Intel 530 SSD Series

Dutch tech article:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/90410/intel-introduceert-high-end-ssd-530-series.html

Intel website:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-530-series.html

Seems they've managed to lower the power consumption by a decent margin and the performance of the mSata drives is interesting. I have a mSata slot in my laptop, but wasn't impressed by the performance of current drives. However, these new 530s seem to have raised the bar. Curious to see at what price point they are introduced at.

The only 'negative' thing I can see is that they are still using the SandForce controllers, which I believe have generated a lot of bad rep in the past. Still, Intels QC seems to be above most other companies so shouldn't be much of an issue.

TLDR:
-Going from 25nm to 20nm
-80, 120, 180 and 360GB models
(240GB and 480GB added to the 2.5" format)

-mSata, ngff-, M.2 and 2.5" form factors
(sata-, pci-e 2x- and pci-e 4x)

-Idle Power Consumption msata-ssd from 275mW to 55mW (compared to the 525)
-Active PC 350mW to 140mW
-DevSleep mode PC to 200µW
-Seq. Read/Seq. Write: 540MB / 490MB
-Random 4k Read/Write: 41.000 IOPS / 80.000 IOPS

Thanks!

Nice to see them getting their writes up, but IOPS isnt there yet.

Power consumption is nice to see go down, but its negligible in the first place so... MEH on that personally.

I wouldnt worry about the SF controller.

Gabber359 said:

Dutch tech article:

The only 'negative' thing I can see is that they are still using the SandForce controllers, which I believe have generated a lot of bad rep in the past. Still, Intels QC seems to be above most other companies so shouldn't be much of an issue.

Click to expand...

Just like EarthDog rightly says, I also would not worry about sandforce controllers. Infact, I am feeling better that Intel is continuing to trust sandforce controller in their latest product which can be a eye opener for people who still dont trust sandforce! Excited to get a hold o this.

Intel was still using Sandforce controllers even when there was a massive DOA issue with them (back when the Vertex 3 was new, it's been fixed since).

The reason they weren't affected by it is because they wrote (and presumably still write) their own firmware for the drive.