Warm? Intel 660p

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I've got the 2tb one which is just under 200 right now. Its great for an external super fast usb-c drive, good as a steam drive too. Not sure I'd use it as a boot drive though being QLC.
 
mikeo said:
I've got the 2tb one which is just under 200 right now. Its great for an external super fast usb-c drive, good as a steam drive too. Not sure I'd use it as a boot drive though being QLC.
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It's a fine boot drive also. In a year or two the QLC stigma will settle.

I remember when MLC was the thing to have and TLC was the bad guy. Or when SLC was the be all end all..so much has changed with ssd's.

Also, it has a great warranty. I don't have anything on a boot drive that isn't backed up. And you should not either.
 
I'm sure the reliability on it is fine, extended read / write performance can drop off a bit.
 
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mikeo said:
I'm sure the reliability on it is fine, extended read / write performance can drop off a bit.
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From what I've seen, it drops down to about hard drive speeds- which is whatever IMO.

Looks like the 2TB drive starts out with 280GB of SLC cache when empty:

SLC%20cache_575px.png


And drops to 24GB when nearly full, which is still a lot.

And once you fill it up, it drops to ~150MB/s, which is still more than usable for the desktop.

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Souce for both images: Anandtech's review of the 660p drives from last year
 
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Yeah, only noticable when initially copying a ton of stuff to it.
 
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FYI OFaceSIG , this drive should come out to $91 after promo code: EMCTAWU22 (expires 6/3)

Might want to add that to the OP.
 
Not bad. I got it for the same price 1-2 months ago. This is 1000x faster than my HDD
 
They won't have many at this price, but Newegg has some open box 1TB 660p drives for $73. I just snagged one. Free shipping on them, too. For $73 that's a STEAL. I'll be using this to store games, replacing a mechanical drive.
 
doublejack said:
They won't have many at this price, but Newegg has some open box 1TB 660p drives for $73. I just snagged one. Free shipping on them, too. For $73 that's a STEAL. I'll be using this to store games, replacing a mechanical drive.
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I'm loving seeing these 1TB prices drop below $100--that means the 2TB is going to drop soon too. :)
 
mikeo said:
I'm sure the reliability on it is fine, extended read / write performance can drop off a bit.
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Endurance should be pretty good. Micron's QLC is rated for up to 1000 P/E (surprisingly) which with a WAF of 1.5 is far in excess of the warranty (TBW). FWIW, Samsung's 860 QVO (which uses comparable NAND) has a DWPD that matches many consumer TLC drives so we can extrapolate that this would survive many times the rated writes.
 
SamirD said:
I'm loving seeing these 1TB prices drop below $100--that means the 2TB is going to drop soon too. :)
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That's what I need to replace the two mechanical drives in my gaming PC. 1TB is not enough room. If the 2TB drives come down to the $150 range I'll buy one.
 
OFaceSIG said:
The phison based drives are better hut this guy is cheap.

https://www.newegg.com/intel-660p-s...MC-053119-Index-_-InternalSSDs-_-20167462-S0A
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This is a good deal and IMHO better than the phison drives. 1. Phison controllers have had marginal reliability at best. 2. in the all important desktop benchmarks of random 4k reads with one thread, even this bests the the phison e12. the phison controller gets mid 40's to low 50's depending on the setup. My 850 evo was capable of doing that. If you want high 50's/60+mb/s in that metric, this drive or other SM controllers are the best option unless you are going with Samsung or xpoint (which is overkill for most). People get enamored with the Phison's ability to do sustained reads/writes - which you use when initially copying a drive but then the typical user rarely sees again. Intel QLC is a great value solution for the typical user. That large SLC cache is a big deal.
 
doublejack said:
That's what I need to replace the two mechanical drives in my gaming PC. 1TB is not enough room. If the 2TB drives come down to the $150 range I'll buy one.
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I see that happening in the next few months. Earlier this year 500GB at sub $100 was a big deal. I'd be shocked not to see 2TB at $99 during the black friday/xmas sales. (y)
 
wadec22 said:
This is a good deal and IMHO better than the phison drives. 1. Phison controllers have had marginal reliability at best. 2. in the all important desktop benchmarks of random 4k reads with one thread, even this bests the the phison e12. the phison controller gets mid 40's to low 50's depending on the setup. My 850 evo was capable of doing that. If you want high 50's/60+mb/s in that metric, this drive or other SM controllers are the best option unless you are going with Samsung or xpoint (which is overkill for most). People get enamored with the Phison's ability to do sustained reads/writes - which you use when initially copying a drive but then the typical user rarely sees again. Intel QLC is a great value solution for the typical user. That large SLC cache is a big deal.
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I am also not a fan (in general) of Phison's controllers. I like SMI's better. The S10 and S11 in particular can be unreliable, I also don't much like the E8/E8T even though the E8 is in some of the few budget NVMe drives with DRAM. The E12/E16 however is quite good and improved a bit with firmware updates. It still seems to have an issue with sequential reads at low QD at times and also scores pretty poorly on 4K random low QD, but in real-world testing I find it a worthwhile option now that the price premium has been removed. It's certainly superior to the SM2263/XT and SM2262/EN at heavier workloads (quad-core vs. dual-core, and 8-channel vs. SM2263/XT's 4-channel). Of course, when it comes to everyday workloads the 660p's SM2263 comes pretty close to the best, it's only when the SLC cache is challenged that it has issues (true of all drives but especially QLC-based ones).

The 660p has a dual SLC cache: part dynamic, part static (dedicated). The dynamic shrinks as the drive is filled as on all drives, but disappears completely at 75% drive usage. After that you only have the static. This is especially problematic at the smallest SKU (512GB) as not only is it only 6GB, the high density of QLC makes the drive flat-out poor at that capacity. It's better at 1-2TB for sure. Still, you can exhaust this cache with sustained writes if they're fast enough (e.g. from a SATA SSD) and that is an issue for many people. But in general sequentials aren't important day-to-day. But it's not an enthusiast drive by any measure while I would consider the E12 drives to be "budget 970 EVOs" in many regards, excepting the fact they are double-sided at higher capacities. That can impact thermals, power usage, on the mobile platform.

That being said I think the 660p (and the SM2262/EN) drives are in general the best drives for most users as long as they are aware of the limitations. But with prices the way they are now I do think the E12 drives are a compelling alternative for many builds.
 
Maxx said:
I am also not a fan (in general) of Phison's controllers. I like SMI's better. The S10 and S11 in particular can be unreliable, I also don't much like the E8/E8T even though the E8 is in some of the few budget NVMe drives with DRAM. The E12/E16 however is quite good and improved a bit with firmware updates. It still seems to have an issue with sequential reads at low QD at times and also scores pretty poorly on 4K random low QD, but in real-world testing I find it a worthwhile option now that the price premium has been removed. It's certainly superior to the SM2263/XT and SM2262/EN at heavier workloads (quad-core vs. dual-core, and 8-channel vs. SM2263/XT's 4-channel). Of course, when it comes to everyday workloads the 660p's SM2263 comes pretty close to the best, it's only when the SLC cache is challenged that it has issues (true of all drives but especially QLC-based ones).

The 660p has a dual SLC cache: part dynamic, part static (dedicated). The dynamic shrinks as the drive is filled as on all drives, but disappears completely at 75% drive usage. After that you only have the static. This is especially problematic at the smallest SKU (512GB) as not only is it only 6GB, the high density of QLC makes the drive flat-out poor at that capacity. It's better at 1-2TB for sure. Still, you can exhaust this cache with sustained writes if they're fast enough (e.g. from a SATA SSD) and that is an issue for many people. But in general sequentials aren't important day-to-day. But it's not an enthusiast drive by any measure while I would consider the E12 drives to be "budget 970 EVOs" in many regards, excepting the fact they are double-sided at higher capacities. That can impact thermals, power usage, on the mobile platform.

That being said I think the 660p (and the SM2262/EN) drives are in general the best drives for most users as long as they are aware of the limitations. But with prices the way they are now I do think the E12 drives are a compelling alternative for many builds.
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I agree with the majority of your view, with the exception of the comparison to the evo drive, but I digress, as I seem to have the minority view around here of that comparison.

Prices being what they are, the phison e12 will continue to be a big seller and frankly another acceptable choice in the budget arena. The consumer is in a great place with storage right now with something for everyone in the affordable tier. I never imagined them hitting the $100 price point. I assume it's the combo of falling nand prices along with the new e16 due out. With the new AMD platform, those e16 drives will become the new thing as folks will be pumped to watch those sustained reads/writes burn past pci-e 3 limitations.
 
wadec22 said:
I agree with the majority of your view, with the exception of the comparison to the evo drive, but I digress, as I seem to have the minority view around here of that comparison.

Prices being what they are, the phison e12 will continue to be a big seller and frankly another acceptable choice in the budget arena. The consumer is in a great place with storage right now with something for everyone in the affordable tier. I never imagined them hitting the $100 price point. I assume it's the combo of falling nand prices along with the new e16 due out. With the new AMD platform, those e16 drives will become the new thing as folks will be pumped to watch those sustained reads/writes burn past pci-e 3 limitations.
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Oh, trust me, I'm not a fan of Phison. One of the reasons I got so involved in the SSD community is because I saw so many people recommending the Kingston A400 which objectively is not a good drive (S11 + 2D TLC). Over time I had to grudgingly admit that the E8 wasn't as bad as I first assumed (I had it relegated to "obsolete" status for a while) and the E12 especially is better than I expected. I also had the E12 outside of the SM2262/2263 drives for many months simply due to the higher cost. Now that it's so close in price, though, I can't recommend against it in most cases. BUT...Phison is in the business of making budget controllers, and they usually pair with Toshiba NAND which is probably the worst 64L there is (WD/SanDisk also uses this, rebranded).

So in that respect, yeah, not the best, but I can't deny the E12 drives are a bit wonky. But I know that SMI originally designed the SM2262 as a quad-core very similar to the E12 but Intel pressured them to go dual-core optimized for low QD/4K instead (which is why the SM2262EN variant is so strange to me). So one could argue the E12 is closer to the original SM2262 which was in fact made to target the penta-core Samsung controllers (Polaris/Phoenix). So in that respect, "budget 970" I feel is legitimate. But we're talking a year ago where the SM2262 drives were 50% the cost of the 970 EVO, which is crazy given most people were buying the EVO because of the Samsung name rather than the fact they'd ever use that level of performance.
 
Maxx said:
Oh, trust me, I'm not a fan of Phison. One of the reasons I got so involved in the SSD community is because I saw so many people recommending the Kingston A400 which objectively is not a good drive (S11 + 2D TLC). Over time I had to grudgingly admit that the E8 wasn't as bad as I first assumed (I had it relegated to "obsolete" status for a while) and the E12 especially is better than I expected. I also had the E12 outside of the SM2262/2263 drives for many months simply due to the higher cost. Now that it's so close in price, though, I can't recommend against it in most cases. BUT...Phison is in the business of making budget controllers, and they usually pair with Toshiba NAND which is probably the worst 64L there is (WD/SanDisk also uses this, rebranded).

So in that respect, yeah, not the best, but I can't deny the E12 drives are a bit wonky. But I know that SMI originally designed the SM2262 as a quad-core very similar to the E12 but Intel pressured them to go dual-core optimized for low QD/4K instead (which is why the SM2262EN variant is so strange to me). So one could argue the E12 is closer to the original SM2262 which was in fact made to target the penta-core Samsung controllers (Polaris/Phoenix). So in that respect, "budget 970" I feel is legitimate. But we're talking a year ago where the SM2262 drives were 50% the cost of the 970 EVO, which is crazy given most people were buying the EVO because of the Samsung name rather than the fact they'd ever use that level of performance.
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lot of interesting tidbits here. thanks for sharing! some of this was new information for me. very cool.
 
wadec22 said:
lot of interesting tidbits here. thanks for sharing! some of this was new information for me. very cool.
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The reason Intel is involved is because of the 600p (SM2260), 660p (SM2263), 760p (SM2262), and 545s (SM2259). The 545s is unique in the SM2259 (which has better LDPC/ECC) but it actually came to market before...well, the MX500, the Blue 3D/Ultra 3D, or the 860 EVO. Intel has long been a market disruptor and its Optane is specifically designed for 4K random, low queue depth operations. Putting two and two together it's clear they influenced SMI's controller design towards this end. And they were very successful - the EX920 & SX8200 really rocked the market last year (I own both of them). But that dual-core was never going to match the E12 or Polaris/Phoenix at higher QD/IOPS, the SM2262EN was an attempt at improving writes however. Important because the E16 is basically an E12 with 4.0 PHY and I suspect the SM2264 is a SM2262 with 4.0 PHY (SM2267 being the SM2263 with 4.0 PHY and the Phison E19 being the Phison E13 with 4.0 PHY). In other words, this will continue forward with 4.0 and 96L NAND. But the general user is still better off with SMI if the price is right. This includes NAND because mostly SMI pairs with Micron which has better reliability than Toshiba.

I, like you, have been a member of [H] for a long time but I've been gone for a while as I mostly focus on Reddit these days. I have a new subreddit for SSD news but am more well-known for my SSD guides (flow chart, list, spreadsheet). So I try to keep up with the trends.
 
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Maxx said:
The reason Intel is involved is because of the 600p (SM2260), 660p (SM2263), 760p (SM2262), and 545s (SM2259). The 545s is unique in the SM2259 (which has better LDPC/ECC) but it actually came to market before...well, the MX500, the Blue 3D/Ultra 3D, or the 860 EVO. Intel has long been a market disruptor and its Optane is specifically designed for 4K random, low queue depth operations. Putting two and two together it's clear they influenced SMI's controller design towards this end. And they were very successful - the EX920 & SX8200 really rocked the market last year (I own both of them). But that dual-core was never going to match the E12 or Polaris/Phoenix at higher QD/IOPS, the SM2262EN was an attempt at improving writes however. Important because the E16 is basically an E12 with 4.0 PHY and I suspect the SM2264 is a SM2262 with 4.0 PHY (SM2267 being the SM2263 with 4.0 PHY and the Phison E19 being the Phison E13 with 4.0 PHY). In other words, this will continue forward with 4.0 and 96L NAND. But the general user is still better off with SMI if the price is right. This includes NAND because mostly SMI pairs with Micron which has better reliability than Toshiba.

I, like you, have been a member of [H] for a long time but I've been gone for a while as I mostly focus on Reddit these days. I have a new subreddit for SSD news but am more well-known for my SSD guides (flow chart, list, spreadsheet). So I try to keep up with the trends.
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Damn. You should have a YouTube channel lol
 
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wadec22 said:
Damn. You should have a YouTube channel lol
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Working on it. I actually do have all of that set up but I'm waiting for the right time. Not in a position to be doing reviews gratis at the moment but I'm going to invest in X570 (and PCIe 4.0) for some proper reviews and that will be on YT (I already have the hardware from my previous gaming channel) for sure. Will be opening up Patreon around then to help pay for samples as I'm not attached to any review site currently. In the meantime I do what I can. Been at this for over a year and learned a lot, good time to get into solid state if you ask me. I think it'll really take off with X570/B550. Gotta start somewhere I guess!
 
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