Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D2, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW010T8X1

The Intel 660p offers 2 TB at one of the lowest prices for PCIe-based SSDs. Its usually fast, but it can be very slow at times. Thats because its QLC, which is the slowest type of SSD memory. Reads from QLC are fast, but writes are about as slow as an average hard disk. The 660p is usually faster because it has a dynamically sized SLC cache--it treats roughly half of the unused space on the drive as an SLC cache (i.e. disabling the other 3 bits in each cell). Most of the time, its about as fast as a typical SLC or MLC NVMe PCIe drive. If youre writing a large amount of data, or if your 660p is mostly full, it may feel like a hard disk drive.

Silent, Quick, easy to install, runs cool. So far so good. I meant to purchase the Intel 665P but the sale limit of 2 per customer meant I had to go elsewhere and elsewhere did not have the sale. After reading the reviews I am glad I went with Intel, and would do it again. My build included 2 660P and 2 665P (all 2 TB each) - I cannot tell the difference operationally.

Updated: So I went ahead and bought a pci-e adapter (once I realized I could do that) and put this drive in that instead of my z97 board (which you can see in 1st benchmark limits it to about 800mb/sec). Now it reads at up to 1.6GB/sec and writes up to 1.9GB/sec. Well worth the $16 adapter for that speed. Windows 10 immediately recognized it as the same drive with no drivers or any hassle. adapter I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N78XZCH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Original: This 2TB drive hits a nice middle ground of speed, size and price per GB (paid 204). I installed it on an older (i7 4790K) system with a Z97 chipset. The MSi (motherboard) website didnt list this m2 drive but it works great despite that. Installation was simple, inserted/screwed it into place, turned on PC and just had to initialize it in the windows disk manager. Thankfully, my main board already had a (tiny!) screw in the m2 slot. Nothing comes with the drive. This drive is limited by my pci-e bandwidth but is still pretty quick. The average write is over 700mb/sec and the average read is around 800mb/sec. Thats quite a bit faster than all my 2.5 SSDs (which reach about 500-530mb/sec) These m2 drives can get hot so I added a $6 m2 heatsink before installing. I removed the Intel sticker from the top and re-stuck it to the back of the drive for better thermal contact. That sticker peels right off once you get it started. Heatsink: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078X8WCY2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When you dont know there are two different interfaces, you assume all SSD drives plug in the same way. The PCI drives use a different interface than SATA. Once you know that, they are clearly marked. Before you know that, it is easy to miss. I bought this one based on the reviews, that it was not quite as good as more expensive drives, but well worth the money for what it does. Now I also know I needed a SATA drive, not a PCI drive.

This isnt the fastest nor does it have the most write cycles, but i was using a HDD to start with. So for me the speed increase was still pretty great, and for my average use, this will still last longer than i will probably need it to before I eventually upgrade again anyhow. If you are looking to get more space for less $ then this is where it is at, but if you arenplanning on pushing it to its limits with tons of writing and rewriting, then you might want to look elsewhere. Again, this is not the fastest or longest lasting, but it is definitely faster than my old HDD and will last long enough for me to get into upgrade territory and maybe a little beyond that. *Depending on your usage your milage may vary.

Installed easily, you do have to go in and reformat it for your computer to recognize it. It is fast, I bought it primarily to hold only my games, sure, there are faster ones out there but I promise you will not get a faster frame rate with a faster SSD. This one has more then enough speed for gaming and its the best deal right now for a 2TB SSD. I will be purchasing another one or maybe two 2tb on black Friday. If you do decide to get ANY SSD be sure to leave 25% of the drive free, at the least or you will big it down dramatically. So if you have a 2tb drive, only use 1.5tb of space, at the most. Other then that, this is a great drive, I will purchase a couple more in the future as they get cheaper.

I wanna start by saying that I did not buy this as a drive for my operating system. Mostly all of my storage is solid state with the exception of a single 2TB hard disk that I was using as an overflow for games. It wasnt able to load large games quickly at all and took forever. So I upgraded to this solid state drive and it’s been worlds better. This solid state drive is not anywhere near as fast as others, especially Samsung nvme drives as well as the new PCIe gen4 ones but when it comes to game load times you won’t notice any difference between this and those but this is still faster and a SATA based SSD. My only complaint is that for the slower speed this thing runs crazy hot. Overall the price you pay for the 2TB version is a great deal and I would definitely buy another one for one of my other systems when I need more storage on one of them.

So I had this SSD for about 2 months now, and I can tell you this... Once you switch from an HDD to an SSD, theres no turning back. This SSD isnt the fastest or most reliable, but if youre looking for something to replace a laptop HDD or just want fast cheap storage, this is the best bang for the buck (unless you wait for the 2TB one to drop in price). This suited my needs of just replacing the HDD in my laptop and making it feel tons faster. The difference is insane, as I just wait 5-10 seconds for my PC to boot, rather than the 5-10 minutes it used to take to have Steam, Discord and the other applications ready to be used. For gaming, its great. Games are notably faster in load times, such as Final Fantasy taking less time to load worlds and such. I use to have issues where my HDD would be capped out in how fast it can work, now the SSD barely gets to 30% usage when installing games. However, I do have to say to not install this on any PC, because it depends on your CPU to make the most of it. Since I have a laptop i5, its not the smartest choice as my CPU at times cant keep up with the speeds. Other than that, its a solid SSD.

Installed two of these in my Synology 420+ NAS and working flawlessy.

I have a couple of small reservations about this SSD but they have turned out to be pretty insignificant in my use case. The main concern I had with this drive was that it was using QLC flash, which is pretty poor when it comes to write endurance. 200TB TBW for a 1TB drive is really low, but then I had to consider if I would ever reach that limit. Ive been using a Crucial MX300 for the past two years with a very similar endurance rating (220TB) and Ive only used 2% of that in those two years. Unless you have a really write intensive work load (like writing 100+GB every day for five years), then I highly doubt youll ever come close to hitting that limit. Once I realized that my fears of QLC were kind of irrational, I came to the realization that this drive is fantastic for what you pay. Any other 1TB NVMe drive is going to go for anywhere for 2-4x the price, while not providing a lot else in terms of features, speed, or capacity. The only thing you may get by paying more is a higher write endurance (from using TLC or even MLC flash) which I didnt find necessary, and slightly higher read and write speeds (which I also didnt think was important given how fast this drive already is). Overall Id highly recommend this drive to anyone who has a normal workload and wants to experience a significant bump in speed (and probably capacity) without spending a ton.