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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emn13 - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
It's interesting to note that both Crucial's M500 and intel's 730 have power-loss protection and a fairly high idle power. Does power-loss protection imply a high idle power?Kristian Vättö - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
The M500 supports low-power states (HIPM+DIPM) so in a mobile environment the power consumption is much lower: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/732hojnikb - Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - link
Is this related to devsleep or do older chipsets support that kind of low power consumption aswell ?Because in some reviews, m500 has quite high idle power consumption...
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - link
This isn't DevSleep, it lower the idle power consumption even more. This is just HIPM+DIPM (Host/Device Initiated Link Power Management), which is supported by older chipsets as well. However, note that only mobile chipsets support HIPM+DIPM, which is why the power consumption is significantly higher when tested in a desktop environment (like most reviewers do).amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
The power loss protection in crucial drives like the m500 is supposedly very incomplete, and not nearly as good as it is with the 730, or in enterprise drives, so its comparing apples and oranges. I would however say that SSD's which are going to be used in laptops are in much less need of power loss protection, but more in need of low power consumption, whereas SSD's that are intended for desktop use don't need low power consumption, and are in much higher need of power loss protection.CeceliaAFolger - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
hywoolfe9998 - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
This doesn't strike me as an especially impressive product given what is already out there. Frankly, it seems that SSD technology has settled to the point where the only thing that matters any more is price/capacity. Find me half TB SSD for $200 and I'll care.hojnikb - Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - link
U can get m500 480GB for ~250$ or less if u find a deal. Thats pretty cheap, if you ask me..RAYBOYD44 - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
til I looked at the receipt for $5432 , I accept that...my... cousin had been truley bringing home money part-time on there computar. . there aunts neighbour had bean doing this for only about 1 year and just paid for the mortgage on their home and purchased BMW M3 .Neo Zuko - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
I was a big fan of the Sata II Intel SSDs but for Sata III I switched to the Samsung 830 Pro and then the Samsung 840 Pro as my SSD of choice. Seems it's time change up again to the SanDisk Extreme II (which was mentioned to be the new favorite SSD) and or the Intel 730 here.However the Intel 730, for all it does well, does not seem to be completely optimized for the average home PC workload and the top performance is suffering. And you can't use it in a laptop. These seem to be big deal breakers to me. Given those limitations it seems the SanDisk Extreme II would still be Anandtech's favorite SSD. Did I get that right? And would the SanDisk Extreme II work well in a PS4 without trim? And as an aside, I would not mind a better paragraph as to why the SanDisk is a favorite. Is it the near Intel constancy combined with the fast performance - like a best of both worlds thing? Also when is SanDisk releasing that enterprise lite version of the Extreme II with power failure features?