# Why the Intel 660P is the Best deal in High Capacity Storage



## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

The Intel 660P is a polarizing product. People either love them or love to lament on them. There are several truths to the drives that make them quite viable for users and enthusiasts alike.

1. The cost of these drives is exemplary they have been as low as $259.99 Canadian for the 2TB. 

https://www.newegg.ca/intel-660p-series-2tb/p/N82E16820167461 This is the cheapest 2TB NAND based storage drive on Newegg. 

2. The performance, while not as fast as other drives in this space, they are faster than any of the ones listed below which have popular nomenclature.









						WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD - SATA III - Newegg.com
					

Buy WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD - SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5"/7mm Solid State Drive - WDS200T2B0A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.ca
				












						WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD - M.2 2280 SSD - Newegg.com
					

Buy WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD - SATA III 6Gb/s M.2 2280 Solid State Drive - WDS200T2B0B with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.ca
				




https://www.newegg.ca/seagate-barracuda-2tb/p/1Z4-002P-00GH8 

3. The warranty is very good at 5 years not any different than drives from Adata, Samsung, Seagate and others. 

4. It comes with software and there are driver updates. The Intel website has a few useful applications that you can use with the drive. 

5. The packaging is better than most drives. The drive actually comes encased in it's own plastic casing. I actually use them to store NVME drives I am not using. 

The downside to the 660P and some other "gimped" NVME drives are that the NAND chips are QLC and therefore will degrade faster than TLC or MLC NAND. The official is 240 TBW but just to put it in perspective here is the MBTF for the Samsung 860 Evo 1,500,000 hours vs the 660P (both 1 TB) MBTF 1,600,000 hours.

Even in official reviews of the 660P the only downside is the QLC NAND. Indeed I have read enough reviews to see that the 660P is faster than even the 760P in some scenarios. The only thing remotely close in terms of a deal to this is a promotion currently running on Amazon for a 2TB Adata SX8200 Pro for less than $300 Canadian.






						XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W 3500/3000MB/s SSD (ASX8200PNP-2TT-C) : Amazon.ca: Electronics
					

XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W 3500/3000MB/s SSD (ASX8200PNP-2TT-C) : Amazon.ca: Electronics



					www.amazon.ca


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## TheLostSwede (Oct 29, 2019)

Sorry, your point is what exactly?
That a cheap SSD is the best product?
The performance is actually rather middling at best and MTBF has nothing to do with how much data you can write to an SSD.
I admittedly nearly got a 2TB drive, but  then came to my senses and bough a different drive with TLC.


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> Sorry, your point is what exactly?
> That a cheap SSD is the best product?
> The performance is actually rather middling at best and MTBF has nothing to do with how much data you can write to an SSD.
> I admittedly nearly got a 2TB drive, but  then came to my senses and bough a different drive with TLC.



The point that I am making is that if you are looking to get into NAND storage instead of buying a 2 TB SSD get the 660P instead (If you can use it).


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## Flaky (Oct 29, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> Sorry, your point is what exactly?


Warming the general view of QLCs? 

@4: Any convincing reasons to use the software and/or switch to Intel's driver from stock MS? I'm just curious what I may be missing. I _kind of_ have a 660p.

The major downside of those drives is sustained write - it drops to abysmal 60MB/s.


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## TheLostSwede (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> The point that I am making is that if you are looking to get into NAND storage instead of buying a 2 TB SSD get the 660P instead (If you can use it).


SATA drive you mean? Yeah, that might make sense.


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

Flaky said:


> Warming the general view of QLCs?
> 
> @4: Any convincing reasons to use the software and/or switch to Intel's driver from stock MS? I'm just curious what I may be missing. I _kind of_ have a 660p.
> 
> The major downside of those drives is sustained write - it drops to abysmal 60MB/s.



When you got it did you install Intel RST? It helped me to improve sustained write times with my drives but they did go to 300 mb/s after 50+GB of written data.



TheLostSwede said:


> SATA drive you mean? Yeah, that might make sense.



 Yeah that is what I meant.


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## The Egg (Oct 29, 2019)

QLC can be a good value when used in the correct application.  For instance, data which is read frequently (and good read performance is helpful), but with fairly uncommon writes.  A perfect example would be games storage, where writes are almost non-existent beyond the initial install.

They're not particularly suited to being (nor intended as) a system/OS drive.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> The Intel 660P is a polarizing product. People either love them or love to lament on them. There are several truths to the drives that make them quite viable for users and enthusiasts alike.
> 
> 1. The cost of these drives is exemplary they have been as low as $259.99 Canadian for the 2TB.
> 
> ...


I agree.
It's big,dirt cheap and read times are excellent.write too,unless you go back and forth writing 30GBs of data.
best deal for gaming rigs hands down.
beats ssd drives hands down while it costs the same or less






If you're worried about 240tbw on a game drive you must be joking.I've written just over 60 on my drives since 2015,and some of them served as OS.


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## Agent_D (Oct 29, 2019)

While it's not a bad deal, the Inland (Microcenter) NVMe drives are much much better overall. 2TB for $228 with 3200TBW and 1.5m MTBF with the Phison controller and excellent read/write speeds.


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## Flaky (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> When you got it did you install Intel RST? It helped me to improve sustained write times with my drives but they did go to 300 mb/s after 50+GB of written data.


No, I didn't. I did install newest RST now, and...
The only thing RST package actually did do was installing Intel's NVMe drivers (which stay in OS even after removing RST altogether). RST app itself kept crashing on launch as I had the SATA controller disabled completely. After re-enabling, all it could do is display some information about Intel's NVMe drives. That's all. No management, no options. Nothing I didn't expect - Z87 has no native support of PCIe storage in any way. Older RST compatible with this platform is completely unaware of PCIe storage, and is even more useless, as it won't even show NVMes.

I think it applies in a same way to non-Intel platforms - it has no use and just bloats the OS with useless software. Drivers can be downloaded separately.

In my case drivers didn't change anything in regard to poor writes - still ~60MB/s. This drive is 80% full tho


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

Flaky said:


> No, I didn't. I did install newest RST now, and...
> The only thing RST package actually did do was installing Intel's NVMe drivers (which stay in OS even after removing RST altogether). RST app itself kept crashing on launch as I had the SATA controller disabled completely. After re-enabling, all it could do is display some information about Intel's NVMe drives. That's all. No management, no options. Nothing I didn't expect - Z87 has no native support of PCIe storage in any way. Older RST compatible with this platform is completely unaware of PCIe storage, and is even more useless, as it won't even show NVMes.
> 
> I think it applies in a same way to non-Intel platforms - it has no use and just bloats the OS with useless software. Drivers can be downloaded separately.
> ...



Intel RST as I understand is a driver level app. Is the M2 slot on your board PCI_E 3.0 or 2.0?


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## ERazer (Oct 29, 2019)

seems like a good product for NAS cache, nm cant handle constant writing


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## Flaky (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Intel RST as I understand is a driver level app.


RST is a complete storage solution consisting of hardware, firmware and software for the OS. Z87 are so old the motherboards had no M.2, and its RST handled only SATA devices.

What options does the RST give you on your platform?


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## Nater (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Even in official reviews of the 660P the only downside is the QLC NAND. Indeed I have read enough reviews to see that the 660P is faster than even the 760P in some scenarios. The only thing remotely close in terms of a deal to this is a promotion currently running on Amazon for a 2TB Adata SX8200 Pro for less than $300 Canadian.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I saw the HP EX950 on Rakuten yesterday for $247.  The Inland Premium is $227 on Amazon.  Sabrent Rocket is $250.   The extra money is worth it IMO, especially after you fill up the drives and watch the 660p performance drop off a cliff, and they're already nearly twice as fast in reviews I've seen before that.


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

Flaky said:


> RST is a complete storage solution consisting of hardware, firmware and software for the OS. Z87 are so old the motherboards had no M.2, and its RST handled only SATA devices.
> 
> What options does the RST give you on your platform?



I have 4 1TB 660Ps in RAID 0 on an expansion card. Before installing RST I would not get over 5000 MB/s reads and writes were in the 4000 MB/s range (sequential). After installing RST on my X399 build the speed increased to 6000 MB/s read and 5500 mb/s writes.



Nater said:


> I saw the HP EX950 on Rakuten yesterday for $247.  The Inland Premium is $227 on Amazon.  Sabrent Rocket is $250.   The extra money is worth it IMO, especially after you fill up the drives and watch the 660p performance drop off a cliff, and their already nearly twice as fast in reviews I've seen before that.



I know what you mean but those drives you mentioned are all at least $100 more in Canada vs the 660P. Any NVME drive (Samsung 970 Pro excluded) will fall off a cliff once the SLC cache has been filled.


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## Nater (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I have 4 1TB 660Ps in RAID 0 on an expansion card. Before installing RST I would not get over 5000 MB/s reads and writes were in the 4000 MB/s range (sequential). After installing RST on my X399 build the speed increased to 6000 MB/s read and 5500 mb/s writes.
> 
> 
> 
> I know what you mean but those drives you mentioned are all at least $100 more in Canada vs the 660P. Any NVME drive (Samsung 970 Pro excluded) will fall off a cliff once the SLC cache has been filled.



I don't mean large transfers filling the cache, I mean actual data filling the drives.

I see how you're using them though, 4 ways on an expansion card, totally get why you're shaking the pom poms for them.

My point is, alone as a main drive, the other options are a better pick, even though they cost more.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I know what you mean but those drives you mentioned are all at least $100 more in Canada vs the 660P. Any NVME drive (Samsung 970 Pro excluded) will fall off a cliff once the SLC cache has been filled.


that is actually untrue.
well,to a point.what I mean is there's a difference between slowing down to 1700mb/s on samsung's tlc and 700mb/s on adata's (micron produced) tlc.toshiba's bics (wd black/xg6) is excellent too.


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## Deathy (Oct 29, 2019)

Nater said:


> I saw the HP EX950 on Rakuten yesterday for $247.  The Inland Premium is $227 on Amazon.  Sabrent Rocket is $250.   The extra money is worth it IMO, especially after you fill up the drives and watch the 660p performance drop off a cliff, and their already nearly twice as fast in reviews I've seen before that.


If you can get them at that price, TLC drives of the current generation can be worth it over the QLC ones. But here (Germany) I'd pay 195€ for a 2TB 660p and about 250€ for the cheapest, available current gen TLC equivalent (SX8200 Pro). That is quite a bit of a difference and in day to day use, it will not make a lot of difference for most consumer grade users. The 2 TB 660p has a minimum of 24GB SLC write cache. Once you have all your stuff installed on it, you like hardly ever run into a situation where you are running out of SLC cache in day to day use (if you do, this isn't your drive of course and you should spend the money you make with your PC to get a better drive). And you really should never, ever, ever fill up any sort of NAND based storage.  If the price delta is over 20%, I'd probably go with a 660p over a TLC PCIe drive. If it is below 10% I'd get the TLC. Between that it'd be a tougher decision. TBW is not an issue in my use case, as I had only 32TB written on my Samsung 840 500GB (first edition planar TLC) and that was over 4 or 5 years I think.


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> that is actually untrue.
> well,to a point.what I mean is there's a difference between slowing down to 1700mb/s on samsung's tlc and 700mb/s on adata's (micron produced) tlc.toshiba's bics (wd black/xg6) is excellent too.



That is a nice chart I have the SP 3480 as my boot drive. I really like it too. If someone asked me for a 1TB NVME drive I would get it as it is only $10 more than the 660P 1 TB.



Nater said:


> I don't mean large transfers filling the cache, I mean actual data filling the drives.
> 
> I see how you're using them though, 4 ways on an expansion card, totally get why you're shaking the pom poms for them.
> 
> My point is, alone as a main drive, the other options are a better pick, even though they cost more.



As boot drives yes and that is why I don't use the 660P as such. I know what you mean but trust me unless you are writing large amounts of data to NVME drives you would be hard pressed to notice a real world difference between NVME drives.


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## king of swag187 (Oct 29, 2019)

The 660P is only good value when its on sale, otherwise no point when you can get a SATA drive that doesnt drop to 100MBps when cache runs out, or a NVME drive for a bit more that isn't shitty  QLC flash


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 29, 2019)

king of swag187 said:


> The 660P is only good value when its on sale, otherwise no point when you can get a SATA drive that doesnt drop to 100MBps when cache runs out, or a NVME drive for a bit more that isn't shitty  QLC flash


yeah,right






it destroys sata drives


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## John Naylor (Oct 29, 2019)

While there are instances where this actually matters, these differences are meaningless when the user can' take advantage of them.  Kinda like telling ya boss he / she should buy you a Porsche cause you can't manage to get to work on time. Can only drive as fast as the person in front of you.  And ya can't accomplish more with super fast storage systems when the system is continually waiting on the user which is the case 99% of the time.

SSDs are great for bragging rights, but I can't argue that it will affect productivity or anything else outside very small market segments.  I have yet to have a user notice when switching their boot drive om SSD to SSHD.  So why do I always used among the fast storage subsystems available ? ... because I can.  But trying to make a case  based upon ROI, will be a rare success.

As an old nerd, started with punch cards in the early 70s, I can never speak against "more power" ... but the it's oft stated mantra that adding an SSD will instantly make someone more productive in what "they do every day" is misplaced.  I have a air compressor and nail gun which is great for roofing jobs .... but it isn't any more productive when wife wants to hang a picture on the wall or when I'm replacing the 3 steps up to my deck.


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## Vario (Oct 29, 2019)

Agent_D said:


> While it's not a bad deal, the Inland (Microcenter) NVMe drives are much much better overall. 2TB for $228 with 3200TBW and 1.5m MTBF with the Phison controller and excellent read/write speeds.


Yep, got one but people are irrationally afraid of generic labels even though the actual components on the drive are brand name: Phison E12 controller, SK Hynix ram, Toshiba 3D TLC NAND .


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## ERazer (Oct 29, 2019)

Vario said:


> Yep, got one but people are irrationally afraid of generic labels even though the actual components on the drive are brand name: Phison E12 controller, SK Hynix ram, Toshiba 3D TLC NAND .


replaced all our office computers (5 yr old pc's) with inland 120gb no issues at all and made things run smoothly.


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## bonehead123 (Oct 29, 2019)

IMHO, the intel drives suk mucho ballah, for all the (negative) reasons the OP listed, except price of course....

Therefore the old adage applies:

"Cheap is as cheap does" - Forest, Forest Gump (well kinda )

For a company that has a near 75-80% monopoly on pretty good CPU's, they sure went to the bottom of the barrel for their drives, and as far as I am concerned, that's where they will stay until they decide to make something that actually works as well or better than the other name brands....

Give me Sammy EVO or WD Black NVME's anyday


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## Vario (Oct 29, 2019)

ERazer said:


> replaced all our office computers (5 yr old pc's) with inland 120gb no issues at all and made things run smoothly.


The two complaints I have with the Inland NVME X4 1TB  is it does not have readable S.M.A.R.T. info, and it also scheduled itself for Windows defragment, which I noticed and unscheduled.  Otherwise a great drive.


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## ERazer (Oct 29, 2019)

Vario said:


> The two complaints I have with the Inland NVME X4 1TB  is it does not have readable S.M.A.R.T. info, and it also scheduled itself for Windows defragment, which I noticed and unscheduled.  Otherwise a great drive.


thats nice to know, i dont have any xp with inland nvme and i was thinking grabbing one for my kiddo's rig.


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## The Egg (Oct 29, 2019)

bonehead123 said:


> IMHO, the intel drives suk mucho ballah, for all the (negative) reasons the OP listed, except price of course....


Yup, aside from price.  And value.  Aside from the two most important things for any item in existence; if you don't take that into account, it's not as good.


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## Flaky (Oct 29, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I have 4 1TB 660Ps in RAID 0 on an expansion card. Before installing RST I would not get over 5000 MB/s reads and writes were in the 4000 MB/s range (sequential). After installing RST on my X399 build the speed increased to 6000 MB/s read and 5500 mb/s writes.


Are you sure that it was RST, and not drivers alone?


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## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2019)

Flaky said:


> Are you sure that it was RST, and not drivers alone?



Nope it was RST. I never used to create content but Humble Bundle (I love that site) had a sale on Vegas Pro for like $27 plus a ton of music and effects programs. I have taught myself how to use that program and I posted in another thread that I have a very large video project that I am using the Intel drives to speed up rendering time. The thing is X399 (if you have a use case for it) is a no brainer if you are  able to utilize the resources available to you. I can attest though that TWWH2 does load faster on the Intel RAID 0 array than 2 SX8200 Pros in RAID 0, 2 MICRON 1100 SSDs in RAID 0, A single NVME (Corsair MP 500) or single SSD (Sandisk Ultra 2 960GB). Trust me I would not use a 660P as a boot drive but as far as data drives go one cannot deny that in Canada it is the only regularly priced sub $300 2TB NVME drive available for purchase on Amazon or Newegg.


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## yotano211 (Oct 29, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> I agree.
> It's big,dirt cheap and read times are excellent.write too,unless you go back and forth writing 30GBs of data.
> best deal for gaming rigs hands down.
> beats ssd drives hands down while it costs the same or less
> ...


Each person is different when it comes to how much is written to their SSD, you might only have 60tb of written in 4 years but others will not have that. I have 18.5TBs written on 1 SSD and I have've had it for almost 3 months.


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## king of swag187 (Oct 29, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> yeah,right
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Nice try, I own a 660P and transferring anything over the 24GB SLC cache kills performance :^)


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## silkstone (Oct 29, 2019)

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-ROCKET-2TB/dp/B07MTQTNVR?th=1
		


Best 'value' NVMe

Pick it up during one of the regular price cuts and its $200 for 2TB TLC NVMe


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## Vario (Oct 29, 2019)

silkstone said:


> https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-ROCKET-2TB/dp/B07MTQTNVR?th=1
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep, the Sabrent is the same model as Corsair MP510, Inland, PNY, MyDigital BPX, etc.  No reason to buy a 660P with these super fast value SSD around.  At one point the Corsair model was shipping with older E12 firmware, otherwise I believe the hardware is identical on all of these.  Pick the brand that gives you the warranty you want.  Rivals a 970 Evo.


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## Bronan (Oct 30, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> I agree.
> It's big,dirt cheap and read times are excellent.write too,unless you go back and forth writing 30GBs of data.
> best deal for gaming rigs hands down.
> beats ssd drives hands down while it costs the same or less
> ...



Its not very cheap here at all, and i do not really believe the result your showing.
I do not have any intel nvme drives so for short burst read/write but i kinda think this is pure cache performance. Although i see lots of people being happy with these nvme ssd.
I have myself 2 x samsung 970 evo plus 2 Tb but they simply are not so fast with the things i do compared to my 4 x 480 Gb  raid 0 enterprise ssd setup for the tasks i do. And i see my games loads faster on the old raid 0 setup as well.
As a rule i allways leave at least 10 to 20% of the drive unused when i format the drive.
The samsungs 970 evo raid0 i made also have both a 300 Gb unused space available. 
This to make sure they never get a performance dip ever.
I believe the intel devices might be fast together with the intel vroc but i still have not been able to compare it. 
But pricewise one can really make a better deal with a bunch of used enterprise ssd which can be bought for insanely low prices these days.
Mine i bought for only 50 euro a piece, sadly i was too late to get more, they simply sold so fast that all 240 where gone in a flash.
Anyway you can mix and match similar sized drives as well, i mean by that when you buy them just look for almost matching sizes 480 to 512 can easily be put in raid0 because you should only use a smaller part when setting them up in raid, never fully make the partition the max sizes to prevent slow performance ever. It works perfect and gets you a very fast performing storage.
I do agree that the max TBW hardly ever gets reached at home usage, however this will not mean that a ssd drive will not fail. But i can promise you a failure of a ssd is really not happening often.
For example all my sata ssd i have including the ones in my NAS as cache work still perfect.
Now let me be clear the intel 60 Gb ssd are many years old, i forgot the date to be honest but they have been used in many machines i ever have used in my live, i have put them in laptops, pc, workstations and several nas and servers and they constant where trustworthy and relative fast compared to old hdd drives. They have done insane numbers or read/writes the numbers are so big that i do not even try to copy them. I do however know for sure that they still show as being 100% ok
Ofcourse some of the cells are being replaced by the controller but even after all these years they still work hard today in my nas as r/w cache. Even though my nas can have 2 nvme as cache i kinda do not believe they would make a big difference in performance as well. And i do not even mention the huge price for the nvme card from synology being over 240 euro here. 
And believe me thats stressfull for any ssd, and these oldies do very well


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## newtekie1 (Oct 31, 2019)

The Egg said:


> QLC can be a good value when used in the correct application.  For instance, data which is read frequently (and good read performance is helpful), but with fairly uncommon writes.  A perfect example would be games storage, where writes are almost non-existent beyond the initial install.
> 
> They're not particularly suited to being (nor intended as) a system/OS drive.



The truth is they are just fine as a system/OS drive, at least the 660p is.  The SLC cache absorbs short writes, which is what most system drives do.  You vary rarely have a large sustained write on a system drive.  The biggest writes will probably be the OS install itself and some programs/games installs.  You'll still get a decent amount of either of those done before the drive starts to slow down, and if those take a little longer to finish, big deal.

Yeah, you can argue that the shorter life span of QLC might be a problem with a system drive, but that doesn't really apply either.  System drives aren't written to nearly as much as people think.  My oldest SSD that has been used as a system drive its whole life on a computer I use pretty much daily is an MX300 that I bought 3 years ago.  It has a whole 11.2TBW so far.  The 1TB 660p is rated for 200TBW.  So it is hightly unlikely that it will reach the end of its life before you're looking to replace it anyway if you use it as a system drive.


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## silkstone (Oct 31, 2019)

newtekie1 said:


> The truth is they are just fine as a system/OS drive, at least the 660p is.  The SLC cache absorbs short writes, which is what most system drives do.  You vary rarely have a large sustained write on a system drive.  The biggest writes will probably be the OS install itself and some programs/games installs.  You'll still get a decent amount of either of those done before the drive starts to slow down, and if those take a little longer to finish, big deal.
> 
> Yeah, you can argue that the shorter life span of QLC might be a problem with a system drive, but that doesn't really apply either.  System drives aren't written to nearly as much as people think.  My oldest SSD that has been used as a system drive its whole life on a computer I use pretty much daily is an MX300 that I bought 3 years ago.  It has a whole 11.2TBW so far.  The 1TB 660p is rated for 200TBW.  So it is hightly unlikely that it will reach the end of its life before you're looking to replace it anyway if you use it as a system drive.



I'm on 70 TB written on my 750 GB system drive that is 2-3 years old. It's health is still 83% based on lifetime writes. If it were an 660P, i'd be getting close to 1/2 way through it's life by now.

I have drives (in use) that are roughly 7 years old and still going strong (OCZ Vector, Sandisk 60 GB ones). They wouldn not be, if they were QLC.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 31, 2019)

silkstone said:


> I'm on 70 TB written on my 750 GB system drive that is 2-3 years old. It's health is still 83% based on lifetime writes. If it were an 660P, i'd be getting close to 1/2 way through it's life by now.
> 
> I have drives (in use) that are roughly 7 years old and still going strong (OCZ Vector, Sandisk 60 GB ones). They wouldn not be, if they were QLC.



Oh, NO, you'll _only_ get 6-8 years out of it.  How terrible.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Oct 31, 2019)

Why is the Op trying to push this stuff, that's quite the post for random support, this is ridiculous to, clearly it's far from the best.

He put the box it comes in as a plus point bulletin!.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 1, 2019)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Why is the Op trying to push this stuff, that's quite the post for random support, this is ridiculous to, clearly it's far from the best.
> 
> He put the box it comes in as a plus point bulletin!.



I don't think he's saying it is the best drive, but the best value.  And, IMO, I agree in the 2TB size.  Until the BX500 came out, it literally was the cheapest 2TB SSD on newegg.  And even with the 2TB BX500, I'd still buy the 660p over the BX500.  the BX500 is only a few $ cheaper, and the 660p is going to be faster than the BX500 in everything except very long sustained writes.  In real world use, most people will be perfectly happy with the 660p.


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## silkstone (Nov 1, 2019)

newtekie1 said:


> Oh, NO, you'll _only_ get 6-8 years out of it.  How terrible.



Considering I still use hardware that is 10+ years old, that I would otherwise need to replace, yes It is a factor I consider when buying.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Nov 1, 2019)

Recently added a 1TB 660p to run x-plane off of (I have a few hundred GB of scenery and need to load ~8GB to start the sim in some places), it's a massive improvement over hard drives (obviously)...

The main thing for me was the 5 year warranty, I don't expect to be writing much to a game drive so the lower write endurance isn't really something I'm concerned about... I'm also not dumping huge files onto it, and when I do it's being bottlenecked by the drive that they are coming off.

I think the QLC parts need to come down a bit more in price to be _really_ convincing, but if you want a relatively cheap drive to throw your games on, a 1-2TB 660p is already plenty good.


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## Palladium (Nov 1, 2019)

What, save <$50 for crappy QLC than getting a $250 Adata SX8200 Pro 2TB? 

Sure, you are the smart guy here and the rest of us the clueless suckers.


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 1, 2019)

Palladium said:


> What, save <$50 for crappy QLC than getting a $250 Adata SX8200 Pro 2TB?
> 
> Sure, you are the smart guy here and the rest of us the clueless suckers.


yeah,as if micron's 3d tlc was worth it.worst tlc by far,doesn't even come close to toshiba or samsung.

there's plenty of good drives you can have for 660p+50 dollars,but 8200 pro is not among them,though it is good overall.
saving $40-50 on a drive that's gonna perform the same for most home/game rigs is huge.might save you enough for a cpu upgrade (e.g. 2600 to 2700) or twice the ram (16 to 32).


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## GorbazTheDragon (Nov 1, 2019)

Reminds me of when people were thinking about "questionable SLC SSDs" and "crappy TLC".

If you are going to say drop $50 more one one component for extra numbers that you won't use, what's preventing that logic on all of the other ones... If you won't be writing much to the drive I don't see why not get a QLC drive, especially given the 5 year warranty.

Honestly my main qualm with the 660p is that you are using an m.2 slot of a drive that doesn't really need it, on that logic I could agree with avoiding that one specifically... In which case I would say get the QVO... Price wise, yeah at 110 $/TB yeah I'd question it, but when I'm seeing them go down and dip below $100 I don't think you can make much of an argument against the value proposition (for the purpose obviously).

As for the m.2 slot thing, a lot of 400 series boards will have a x4 laned slot off the CPU and only an x2 off the chipset... In this situation I don't see why you would bother sticking a faster TLC drive in it at all... On top of that I'd honestly just say in the future, given that Ryzen is finally freeing us of the ridiculous I/O constraints of the 1151 platform, just slap it on a pci-e slot adapter and run it off the leftover chipset or CPU PCIe lanes...


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## TheLostSwede (Nov 1, 2019)

Nater said:


> I saw the HP EX950 on Rakuten yesterday for $247.  The Inland Premium is $227 on Amazon.  Sabrent Rocket is $250.   The extra money is worth it IMO, especially after you fill up the drives and watch the 660p performance drop off a cliff, and they're already nearly twice as fast in reviews I've seen before that.


The HP drives are apparently not supported by HP, so you're SOL if something goes wrong.
Sabrent are meant to be ok though.



Palladium said:


> What, save <$50 for crappy QLC than getting a $250 Adata SX8200 Pro 2TB?
> 
> Sure, you are the smart guy here and the rest of us the clueless suckers.


It depends where you live you know, not everyone gets cheap prices like in the US.
In fact, the Adata SX8200 Pro is quite pricey here, 40% more so than the Intel drive, which would make a big difference to a lot of people.
The cheapest decent NVMe drive here is the Pioneer APS-SE20G which is still 33% more expensive at 2TB.


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## theonedub (Nov 1, 2019)

Got my 2TB 660p drives for $150/each. Using them as storage drives and couldn't be happier with them.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 1, 2019)

silkstone said:


> Considering I still use hardware that is 10+ years old, that I would otherwise need to replace, yes It is a factor I consider when buying.



I'll use hardware as long as it is useful or until it dies, whichever comes first.  I just retired my last 60GB SSD, and by retired I mean it finally died.



Palladium said:


> What, save <$50 for crappy QLC than getting a $250 Adata SX8200 Pro 2TB?
> 
> Sure, you are the smart guy here and the rest of us the clueless suckers.



Nice try, but the SX8200 Pro 2TB is $85 more than the 660p.  Paying 40% more for no real world benefits makes no sense.



TheLostSwede said:


> It depends where you live you know, not everyone gets cheap prices like in the US.



I don't know where he lives, but it's definitely not like that in the US.  The SX8200 Pro is $290, the 660p is $205.


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## Nater (Nov 1, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> The HP drives are apparently not supported by HP, so you're SOL if something goes wrong.
> Sabrent are meant to be ok though.



You're spot on there man.  I just put the 2TB Adata in last night.  The EX950 is a GHOST online.  There's next to nothing for support.  At least Adata has a product page that's easily found.



newtekie1 said:


> I'll use hardware as long as it is useful or until it dies, whichever comes first.  I just retired my last 60GB SSD, and by retired I mean it finally died.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I just did that, because in a few months when it's damn near full, I don't want to EVER chance feeling this kind of chart.


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## Vario (Nov 2, 2019)

ERazer said:


> thats nice to know, i dont have any xp with inland nvme and i was thinking grabbing one for my kiddo's rig.


Inland is a good drive for the money.  I paid $100 for it.
This is the performance I got on the Inland 1TB empty, I left 20% unformatted.




here it is today half full with steam games


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## GorbazTheDragon (Nov 2, 2019)

Nater said:


> I just did that, because in a few months when it's damn near full, I don't want to EVER chance feeling this kind of chart


Do wonder how many orders of magnitude even the full 660p is over a spinner...

Also one thing to note is the 660p 1TB has only 2 of the 4 channels populated


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## Hardcore Games (Nov 6, 2019)

I have been using the 660p 512GB model and it has done well and I have been happy with it. 

Larger capacity models tend to be more expensive than my tastes.

Next year the 665p are shipping and they should be less costly


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