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

Well I upgraded, or tried to, upgrade from a standard 512gb SSD to this and once I figured out that my brand new motherboard required you to disable some SATA ports, I got it to work. Tested the speeds and it was pretty impressive reading and acceptable writing. Yes there is a cost for lower priced SSDs and write speeds can supper under some heavy loads. The problem came up when I tried to transfer over 400gb of data from the old SSD to this one. It got about two thirds of the way and then stopped working. When I touched to SSD it almost burned my finger. The combination of heavy use and the small surface area of the unit makes this, and to be fair most all M.2 SSDs run hot... VERY hot which I have read can be normal. In my case the unit stopped working and I had to ship it back. Had I to do it over again I would add a small heat sink on it to help dissipate the heat. Yes it runs that hot. I did not take a temperature reading because it stopped working but if something gets so hot that it can burn your skin, well in my book, no matter the supposed design, it runs too hot. They sell cheap M.2 heat sinks on Amazon, just search for one. I highly recommend it for this and all M.2 SSDs if you have the room.

This is the cheapest brand new 2TB NVMe SSD you can buy now. Though the price per GB is really low, the performance penalty of QLC NAND flash really hurts when you run out of the SLC cache. Sometimes it may even dip below 100MB/s. This is a great warehouse for your massive Steam library but I do not recommend using it as your boot drive for Windows. Also the greater the total capacity, the greater amount of SLC cache it have, so I am only comfortable recommending the 2TB version.

Intel solid state drive comes without OEM box and mounting screw. This is no big deal. Works and performs as advertised.

I’m running 2 of these in a storage pool for a total of 2 Tbs. Are they the fastest drive on the market? No but they work well enough for the average person. Sustained writes tend to bog the controller down but if you’re coming from a normal sata ssd, you’ll be very pleased. My first solid state drive was an intel 160gb sata II back in 2008 and it’s still running. I have no reason to believe that these drives will outlive the system they are installed in.

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.

I use this as my OS bot disk, but only part of it. the rest is partitioned to work alongside my other drives as extra space. this this is fast and boot time is awesome. PC boots in 4-5 seconds. for the price per gig, this drive is a good deal, even though it changes from time to time, which pisses me off as at times it will increase out of nowhere, but I digress. since it is intel based, you can use it with the migrating software on the intel website to migrate your data and/or OS over to it. Gaming wise, If you are a modder, this drive is good for loading and deploying mods to games fast. the drive has one large tooth and one small tooth, so itll fit inside the slots with only one groove, NOT 2. make sure you check that out before buying for compatibility reasons.

So much faster than my SATA SSDs, and cheaper. My Dell XPS 8900 had a spare M.2 slot on the motherboard, so I initially installed there and performance was good. I then bought a $20 PCI card to mount the drive, and thats when the speed went crazy fast (1800 MB/s) compared to 450 MB/s for my Samsung EVO on SATA. Intel has good installation instructions on their website. You have to install Windows 10 from a jump drive before running the disk cloning program.

I installed this as a secondary SSD to my MSI GS65 Stealth 9SE. Aside from the process of tearing down the GS65 (MSIs fault), this was a quick and easy install. The drive was easily recognized by the BIOS and Windows 10. CrystalMark Benched this at 1.7GB Read and 1.7GB write which is pretty good for the price. Sure its no Samsung Evo 970 Pro, but you have to factor in that the Intel drive costs 3X less. This drive is totally worth it!

I ultimately bought this to be used as an extra drive for storing some applications and other files on. Gets the job done. If you are interested in buying this item, I would highly suggest researching the technology this device uses to see if it would suit your needs, or if you could go for a cheaper alternative that could last longer with more space but longer load times.

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