Wednesday, June 28th 2017
Intel Intros SSD 545s Mainstream SATA SSD
Intel today announced the SSD 545s line of mainstream SATA solid-state drives. Built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gbps interface, the drives combine new 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory by IMFlash Technology, with a Silicon Motion SMI SM2259 controller, and a custom firmware by Intel. For now, the drive is only available in one capacity, 512 GB. It offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 550 MB/s, with up to 500 MB/s sequential writes; 4K random read performance of up to 75,000 IOPS, 4K random write performance of up to 85,000 IOPS, and endurance of at least 144 TBW. Besides common SSD features such as NCQ and TRIM, the drive offers native 256-bit AES encryption. Available now, and backed by a 3-year warranty, the SSD 545s 512 GB is priced at USD $179.99.
10 Comments on Intel Intros SSD 545s Mainstream SATA SSD
I care not for performance of Sata versions, if that's important get an M.2/PCIe drive.
I bought an 8TB HDD the other day, performance is fantastic, runs cool and quiet. SSD's should be aiming to hit at least 4TB now at reasonable prices, Samsung are the only ones but take the mick with their pricing, the cost of a high end PC.
Soo all in all, it's actually a rather nice drive. Which is about time, since all but the top end Intel drives were rather underwhelming. Especially considering the premium “Intel” prices, you were expected to pay for them.
I’d wait a bit more before buying one though. It’s fresh from the assembly, which means there are currently no specials on it. Seeing as there are plenty of drives with a similar performance/warranty out there, it comes down to the price.
And this year we have a boom of 3D vNAND in one form, or the other from almost every major flash memory manufacturer.
So, both problems - price and capacity - won't be a problem. Heck, my Sandisk X400 at the time of purchase was ~27c/GB, while my slightly older Extreme II was near the 80c/GB mark just two years before that.
I'm keeping an eye on 1TB for the future upgrade.
Although, I would love to have an M.2 NVME SSD but sadly my motherboard (z77 chipset) doesn't support booting from an NVME SSD. Do I really need that kind of SSD? Eh... not really.