Is the intel 660p a good m.2 ssd?

PatStick · 10 Apr 2020 at 15:36

I am about to buy a new system but i dont no if a 660p intel's m.2spports Ryzen 7 cpu's. It is a very good price for a m.2 that has a speed of 1800 mb/s. It would be fine as i get a reply.

(1 TB version)

Scougar · 12 Apr 2020 at 21:08

660p and things like the Crucial P1 are based on the 660p I think. The P1 is actually faster though.

Things to note: It does not have the same level of endurance as other SSD's due to the tech it's using. Get one with a decent warranty. Once you max out the buffer on long copies/writes, it will be muchhhhhh slower. The more it fills up, the slower it will be.

PatStick · 13 Apr 2020 at 16:35

ok, thx. I'm gonna see what i can do.

Minstadave · 13 Apr 2020 at 16:39

If it was my main drive I'd pay the extra for a TLC based drive for the better endurance/faster speeds.

I have a 2TB one as my media drive and it's excellent.

A good review is here:

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/intel-ssd-660p-qlc-nvme,5719.html

The chart shows you how much cache you have left in different scenarios. Until the cache is exhausted the drive performs very well, once exhausted though QLC gets really slow.

PatStick · 13 Apr 2020 at 16:48

The m.2 is gona be my main so a TLC should perform better.

Minstadave · 13 Apr 2020 at 16:55

PatStick said:
The m.2 is gona be my main so a TLC should perform better.

I'd go TLC if budget allows for my main drive. For an office PC you're not going to notice the difference. For a heavy user you may exhaust the cache if doing large writes on a close to full drive.

voidshatter · 16 Apr 2020 at 00:49

Minstadave said:
If it was my main drive I'd pay the extra for a TLC based drive for the better endurance.

I strongly doubt about that. My Samsung 960 PRO 2TB is still at 98% lifespan remaining after 2 years of usage, and my Intel 660p 2TB is still at 99% lifespan remaining after 8 months of usage.

I don't think anyone with "normal" usage can make QLC worn out before capacity becomes obsolete.

Minstadave · 16 Apr 2020 at 05:34

voidshatter said:
I strongly doubt about that. My Samsung 960 PRO 2TB is still at 98% lifespan remaining after 2 years of usage, and my Intel 660p 2TB is still at 99% lifespan remaining after 8 months of usage.

I don't think anyone with "normal" usage can make QLC worn out before capacity becomes obsolete.

You removed the bit about it being faster in your quote.

I've got one as a backup drive and am happy with it but the combination of reduced speed, ability to exhaust the pseudo SLC cache and reduced endurance seem a relatively big compromise compared to the small saving to be had.

Yes I'd probably never wear it out, and not notice any real world speed difference day to day, but when thess drives are filling up and a big write uses up the cache these drives crawl.

voidshatter · 16 Apr 2020 at 10:34

Minstadave said:
You removed the bit about it being faster in your quote.

I've got one as a backup drive and am happy with it but the combination of reduced speed, ability to exhaust the pseudo SLC cache and reduced endurance seem a relatively big compromise compared to the small saving to be had.

Yes I'd probably never wear it out, and not notice any real world speed difference day to day, but when thess drives are filling up and a big write uses up the cache these drives crawl.

At the moment I have two QLC drives, Intel 660p 2TB and Samsung QVO 4TB. They can both sustain 150MB/s sequential writing after cache exhausts; though I am not a content creator and I cannot benefit from the consistently faster writing speed of MLC and TLC. The SLC cache on the 2TB version of 660p is 24~280GB the last time I read it, and imo it's big enough for daily driving, because I have never noticed any performance drop during daily usage.