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5 year warranty

Intel's latest high-end consumer SSD, the SSD 520 series, is finally here. With the SSD 520 series, Intel has also made the switch to a SandForce controller. We pit it against the fastest drives in the market today to see how it fares.

Class-leading performance; Much improved over Intel SSD 510 series; Special firmware exclusive to Intel

Slightly pricey; Below average IOPS performance on Iometer

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time.

Fastest SATA storage device ever tested; Delivers over 83K IOPS performance in IOMeter; Outstanding 559/528 MBps read/write speed with ATTO; Built-in 256-bit AES data encryption; Hardware-level data compression preserves NAND longevity; 5-Year Intel product warranty support; Enhanced power-loss data...

Expensive enthusiast-level product

When Intel released its 510 Series solid-state drive (SSD) a year ago, it used a controller not that the giant company had created itself but rather one from Marvell. Intel hasn't gone back to keeping it "all in the family" with its newest SSD, the 520 Series, but it has chosen SandForce instead-and...

Excellent performance; Covered by five-year warranty

More expensive; but not significantly faster; than competing drives

The Intel SSD 520 series drives sport the same 2.5" form factor that's common with other SATA solid state drives on the market. In fact, the drives look virtually identical to Intel's older SSD 510 and 320 series products, save for the decal on top.

If our review of the Intel SSD 520 shows anything, it's that engineering is a key component when it comes to SSD performance. Specifically, when thinking about the effort that went into development of the firmware on the SSD 520, we see the effort pays off.

Exceptionally strong performance up against OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS; Incredibly fast compressible speeds in our mixed-workload tests; Industry-leading reliability testing; Custom firmware and engineering shows its value

More expensive than other SandForce SF-2200-powered SSDs with synchronous NAND

Intel's 520 Series SSD is undoubtedly a good match for any high-end PC; it's lightning-quick in various scenarios, and if you're coming from a traditional hard disk, it'll provide a jolt in performance that few other components can offer.

The Intel 520 test model (240 GB version) has proved its worth in multiple tests and time and again, it landed in the top tiers of our database. Intel aims to offset the issues of reliability of SandForce-based SSDs by extensively modifying and testing the firmware used by the SandForce controller.

September 24, 2012 by Lawrence Lee Product Intel 520 Series 120GB SSDSC2CW120A310 2.5" SSD (OEM model) Manufacturer Intel Street Price US$120 When consumer SSDs began to pick up steam about four years ago, there weren't a lot of solid choices available.

The Intel 520s really scored a knockout in our ‘consumer' RAID testing exercise and, with the speed and latency displayed, it would be hard to go wrong with them. These results are some of the best I have ever experienced with so few SSDs and it wasn't so long ago that it took a whole stack of SSDs,...