Intel 660p M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVME SSD - $84.99 w/ code NEFPCA96

It's in the same ballpark as the other best priced 1TB nvme drives.

I wouldn't run databases or a bunch of VMs off it in production. But some more space for a Steam drive like most of this forum is looking for?? Hell yes.
 
It's in the same ballpark as the other best priced 1TB nvme drives.

I wouldn't run databases or a bunch of VMs off it in production. But some more space for a Steam drive like most of this forum is looking for?? Hell yes.

Even as a boot/only drive in most people's systems it's totally fine. People freak out way too much about the lower total write life of these drives. I've had my 500GB 840 Evo since Feb 2014, it has served as my only internal drive (with a 2TB external for backup purposes) this entire time and I've only written 50TB on it. At that rate it, would take me over 24 years to reach the TBW of this drive.
 
Even as a boot/only drive in most people's systems it's totally fine. People freak out way too much about the lower total write life of these drives. I've had my 500GB 840 Evo since Feb 2014, it has served as my only internal drive (with a 2TB external for backup purposes) this entire time and I've only written 50TB on it. At that rate it, would take me over 24 years to reach the TBW of this drive.

I've had a Sandforce 3 OCZ drive for 7 or so years, still running strong.
 
Even as a boot/only drive in most people's systems it's totally fine. People freak out way too much about the lower total write life of these drives. I've had my 500GB 840 Evo since Feb 2014, it has served as my only internal drive (with a 2TB external for backup purposes) this entire time and I've only written 50TB on it. At that rate it, would take me over 24 years to reach the TBW of this drive.

Yep, I have a 240gb 840 Pro that is still my OS drive and I'd have to check my writes but it's going to be replaced well before I come close to the TBW. Also have a 1tb 850 Evo used solely as a games drive and it will be the same story.
 
It's in the same ballpark as the other best priced 1TB nvme drives.

I wouldn't run databases or a bunch of VMs off it in production. But some more space for a Steam drive like most of this forum is looking for?? Hell yes.

What about for large Photoshop .PSD files? Any notable difference for loading and saving with those types of workloads? Referring to 5-7GB files. Thinking it has more to do with my old version of PS, but I have some larger files now and loading takes forever. Looking to get another SSD for large files that I edit.
 
Anyone know of a good NVME in the 50$ range? 500gb preferebly. I missed out on the newegg special they had for the 512gb version.
 
Sure, that's just Micro Center's amazon store front.
Edit: You may want to read up on that drive's deal thread, one think to note is it does NOT support 512e. If you're doing a fresh install of windows or just using it as a game drive it's a non issue, but if you think you're going to clone your current drive it may be problematic - https://hardforum.com/threads/hot-inland-1tb-nvme-premium-107-99-microcenter.1978390/
I was able to clone my server's os with macrium reflect making an image to another drive, and restoring that image & doing a repair with the macrium boot disk. Here's my comment about it https://hardforum.com/threads/hot-i...9-microcenter.1978390/page-25#post-1044223605
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Maybe not as fast as the Evo pro or MicroCenter drives but in real world use it's very unlikely you would ever notice. I got this a month or so back for $95 and put it in a new i5 NUC, no complaints, excellent performance.
 
This will be a fresh install for windows 10 pro. That will server as a plex server.
 
I've had a Sandforce 3 OCZ drive for 7 or so years, still running strong.

Yeah I used a 64gb vertex 4 for years as a cache drive for Intel srt for years until the HDD finally failed. According to the smart data the drive is still like new.
 
Sure, that's just Micro Center's amazon store front.
Edit: You may want to read up on that drive's deal thread, one think to note is it does NOT support 512e. If you're doing a fresh install of windows or just using it as a game drive it's a non issue, but if you think you're going to clone your current drive it may be problematic - https://hardforum.com/threads/hot-inland-1tb-nvme-premium-107-99-microcenter.1978390/
I was able to clone my server's os with macrium reflect making an image to another drive, and restoring that image & doing a repair with the macrium boot disk. Here's my comment about it https://hardforum.com/threads/hot-i...9-microcenter.1978390/page-25#post-1044223605

I cloned my 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVME boot drive to the 1TB Inland NVME and it worked fine. I just uninstalled the Samsung driver beforehand. I did the same thing on another system just 250Gb Samsung to 500GB Inland with no issues.
 
Even as a boot/only drive in most people's systems it's totally fine. People freak out way too much about the lower total write life of these drives. I've had my 500GB 840 Evo since Feb 2014, it has served as my only internal drive (with a 2TB external for backup purposes) this entire time and I've only written 50TB on it. At that rate it, would take me over 24 years to reach the TBW of this drive.

I've had a Sandforce 3 OCZ drive for 7 or so years, still running strong.

Yep, I have a 240gb 840 Pro that is still my OS drive and I'd have to check my writes but it's going to be replaced well before I come close to the TBW. Also have a 1tb 850 Evo used solely as a games drive and it will be the same story.

Put your Plex transcoding folder on it and see how quickly it wears out. Killed a Crucial M4 that way and have just left it in the system because it's on the back side of the motherboard and would be complete pita to pull out.

upload_2019-8-8_18-53-2.png
 
I cloned my 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVME boot drive to the 1TB Inland NVME and it worked fine. I just uninstalled the Samsung driver beforehand. I did the same thing on another system just 250Gb Samsung to 500GB Inland with no issues.
Yeah cloning from a newer drive, especially an nvme, wouldn't likely be a problem. In my case I was goign with an old ssd to nvme, and in my particular case it was because that ssd was MBR while the new drive had to be GPT. Was just trying to give a heads up to those who would try cloning an old drive like I did, and ran into issues.
 
I got a follow-up question for anyone who knows the answer, I'm rocking a ASUS Sabertooth x79 and I'm sorta confused which m.2 nvme adapter will be satisfactory. Will I notice any difference if I use the pci-e 2.0 x4 slot vs the pci-e 3.0 x16? Also, since I'm planning on using a second GPU in the 4th slot (too big to fit on the 6th slot) will using the 6th slot for the nvme effect the bandwith as well since it's in x8 mode? FYI, I'll be using this also as the boot drive as well after modding the bios.

Sabertooth x79 diagram

Also, what adapter would you guys recommend that's not to inexpensive, I'm on a tight budget here.
 
Last edited:
Put your Plex transcoding folder on it and see how quickly it wears out. Killed a Crucial M4 that way and have just left it in the system because it's on the back side of the motherboard and would be complete pita to pull out.

View attachment 179509

Well I don't have a plex server, but as I and many others in these threads have mentioned before it is not recommended to use the 660p for programs that are very disk intensive.
 
I got a follow-up question for anyone who knows the answer, I'm rocking a ASUS Sabertooth x79 and I'm sorta confused which m.2 nvme adapter will be satisfactory. Will I notice any difference if I use the pci-e 2.0 x4 slot vs the pci-e 3.0 x16? Also, since I'm planning on using a second GPU in the 4th slot (too big to fit on the 6th slot) will using the 6th slot for the nvme effect the bandwith as well since it's in x8 mode? FYI, I'll be using this also as the boot drive as well after modding the bios.

Sabertooth x79 diagram

Also, what adapter would you guys recommend that's not to inexpensive, I'm on a tight budget here.
Odds are you won't notice a difference at all. I saw no gains in windows or game loads going from a samsung 850 evo ssd to my 970 evo nvme. If you're transferring large amount of data regularly, the extra speed for reads and writes may be noticed, but for what sounds like a gaming pc, I say don't bother.
 
Put your Plex transcoding folder on it and see how quickly it wears out. Killed a Crucial M4 that way and have just left it in the system because it's on the back side of the motherboard and would be complete pita to pull out.

View attachment 179509

What part of "most people's systems" did you misunderstand? I wouldn't call your usage average or what most people would use these drives for. If you're doing a lot of PLEX transcoding or other drive intensive work on a cheap consumer SSD then you deserve what you get. If I had a PLEX server with a lot of stuff on it I'd either run good 7200RPM HDDs or Samsung Pro SSDs on it. I would never use a cheap consumer drive for something like that.
 
Because it is pretty cheap storage so it makes it great for anything you just want to store like a Steam drive.

I havent gamed a AAA title in some time so correct me if I'm mistaken..

Steam drive means you're moving around GBs of games every once in a while. Reads should be fine but when installing a game QLC will suffer a big slowdown once the buffer runs out.

Wouldn't it be way better to spend $10 more and get a E12 TLC drive ? Or is this not a something you've noticed using it as a game drive?
 
I got a follow-up question for anyone who knows the answer, I'm rocking a ASUS Sabertooth x79 and I'm sorta confused which m.2 nvme adapter will be satisfactory. Will I notice any difference if I use the pci-e 2.0 x4 slot vs the pci-e 3.0 x16? Also, since I'm planning on using a second GPU in the 4th slot (too big to fit on the 6th slot) will using the 6th slot for the nvme effect the bandwith as well since it's in x8 mode? FYI, I'll be using this also as the boot drive as well after modding the bios.

Sabertooth x79 diagram

Also, what adapter would you guys recommend that's not to inexpensive, I'm on a tight budget here.
I upgraded recently from an H77 (board to something modern) and I used a PCIE adapter with this drive. I didn’t notice any difference in speed but benchmarks said the native M.2 slot was 15%-25% faster. I do not have the adapter I used but it was under $30. Also, I doubt you will be able to boot off the NVME drive. The bios of my Asus board could not see it, only once inside Windows could you see the drive.
 
I havent gamed a AAA title in some time so correct me if I'm mistaken..

Steam drive means you're moving around GBs of games every once in a while. Reads should be fine but when installing a game QLC will suffer a big slowdown once the buffer runs out.

Wouldn't it be way better to spend $10 more and get a E12 TLC drive ? Or is this not a something you've noticed using it as a game drive?

I should have clarify, installing your games to that one drive leaving your main drive free. While 660P does suffer when SLC cache is full as the QLC get fill up to the max, but most users won't notice it especially if you write it once and forget about it as you use it as a read drive.

Not saying you are wrong that money can be spent to obtain an E12 to get better performance, but the vast majority of users do not perform write intensive workload on a daily basis so the 660p is fine for everyday use or using it as storage.
 
I havent gamed a AAA title in some time so correct me if I'm mistaken..

Steam drive means you're moving around GBs of games every once in a while. Reads should be fine but when installing a game QLC will suffer a big slowdown once the buffer runs out.

Wouldn't it be way better to spend $10 more and get a E12 TLC drive ? Or is this not a something you've noticed using it as a game drive?

Not very many games are going to exhaust the 1TB's 140GB (when near full) SLC cache, not to mention the 280GB cache on the 2TB. Even when the 660p is around half full you're looking at 50 and 100GB of SLC cache respectively.

If we're talking 1TB drives, that E12 Inland drive seems like a damn good deal when its near the $100-$110 mark. There's a TLC drive from Sabrent around that price too that would be a good pick (not sure on the controller off hand). With the 660p at $95 it might be worth going for Inland or Sabrent if you don't want to "worry" about the SLC cache. When the 1TB is under $90 I'd say that would be the better buy. In the 2TB space I don't think anything comes close to the 660p.
 
What part of "most people's systems" did you misunderstand? I wouldn't call your usage average or what most people would use these drives for. If you're doing a lot of PLEX transcoding or other drive intensive work on a cheap consumer SSD then you deserve what you get. If I had a PLEX server with a lot of stuff on it I'd either run good 7200RPM HDDs or Samsung Pro SSDs on it. I would never use a cheap consumer drive for something like that.

The Crucial M4 was a cheap consumer SSD? Samsung didn't even have a Pro line at the time and the 830 that I bought after the M4 when it was released would have suffered the same fate. The back end at the time was a 6 2TB disk raid 5 array for the media and the M4 was a boot/application drive. The point was, you can easily SSDs depending on how they're being used, this was used as a boot drive with a single application running on it, it provided great performance and when it hit its write limit, I replaced it.
 
The Crucial M4 was a cheap consumer SSD? Samsung didn't even have a Pro line at the time and the 830 that I bought after the M4 when it was released would have suffered the same fate. The back end at the time was a 6 2TB disk raid 5 array for the media and the M4 was a boot/application drive. The point was, you can easily SSDs depending on how they're being used, this was used as a boot drive with a single application running on it, it provided great performance and when it hit its write limit, I replaced it.

You were responding to my post talking about how the 660p, a cheap consumer SSD, would be fine for most people by using an example that does not apply to my "most people" statement. This is why I made the "cheap consumer" comment because it would be stupid to buy something like the 660p for your example and anyone doing so would deserve what they would get. I am well aware that certain situations can burn through SSDs TBW much quicker than others, but you're not going to find most users engaging in those situations.
 
I upgraded recently from an H77 (board to something modern) and I used a PCIE adapter with this drive. I didn’t notice any difference in speed but benchmarks said the native M.2 slot was 15%-25% faster. I do not have the adapter I used but it was under $30. Also, I doubt you will be able to boot off the NVME drive. The bios of my Asus board could not see it, only once inside Windows could you see the drive.

someone successfully created a custom modded bios for the Sabertooth which allows the uefi to recognize m.2 ssd's
 
You were responding to my post talking about how the 660p, a cheap consumer SSD, would be fine for most people by using an example that does not apply to my "most people" statement. This is why I made the "cheap consumer" comment because it would be stupid to buy something like the 660p for your example and anyone doing so would deserve what they would get. I am well aware that certain situations can burn through SSDs TBW much quicker than others, but you're not going to find most users engaging in those situations.

I was responding to your post about it being a boot or single drive in most people's systems. I was giving an example of usage that can kill these types of drives, if someone was using this as a boot/app drive. Plex is pretty common these days and if you're transcoding it's something to watch out for. Everyone posts that you'll never kill one of these drives, no normal person writes that much data, etc. and people may not realize that they're doing it when streaming media with some apps.
 
I was responding to your post about it being a boot or single drive in most people's systems. I was giving an example of usage that can kill these types of drives, if someone was using this as a boot/app drive. Plex is pretty common these days and if you're transcoding it's something to watch out for. Everyone posts that you'll never kill one of these drives, no normal person writes that much data, etc. and people may not realize that they're doing it when streaming media with some apps.

I think it's actually good to hammer this point home as much as possible. How many times do we hear novice PC owners/builders say "well if I knew that I wouldn't have bought it!" Most of the time it's because they didn't do any research before buying.
 
Not very many games are going to exhaust the 1TB's 140GB (when near full) SLC cache, not to mention the 280GB cache on the 2TB. Even when the 660p is around half full you're looking at 50 and 100GB of SLC cache respectively.

If we're talking 1TB drives, that E12 Inland drive seems like a damn good deal when its near the $100-$110 mark. There's a TLC drive from Sabrent around that price too that would be a good pick (not sure on the controller off hand). With the 660p at $95 it might be worth going for Inland or Sabrent if you don't want to "worry" about the SLC cache. When the 1TB is under $90 I'd say that would be the better buy. In the 2TB space I don't think anything comes close to the 660p.

Yep, highly recommend the E12 Inland Premium 1TB (3yr warranty). Got it @ $94 and the Sabrent Rocket 1TB E12 (5 yr warranty) @ $125 a few months earlier.

Stick a heatsink on em and watch em fly!

I also use this $4 NVMe adapter and it gives me same speeds as direct connection: https://www.amazon.com/Cablecc-M-Key-Adapter-XP941-SM951/dp/B07GPBBCGS/

someone successfully created a custom modded bios for the Sabertooth which allows the uefi to recognize m.2 ssd's

BIOS modding is easy once you get the hang of it. Adding in the NVMe module to UEFI BIOS takes only a few seconds! I've done it to all my boards now and updated the microcode.

Check out win-raid forums where they specialize in that and have tons of good info and tools. Be sure to have an SPI flasher just in case!! Raspberry Pi and jumper wires work in a pinch.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I was responding to your post about it being a boot or single drive in most people's systems. I was giving an example of usage that can kill these types of drives, if someone was using this as a boot/app drive. Plex is pretty common these days and if you're transcoding it's something to watch out for. Everyone posts that you'll never kill one of these drives, no normal person writes that much data, etc. and people may not realize that they're doing it when streaming media with some apps.

That's fair, though I would personally never recommend something like the 660p (or anything in its price range really) for Plex or other write intensive situations. Even beyond how quickly it could burn through the TBW, if you fill up the drive then transcoding is going to quickly chew through the SLC cache.
 
That's fair, though I would personally never recommend something like the 660p (or anything in its price range really) for Plex or other write intensive situations. Even beyond how quickly it could burn through the TBW, if you fill up the drive then transcoding is going to quickly chew through the SLC cache.
It also makes no sense to be using the ssd for the transcoding cache, unless you need to fast forward and rewind a lot, you'll ever see the difference with the transcoded chunks on ssd vs a typical spinner. I have 30 users on my server and my transcode directory is on a run of the mill 2tb spinner, no one complains or has experienced an issue. For the plex data directory an ssd is great, but that isn't going to burn through writes nearly as fast as transcoding.
 
Back
Top