thermal dissipation, hotswap, interface, etc.

I'm personally still hesitating to buy a SSD for my newly-upgraded desktop. Not sure what you mean with BTU, but it should reduce vibrations as well as power consumption/dissipation. SSDs in laptops bring in more resilience to falling damage as well, which makes them very attractive.

[calc]

I think the other guys did not talk about the biggest benefit of a SSD: simultaneous read/write of files. Forget about loading OS times, you probably do it only once or twice a day.

But is after you boot the system that you see what a SSD is all about. Almost instantaneous system upgrades, opening a program while you copy large file only takes a second, reading a directory with thousands of files unbelievably fast, etc etc.

To me, SSDs are to files what a multicore CPUs are to programs: it enables you to really multitask. Give it a shot, a cheap 120GB one is enough to show you what people are talking about SSDs.

Exactly.

I have a 1TB NVMe SSD for OS stuff and a 5TB 2.5" SMR HDD for random data (1 liter desktop). As all the OS related stuff is on the SSD it makes it immensely faster than using a HDD for pretty much everything. I recently rebuilt an old system with a HDD as the only drive which reminded me immediately how slow running off a regular HDD was, ouch.

Also as to the person who mentioned SSDs slow down when they get full thats true and also why you should never allow that to happen. You should reserve ~ 20% of the space for overcommit. See anandtech reviews for benchmarks comparing with/without that done.

As to longevity:

I've had the following TLC SSD for about 1.5 years, which I use all day every day, and it looks like it will last a long time at present rate.

Its current at 3.8TBW and is rated for 576TBW, it still has 100% of spare available.

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0xffffffff)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        38 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    2,654,859 [1.35 TB]
Data Units Written:                 7,418,329 [3.79 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 25,508,937
Host Write Commands:                308,722,551
Controller Busy Time:               5,535
Power Cycles:                       866
Power On Hours:                     4,998
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   134
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    3
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0

This older 2.5" MLC SSD I have in another system, I've used for over 6 years now, 3 of which was daily use like above.

Its at 71TBW and is only rated for 80TBW but its still also at 100% spare available.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 4
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   253   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       23862
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       1574
166 Min_W/E_Cycle           0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       183
167 Min_Bad_Block/Die       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       21
168 Maximum_Erase_Cycle     0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       493
169 Total_Bad_Block         0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       213
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 Avg_Write/Erase_Count   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       281
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       155
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   070   041   ---    Old_age   Always       -       30 (Min/Max 17/41)
212 SATA_PHY_Error          0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
230 Perc_Write/Erase_Count  0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       2340
232 Perc_Avail_Resrvd_Space 0x0033   100   100   004    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
233 Total_NAND_Writes_GiB   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       71547
241 Total_Writes_GiB        0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       27382
242 Total_Reads_GiB         0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       1763
243 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

[peppercats]

My desktop doesn't have a m.2 connector, is there a PCI-e adaptor for these?

[creative]

If your running a system enclosure with the panels on, machanical drives are going to increase that boogers overall ambient temps leading to higher cpu, gpu, ram and of course power supply temperatures. I hope your power supply does not pull air from inside the case. I can't think of a legitimate reason to have tons and tons and tons of storage if you are a real desktop user. I am of the mindset if you rarely use it, lose it.

As far as SSD vs the fastest machanical drives with highest RPM rates you can find and afford, have fun with those. The higher the RPM the hotter they are but of course everyone knows or should know that, for every drive you have it basically is like having large heatsinks dumping thermal waste into your system. I can't stand a loud workstation/gaming PC.

The cheapest crappiest SSD will absolutely slaughter any mechanical drive out there in terms of performance. When I first got one when they became affordable around 120GB, that was when I never turned back, yes they are that much better. The whole desktop was way more responsive.

[creative]

My desktop doesn't have a m.2 connector, is there a PCI-e adaptor for these?

Yes there are.

[M@GOid]

My desktop doesn't have a m.2 connector, is there a PCI-e adaptor for these?

Yes but you need to check if your BIOS/mobo allow booting from a PCIe drive. And if it does not, you may need something bootable, like a old USB flashdrive, to fire up the PCIe drive.

[M@GOid]

As to longevity:

This older 2.5" MLC SSD I have in another system, I've used for over 6 years now, 3 of which was daily use like above.

Yeah, I find interesting that some people still believe the myth that says SSDs have a very limited life and will die after a couple years.

I have a pair of the infamous Samsung 840 Evo SSDs, that are pushing 5 years now. Still going strong.

The Tech Report tested a bunch of SSDs, to find out that all of them passed way more than the manufacturer estimated life, but the myth persists:

https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead