Introduction

Intel really needs no introduction because you are most likely running on an Intel platform with an Intel CPU in your system. The company is one of the forerunners of SSD technology and was one of the first manufacturers of solid-state-disks. In recent times, it has gotten a bit quiet though as price drops and improvements in controller performance have made competing drives from Crucial and Samsung more attractive. Intel has recently also released the DC P3700 for professional datacenter solutions, and it is awesome but way too expensive and not meant for consumers.

Based on that platform, Intel is now entering the enthusiast-consumer-storage market with the Intel 750 Series. The new drives use the PCI-Express interface exclusively; there is no more SATA support. The new disks are available in two form-factors: PCI-Express x4 add-in card or 2.5" drive (not SATA compatible). Both form factors use the NVMe storage protocol instead of the aging AHCI which wasn't really designed for low-latency storage.

Today, we are reviewing the Intel 750 Series PCI-Express version. It is a bit easier to use given the current hardware ecosystem. Intel's 750 Series SSD is available in capacities of 1.2 TB or 400 GB—there is nothing in-between, nothing smaller, which looks as though Intel is testing the waters with an enthusiast drive first because it promises to run into fewer platform incompatibilities.

With pricing of $1200 for the 1.2 TB version and $400 for the 400 GB version, basically $1 per GB, the drives are not cheap, or insanely expensive. However, current consumer SSDs go down as low as 40 cents per GB, so if your focus is on price/performance, those drives are probably a better alternative.