Intel SSD 730 (480GB) Review: Bringing Enterprise to the Consumers
by Kristian Vättö on February 27, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 730
Final Words
It's great to see that Intel has not forgotten the enthusiast market. While the SSD 520 and SSD 530 weren't bad SSDs, they didn't exactly fill the shoes of X-25M—they were just another batch of SandForce drives, with more generally better validation. With the SSD 730 Intel finally provides a solution that's capable of filling the shoes that have been left empty for more than two years. However, the SSD 730 doesn't provide anything substantial in the terms of performance like the X-25M did.
The performance consistency of the SSD 730 is brilliant but nothing we've not seen from other OEMs before, and the consistency comes at the cost of peak performance. Even though consistency is an important metric regardless of the workload, I would say peak performance is still the dominant factor in most cases as client IO tends to happen in bursts, whereas in enterprises it's more of a constant flow of IO requests.
On top of that, the SSD 730 lacks some features that other high-end drives have. There is no TCG Opal 2.0 or eDrive support to enable proper hardware encryption, which is something that's slowly becoming a norm. Many companies and governments require encryption in all drives they use and that's a market the SSD 730 misses, although that was never its target market. Another weakness is the high power consumption, although neither that or the lack of encryption support plays a big role in the desktop market.
However, given that laptops and other portables cover most of the market nowadays, I feel it's not the best choice to completely rule that market out. Much like the Skulltrail platform whose logo adorns the SSD 730, this targets a very specific enthusiast niche, and the prices not surprisingly are going to be higher than "typical" consumer SSDs.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (2/25/2014) | ||||
| 240/256GB | 480/512GB | |||
| Intel SSD 730 (MSRPs) | $249 | $489 | ||
| Intel SSD DC S3500 | $300 | $605 | ||
| Intel SSD 530 | $180 | $399 | ||
| Intel SSD 335 | $200 | N/A | ||
| OCZ Vector 150 | $210 | $445 | ||
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $190 | $360 | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $190 | $300 | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $215 | $410 | ||
| Crucial M500 | $136 | $275 | ||
| SanDisk Extreme II | $233 | $450 | ||
| Seagate SSD 600 | $130 | $380 | ||
MSRPs are fairly high but as usual should be taken with a grain of salt. We are definitely dealing with premium pricing (though nothing close to the enterprise prices) but the SSD 730 is still rather competitive with the other high-end drives. Intel likely views the OCZ Vector 150 and SanDisk Extreme II as direct competitors and is hence pricing the SSD 730 accordingly.
All in all, the SSD 730 is a competitive option for users who seek maximum performance consistency but don't care about power consumption or encryption support. You'll have to sacrifice peak performance and the lack of an M.2 PCIe option may further limit the appeal in the long run. Given Intel's track record and the best-in-class endurance, the SSD 730 is best for the no-compromise enthusiasts and professionals who really need a reliable and consistent drive.
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Neo Zuko - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
Or more exactly, why is the SanDisk Extreme II better than the Samsung 840 Pro for Anandtech?coder111 - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
Regarding hardware encryption- don't use it. Seriously, these days, can you really trust anything but open-source encryption not to have backdoors for NSA, FBI, GCHQ or any other intelligence, police or RIAA/MPAA agencies out there?I do understand hardware encryption is faster, easier, more transparent. But there is no way to prove it's correct. And if it can be bypassed by government, it's useless.
psyq321 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
How can you trust anything that you didn't write from the zero (including compiler >and< hardware)? Who is to attest that your compiler or compiler used to compile your favorite distro/software is not injecting backdoors? Who is to attest that your hardware does not have a firmware-level exploit that can be used to log keys?Can you trust software with millions of lines of code that you did not write?
Nope, you can't. Even open source software has a history of lingering vulnerabilities that stuck for >ages< (Debian pseudo "random" number generator, for example).
If you think your communication is going to be targeted by any government, the best idea is to be as paranoid as it gets and use multiple measures perhaps including >both< hw. level and software encryption.
If you are, like majority of businesses, mostly concerned whether your disk might fall into wrong (criminal) hands, then disk-level hardware encryption would probably be not worse than software encryption.
amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
It could be helpful to avoid the wrong information getting into the hands of a competitor or something like thatHrel - Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - link
Those Seagate drives are looking better every day. I just saw a 240GB one on Newegg for $120!!!!preamp - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
Ouch! "(...) the chassis also gets very hot and uncomfortable to touch under load" should translate something like 50°C on the outside of the SSD, which means that the electrolytics will constantly be cooked.Granted, the Chemi-Con KZH are rather good ones (although not the most reliable out there) with a rating of 5000 hours at 105°C, but I've had rather bad experiences with any electrolytics running hot in unvented cases for extended periods of time.
According to the Illinois Lifetime Calculator those caps should last for more than 20 years at 60°C and 12V, but personally I have my doubts that the power loss "protection" is still working up to spec while approaching end of warranty...
crazzeto - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
Funny, I actually just bought a Crucial M500 (240GB) for my ~6yr old HP DV6500 Media Laptop. I guess I was a little surprised to see generally this isn't even the fastest ssd lol. It's been a number of years since I've been a serious home builder, so I'm not fully in touch.Anyway I'm blown away by what a difference it makes even in this ancient machine running Vista 64B with just 2GB ram.
binarycrusader - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
NewEgg as of today (for the next 24 hours or so?) is running a special on this drive, $379.99 for the 480GB model, which makes it a lot more appealing.KAlmquist - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
And today the price is $110 for the 240GB drive and $200 for the 480GB drive. The latter price is actually ten dollars less than the 512GB Crucial MX100. So Intel seems to be serious about selling these drives in quantity.amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Yes, and similar sale prices in Canada as well. They still show the original MSRP in sales to try to make it seem like a better deal, but the actual MSRP seems to have come down significantly as well.As far as I know, the 730 is the only drive with full power loss protection in the consumer segment, which, along with Intel's awesome drive monitoring functionality, makes this the most attractive SSD in my mind. It makes me wonder... what's the catch? I really don't care about the lower speed (especially on the 240gb model).