Intel is looking to SandForce to provide it with a performance-class SSD in the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB. It changed tack about a year ago and started using third-party controller chips in its consumer class solid state drives (SSDs).

The rumour mill was working overtime throughout 2011 with suggestions that Intel was considering forsaking the

The Intel 520 Series 240GB is one of the fastest solid state drives on the market, right at the very top of our group test beside the Patriot Wildfire 240GB and Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS.

not quite as fast as the latest Samsung drives when reading imcompressible data

Intel's latest batch of SSDs, the 520 Series, offers a variety of different capacities, but the 60GB is the smallest on offer. That doesn't sound like much, but it's more than enough for an installation of Windows and some key applications, which makes a smaller drive is a route to the speed of an...

Some companies are content to be first to market with an SSD and then spend months and months squashing bugs which had no business being in firmware released to the general public. Intel on the other hand tends to chart a safer course and while they may not be able to take advantage of early adopter...

A fantastic product at an acceptable price.

Intel has not been making SSDs for the mainstream market for as long as OCZ, but it's learned quickly, and as usual quickly worked its way into a position of power in a very short time.

SandForce was an unknown newcomer to the solid state drive business when they announced their first SF-1000 memory controller in 2009. Nevertheless many storage manufacturers recognized the chip's potential and moved quickly to adopt it, among them A-Data, Corsair, G.Skill, OCZ, Patriot, Super...

Excellent performance; The speed of SandForce's latest controller with the backing of Intel's testing and firmware validation

A tad more expensive than other similar drives; SSDs in general are still limited in storage capacity given the premium you pay per gigabyte

Throughout this review, the Intel 520 has gone head to head with the OCZ Vertex 3, which is really the only other SSD that I have tested that can compete directly with the Intel 520 240GB SSD. In some cases the Intel 520 was faster than the Vertex 3, and in other cases the Vertex 3 came out on top.

Silky smooth operation as a system drive; Excellent sequential reading and writing performance; Excellent 4K random I/O performance; SATA 6Gbps support; The drive is supported by the excellent Intel SSD Toolbox; TRIM support under Windows 7; Lightning fast access times; Completely silent operation,

Expensive

Although more expensive than some of the other SSDs on the market, I feel the price is warranted. I've owned OCZ drives and both of them failed within the first 6 months. I also own a Samsung, which is in the same price range as the Intel and have not had any problems with that drive either.

This thing is "off the chain" fast; I'll never own a traditional hard drive for anything but storage again; I can't say enough good things about this drive; It's fast and works; Installation was a piece of cake and it took the Windows 7 Image I created to migrate the date without issue.

Size; At 120GB, this drive is small; But SSDs aren't really designed for storage and are best when used as boot drives; This is perfect for a client / file server environment, or when you pair it with a 2 or 3TB traditional HDD