The Intel SSD 540s (480GB) Review
by Billy Tallis on June 23, 2016 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Intel SSD 540s is their first entry level consumer SSD in quite a while, and our first look at Silicon Motion's new SM2258 controller. It's a little surprising to see Intel being an early adopter of a third-party SSD controller after their SandForce-based drives spent so much time going through Intel's QA, but the SM2258 is not a radical departure from Silicon Motion's earlier controllers, which have a pretty good track record for reliability.
Intel's use of the same 16nm SK Hynix TLC NAND as in the ADATA Premier SP550 allowed us to make a direct comparison of the SM2258 controller against the preceding SM2256, and the Crucial BX200 provides another point of comparison with Micron's 16nm TLC instead. The 540s is much better than the BX200 in every way, but that's not saying much. Against the SP550, the Intel 540s was not able to score a clear win. On most synthetic benchmarks the 540s improved performance over the SM2256 drives, mitigating their most glaring weaknesses and occasionally rising above the field of budget TLC drives in general. These improvements did not translate into a significant advantage over the SP550 on our real-world AnandTech Storage Bench tests. The ADATA SP550 is still faster overall for realistic workloads with bursts of I/O, even though it is slower under the sustained load of synthetic benchmarks.
The wide disparity in performance between the Crucial BX200 and ADATA SP550 showed just how much firmware tuning can affect drive performance. I think it's likely that later this year we'll see a more refined SM2258 drive, perhaps even on planar TLC before 3D NAND is cheap enough.
| Budget SSD Retail Price Comparison | ||||
| Capacity | 120-128GB | 240-256GB | 480-512GB | 960-1024GB |
| Intel SSD 540s 2.5" | $51.95 (43¢/GB) | $93.91 (39¢/GB) | $149.99 (31¢/GB) | $304.96 (30¢/GB) |
| Intel SSD 540s M.2 | $49.95 (42¢/GB) | $91.77 (38¢/GB) | $155.65 (32¢/GB) | $305.29 (31¢/GB) |
| ADATA SP550 | $37.88 (32¢/GB) | $57.99 (24¢/GB) | $107.99 (22¢/GB) | $205.99 (21¢/GB) |
| OCZ TR150 | $37.99 (32¢/GB) | $59.99 (25¢/GB) | $99.95 (21¢/GB) | $199.99 (21¢/GB) |
| SanDisk X400 | $49.59 (39¢/GB) | $80.19 (31¢/GB) | $126.23 (25¢/GB) | $237.99 (23¢/GB) |
Against the wider field of competitors, the Intel 540s is clearly an entry-level SSD, intended for light workloads. It cannot keep pace with SanDisk's X400 or even the current generation of Phison S10-based drives like the Toshiba OCZ TR150 (formerly Trion 150). The ADATA SP550 has held on to a place in the market by usually being one of the cheapest drives available, but at the moment it is mostly tied with the TR150 on price, making the latter a better purchase given its better performance.
The current retail pricing of the Intel SSD 540s makes my recommendation quite simple: don't buy. The 180GB and 360GB models are only a few dollars cheaper than the next size up, and the four standard sized models are priced above many MLC drives. The OCZ TR150 provides better performance for a far lower price. The SanDisk X400 provides much better performance, the same 5-year warranty period of the 540s, and M.2 models for a significantly lower price. ADATA has also recently announced M.2 versions of the SP550, which will probably be only a little more expensive than the 2.5" drives, providing a very welcome cheap M.2 option.
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Drasca - Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - link
There is a matter of scale. What is efficient for the small scale is not efficient for the large scale deployment.> even though it would probably save them a lot of dough
It wouldn't, it'd create the opposite effect costing them far more in the long run. You're thinking from the personal perspective where maintenence, reliability and security isn't an issue and non critical.
En mass, it costs them far more to have downtime, maintaining and replacing gear, than it does the initial purchase-- security notwithstanding either. They have to pay people time and money to keep the equipment up, whose price just snowballs as downtime accrues. The initial equipment cost is extremely fractional compared to the human resource cost of dealing with the equipment afterward, keeping track of it, security, physically replacing as it goes down, etc.
Buying from bulk also guarantees Hp/dell/lenovo has standardized problems and they replace the gear as it breaks wholesale. The equipment is closer to leased than purchased, with basically extended warranty guarantees. Consumer equipment does not have these protections and guarantees.
It costs far far far more in human resources spending time and money upkeeping a lot of gear that breaks, and all things will eventually break with this many pieces of equipment, taking up space that costs even more money, and causing a clusterfuck when you don't have government contracts.
The consumer level does not work at the government level and vice versa.
>entirely new workstation for that user.
They actually get entirely new workstations, for the most part. . . and old ones are worked to hell until budgets come in and approved for for upgrades across the board.
woggs - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
Intel doesn't ship unreliable drives (and will fix an issue if it slips out). That's the one thing you get from intel and is why they can get the big OEM orders. Other than that, I agree with "meh."trparky - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
For Christ's sake, why are we still using Planar NAND? Haven't we learned already that Flash memory at anything smaller than 19nm is just too unreliable? For God's sake! Everyone should be moving to 3D NAND already!trparky - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
Unless it's using 3D NAND, I won't buy it.ClockHound - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
3D? If it's not 4D, I'm not putting precious historically disposable data on it.chrcoluk - Sunday, July 17, 2016 - link
looks like its planar I am guessing by the small manufacturing size, one of the reasons ofr 3d nand is to use larger manufacturing process which has more reliable flash.16nm TLC is too scary for me.
euskalzabe - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
Agreed. I was on the verge of buying a 512GB X400 but I think I'll wait until the fall, see what 3d NAND comes out...maxxbot - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
Who is this marketed for exactly? The X400 is faster AND cheaper, the 850 EVO is around the same price and much, much faster. It looks like you didn't even read the review.maxxbot - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
As for the reputable company comment, there's already a very reputable company out there that produces drives with much better price/performance: Samsung. Every corporate laptop I have had has had a Samsung SSD, why would they choose lower performance and higher price to go with this drive?alpha754293 - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link
Sadly though, my Intel 520 series SSDs performed better in random I/O (swapping) than this *NEW* Intel 540 series drive.The ONLY thing that has changed is cost. (I can buy a 1 TB 540 series drive at Microcenter for $250, and therefore; the $/GB has come down a LOT since the 520 series days), but for a 5-series drive, it certainly doesn't have the performance to match.
This was the same problem that I had with the 535 Series as well.
Whyyy would you release a NEW product that's actually inferior in measurable performance?
You would think that when you're buying a NEW drive, that you're getting the best that the company has to offer at this level. (Yes, I also have a 750 series PCIe x4 SSD as well, in case you were wondering (or not).)