Introduction
For as long as solid state drives have been a thing, Intel has been known for making some of the highest quality SSDs on the market. However, this usually came with a pretty hefty premium, like the 750 series when they first launched. Then, in August of 2016, they introduced their first budget friendly NVME M.2 SSD with the 600p. It was a great value, if you were willing to give up a little speed when compared to other NVME SSDs. The Intel 600p advertised sequential read and write speeds of around 1800 and 560 MB/s. Although this is much higher than the saturation point of a SATA 6 SSD (550 read and 520 write), it was still much slower that the average NVME SSD. However, it was also much cheaper than your average NVME M.2. At launch, I paid only $69.99 at launch for a 250 gb 600p.
Now, about two years later, Intel has done it again with the launch of their all new 660p NVME M.2. This is Intels latest offering of PCIE gen 3 X4 NVMe SSDs and the first consumer QLC, or Quad Level Cell drive to hit the market. They come in 512 GB, 1024 GB and 2048 GB variants and advertise speeds of up to 1800 on the read and 1800 on the write. The read speeds may be the same as the 660p, but the write speeds are estimated at over 1200 MB/s faster than the 600p. They have also priced the 660p below the launch price of the 600p. So, we have a faster, cheaper drive that its predecessor, potentially. We recently picked up a 660p to run it through our suite of benchmarks. Now let’s see how it did.
Specifications
Essentials
- Product Collection Intel® SSD 660p Series
- Code Name Products formerly Neptune Harbor
- Capacity 512 GB
- Status Launched
- Launch Date 03’18
- Lithography Type 3D2 QLC
- Recommended Customer Price $99.00
- Use ConditionsPC/Client/Tablet
Performance
- Sequential Read (up to) 1500 MB/s
- Sequential Write (up to) 1000 MB/s
- Random Read (8GB Span) (up to) 90000 IOPS
- Random Write (8GB Span) (up to) 220000 IOPS
- Power – Active 0.1 W
- Power – Idle 0.040W
Reliability
- Shock (Operating and Non-Operating) 1000 G
- Endurance Rating (Lifetime Writes) 100 TBW
- Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) >= 1.6 million hours
- Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER) <1 sector per 10^15 bits read
- Warranty Period 5 yrs
Supplemental Information
- Additional Information URL View now
Package Specifications
- Weight <10 grams
- Form Factor M.2 22 x 80mm
- Interface PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4