Intel 600p Series SSD Review

[Guest]

If you can't beat them, undercut them on price. Intel plans to do just that with the first TLC-based NVMe M.2 SSD to hit the market. The new 600p Series ships in three low-cost capacities, and a 1TB drive will join them, but endurance is a sticking point.

Intel 600p Series SSD Review : Read more

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Lol ...
glad I got the much cheaper X400 wth 320 TBW.
Somehow the performance difference (M.2 sata vs PCIe ) isn't that noticeable in real life. Not to mention throttling - which for some reason was not mentioned in review

 

[rgrigio]

I have a standard 120GB 840 from 2013 alongside with a 1TB HDD on my laptop, paid 120 bucks for it then, and... only 4.60TBW... As long as you use it as a read-drive there isn`t much to be afraid.

Now... if you have a more demanding workload or install/uninstall games every few days, then you should look for another drive.

IMHO it should at least have better performance. This seems "meh"...

 

[Game256]

Intel just can't release a good product for mass market. It's either pricey stuff with high capacity like Intel 750 or garbage like 540s and 600p.

At least 600p is not so overpriced like 540s was (btw the price for 600p is constantly jumping, from 105-130$ for 256 Gb version). At the moment 600p is a good alternative for premium SATA SSD but soon, when there will be more NVMe SSDs on the market and prices fall, 600p will become obsolete.

 

[philipemaciel]

Glad there are SATA real world benches in the review! These are very useful for those of us using SATA SDDs and contemplating moving to NVMe.

 

[tripleX]

The difference is that your Samsung doesn't self destruct when it passes the endurance limit. Also, since that is early flash I'm sure you have the endurance number wrong.

 

[tripleX]

On further thought... that's only 14tb of data per year. Horrible.

 

[Brian_R170]

If the not-yet-released 1TB version scales up well, it will be somewhat competitive with the other NVMe offerings and likely a lot cheaper, but as it is, there's not really a lot of reason to buy a 600p.

Of course, the application benchmarks clearly show that the fastest NVMe drives improve your experience by only 1-2% over SATA while costing twice as much, so for most users, there's not a lot of reason to pay extra for NVMe.

 

[tripleX]

Well it doesn't scale at all, like it said in the article...

 

[Zaxx420]

Intel should not even use 'NVMe' anywhere on the product or packaging...would better keep user's initial expectations in check...everybody associates 'NVMe' with blistering speeds atm. Exceptional job of keeping your conclusion fair with the price being the top consideration. Woulda been REAL easy to unfairly declare this a real turd...tho it does seem Intel coulda done a little better by having direct to die writes at least.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

On further thought... that's only 14tb of data per year. Horrible.

A single game with updates etc can do about 1TB a year. some games are crossing 100GB already.
So while 14TB is indeed a lot, I'd prefer to gave more just to be sure.

 

[TechyInAZ]

This is a great option for those who only have M.2 with x2 not x4. I personally have been looking for a m.2 ssd that is cheap enough like this that won't offer too much extra performance since my m.2 x2 slot will bottleneck it either way.

 

[bfr05t]

So are we just going to ignore the part where Chris admits to stealing hundreds of gigabytes of movies?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

This is a great option for those who only have M.2 with x2 not x4. I personally have been looking for a m.2 ssd that is cheap enough like this that won't offer too much extra performance since my m.2 x2 slot will bottleneck it either way.

That's where 100$ cheaper X400 comes handy

 

[TechyInAZ]

This is a great option for those who only have M.2 with x2 not x4. I personally have been looking for a m.2 ssd that is cheap enough like this that won't offer too much extra performance since my m.2 x2 slot will bottleneck it either way.

That's where 100$ cheaper X400 comes handy

Not really since that SSD is M.2 Sata not M.2 PCIE like mine is.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

^ that's true, but do you feel the 100$ (30%) performance difference in daily use ?

 

[TechyInAZ]

^ that's true, but do you feel the 100$ (30%) performance difference in daily use ?

I don't think it would matter, PCIE is not compatible with Sata.

Plus, I wouldn't get M.2 just for speed. The ability to not have a extra drive with extra cables plugged into it saves a lot on cable management.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

M.2 slots are mostly compatible with both sata and pcie drives.
I got it for exactly same reason. i like it sitting on the back of MB without cables. mITX FTW

 

[rgrigio]

"The difference is that your Samsung doesn't self destruct when it passes the endurance limit. Also, since that is early flash I'm sure you have the endurance number wrong."

Hmm... I meant i`ve written only 4.6TB since 2013, sounds too little? This number comes from the Samsung Magician Software, both software and the ssd firmware are up to date...

 

[TadashiTG]

Rather wait for the 960 EVO. This thing is a mess.

Compared to the 850 EVO, better save the $30-40.

 

[helopilot]

Great review. Thanks for running to ground the major issue with the endurance limitations. I bought the 512Gb version about a week ago and I've already had problems with it. Unfortunately the terms of the sale are returns for exchange only. Otherwise I'd be happy to spend more on an alternative SSD with a) higher performance b) higher endurance c) SLC writethrough mode and finally d) that does not self destruct and lock me out from my own data. BTW: last week there were no Intel tools that recognized the 600P. Maybe there is now. Not happy. Intel let me down - badly.

 

[Brian_R170]

Well it doesn't scale at all, like it said in the article...

Looks like at least the read performance and latency scales with the size. Neither the write performance nor the endurance scales, though. Like most consumers, I don't care much about the endurance, since it's highly unlikely I will have any storage device longer than 3 years. However, write performance makes me question whether it's worth any more than any of the high-end SATA M.2 devices.

 

[apk24]

72 TBW is insanely low. I would definitely expect more form my next ssd purchase. I currently own a 120GB Intel 520 SSD that I got 4 years ago and I've already hit 23TBW on it. I would expect my next SSD to last me at least that long. Since program and file sizes are increasing as time goes on I would worry that a 72TBW drive would even last me 3 years. Now, I grant that I use my SSD for a little bit of pagefile, but other than that it's pretty much a read only disk, operating system and programs only. Then again, if massive windows updates are becoming the norm, idk if we can still classify the OS disk as a mostly read only disk.

 

[panathas]

LOL, your SSD will self destruct in 72...3,2,1... Bye bye data. Mission impossible anyone?

 

[heliomphalodon]

I guess it's just me, but these M.2 NVMe reviews seem incomplete without a discussion of whether Intel PCH RAID is supported.