Intel 330 Series SSD 180 GB

[W1zzard]

Intel's 330 Series SSD is available in a capacity of 180 GB, which could be the new sweet spot for users who need more than 120 GB of storage. Being based on the Sandforce SF-2281 controller, it offers good performance at a very competitive cost per Gigabyte.

Show full review

 

[LTUGamer]

I think Intel should found more serious partner than LSI

 

[WillRock]

I think Intel should found more serious partner than LSI

Did you read the review?

There's nothing wrong with SandForce at this time and date. Pretty much all it's quirkynesses have been fixed and gone months ago. More so, Intel's take on the SandForce has pretty much been problem-free. More so, if you look at the majority of the SSD's on the market, they're %90 based on the reference SandForce SF-2281 PCB and are the exact same thing except for the flash and the firmware used.

SandForce SF-2281 drives are excellent SSD's. And now that the prices have gone down with newer controllers and faster SSD's coming out (Neutron GTX, 840 Pro etc etc.) they offer great bang for the buck.

Also, Intel SSD's have always focused on reliability and not speed. Intel has never had the fastest SSD's on the market. Their drives have always been tad a bit, if not significantly slower than competition.

 

[LTUGamer]

Did you read the review?

There's nothing wrong with SandForce at this time and date. Pretty much all it's quirkynesses have been fixed and gone months ago. More so, Intel's take on the SandForce has pretty much been problem-free. More so, if you look at the majority of the SSD's on the market, they're %90 based on the reference SandForce SF-2281 PCB and are the exact same thing except for the flash and the firmware used.

SandForce SF-2281 drives are excellent SSD's. And now that the prices have gone down with newer controllers and faster SSD's coming out (Neutron GTX, 840 Pro etc etc.) they offer great bang for the buck.

Also, Intel SSD's have always been focused on reliability, and not speed. Intel has never had the fastest SSD's on the market. Their drives have always been tad a bit, if not significantly slower than competition.

Yes, this SSD looks nice but SandForce isn't good enouth to be competitive with Plextor, Samsung, Corsair or OCZ. Sandforce is enouth to random manufacturer but it isn't enouth to gain leading, I think Intel would to do it.

 

[THE_EGG]

Great review. It seems a typical Intel SSD performance - pretty good (but not great) but most likely very reliable.

I don't suppose in the future you could add 1 or 2 different HDD's to the testing to show how fast these SSD's are compared to HDD's? Thanks.

 

[v12dock]

Love the anandtech style review

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Running one of these drives in my laptop. pretty sweet. good review as always.

 

[kn00tcn]

for some reason when i go through the charts, all i can think of is 'the ocz vertex 4 looks consistently good'

 

[cedrac18]

for some reason when i go through the charts, all i can think of is 'the ocz vertex 4 looks consistently good'

LMAO i thought i was the only one. After reading the review i went to newegg to see what the owner's are saying about the drive. The Vertex 4 is really a serious performer and as an owner of a solid problem free Agility 2 it looks even better.

 

[DayKnight]

HAHA holy moly!. I decided to get this after looking at prices, reviews and what not from like past one month.

I will be getting one today. Nice to see a review popping up of a relatively old SSD, If I may say?.

Will read the review after getting one.

 

[pokazene_maslo]

Hi.
Ine small mistake in introduction page: "The SSD 330 series is Intel's newest line of mainstream consumer SSDs." I thought SSD 335 is the newest mainstream line.

Did anyone tried to flash intel 520's firmware on 330? They are architecturally almost the same, just 330 has 12 flash chips where 520 has 16. In review is mentioned that 330's firmware is a slowed down version of 520's firmware.

 

[DayKnight]

335 cant be mainstream because its only available in 240gB.

 

[TheHunter]

I bought one 2weeks ago, it was at "discount" price 130€ and i pulled the trigger

Its super fast even though im still at Sata2 atm


Intel is known for its great/bulletproof firmware support so I dont mind that sandforce controller.. Although from what i saw its still affected from a little slower speed once full or after trim.. Nothing shocking though.

 

[DayKnight]

335 cant be mainstream because its only available in 240gB.

Strike that!.

Report is in, that, Intel is releasing 60 and 180gB variants of 335 series with new 'appearance'.

 

[pokazene_maslo]

I have one big warning for all users that want to purchase Intel SSD.
The provided Intel Data Migration Software is a useless peace of crap. It doesn't allow you to select which partitions you want to migrate to the SSD, you can only select "source drive" (yes, entire drive). As a result I get only error message that the source drive is bigger than the target drive. The only thing you can do is to buy full version of that software from Acronis. :shadedshu

So if you are using HDD that is bigger than your new SSD (most HDDs are bigger than SSDs) you would not be able to use the provided software.

 

[twicksisted]

I recently built a PC for someone with one of these drives inside.
Got it for £99.99 which I thought was a great deal for an extra 60gb storage space that youd get on a 120gb drive.

I have a 120gb corsair GT drive and couldnt tell any discernable speed difference between them... windows installed, launches really quickly and the extra 60gb is a bonus specially at the price... Great drive!

also worth mentioning is that I did not have to do any troubleshooting or firmware updates to get this drive to run... whereas the Corsair 120gb GT drive was completely full of bugs and took months of troubleshooting and updating to get to run stable.

 

[N3M3515]

LMAO i thought i was the only one. After reading the review i went to newegg to see what the owner's are saying about the drive. The Vertex 4 is really a serious performer and as an owner of a solid problem free Agility 2 it looks even better.

I own one (256 GB 1.5 FW), it's a great drive, super fast.