![]() After an extensive investigation, we were unable to find any endurance limitations for the SSD 540s aside from the 1.6 million-hour MTBF figure, which means very little to end users. Intel covers the 5-Series with a five-year warranty that matches the warranties found with the 850 EVO and Intel's 7-Series SSDs. The price is slightly lower than the current mainstream SSD market leader, the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB. The 480GB model we have sells for $145 at the time of writing. The SSD 540s ships with 12 different product SKUs thanks to the two form factors and six separate capacities. The 5400s enables support for vPro technology, which provides advanced management features. Intel also chose the same controller for the Intel Pro 5400s SSD. ![]() ![]() The Intel SSD 540s does support the AES 256-bit full-disk encryption that is compatible with TCG Opal and Microsoft's eDrive. Because of that, it's difficult to find additional information about the controller and what features differentiate it from the previous-generation product. It appears Intel has exclusive use of the SM2258, at least for now. After talking with the company, we expected to see the latest four-channel controller appear simultaneously with IMFT 3D flash. Silicon Motion hasn't released many details about the SM2256's successor. Intel chose to utilize the SM2258 in tandem with SK Hynix 16nm TLC planar flash for the SSD 540s. The 480GB drive we have on hand delivers 85,000/78,000 IOPS of random read/write performance. Random performance also scales with capacity. The sequential write performance (within the SLC buffer) ranges from 400 MB/s to 480 MB/s with a progressive uptick as capacity increases. The sequential read performance clocks in at 560 MB/s, which is at the upper limits of SATA 6Gbps (after accounting for overhead). Intel isn't the only company hiding its native TLC write performance, which occurs outside of the SLC cache buffer. On paper, the performance looks attractive for a modern mainstream product, but Intel generates the performance numbers in a fresh-out-of-box state (per Intel's documentation), and there is no mention of native TLC write speeds. Intel has a long history of giving users capacity choices outside of the mainstream, so this series, like many before it, also ships in 180GB and 360GB. All six sizes ship in 2.5 inch and M.2 2280 form factors. The Intel SSD 540s ships in six different capacities that range from 120GB to 1TB. The second issue with being a customer, rather than a builder, is the lack of the intimate NAND knowledge that allows for a faster time-to-market. Intel gets a price break on flash as a NAND manufacturer, but as a flash customer, Intel is forced to pay a markup on the NAND, which is the most expensive component inside the case. The problem for Intel as a flash customer comes down to pricing. Intel is struggling to be competitive in the entry-level and mainstream SSD markets in this new role. The move left Intel, one of the very few NAND flash manufacturers, as a customer rather than a market leader for an entire generation of products. Intel paired the controller with SK Hynix 16nm 3-bit-per-cell NAND flash because Intel didn't collaborate with IMFT partner Micron on 16nm flash, instead choosing to focus its resources on the upcoming 3D NAND and Optane (3D XPoint) products. The Intel 540s is our first look at the new SMI SM2258 controller, but this SSD has an interesting backstory, too.
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