Hardware Award
INTEL 730 480GB SSD
RRP: $479.99 | Website: www.intel.com
Test Machine
• INTEL Core i7 4770K
• GIGABYTE Z87X-OC (F8)
• CORSAIR Dominator
Platinum 2x4GB DDR
2666MHZ CL10
• Cooler Master Silent Pro M2
1500W
• Windows 7 64-bit SP1
I
NTEL has had a fairly
respectable history
concerning SSDs. With
every INTEL SSD review we
do, we can’t help but think
of the old X25-M drive they
introduced back in 2008.
At the time it there wasn’t
anything remotely close
to it in performance. Since
then however, it’s become
an increasingly more
competitive market and what
made the INTEL drive stand
out then is not enough to
even warrant a second look
today.
With that said, the 730
24 The OverClocker Issue 29 | 2014
drive represents INTELs’
most high end consumer
level SSD. Much like the
X25-M at the time, the
730 brings with it some
enterprise level features
and obviously incredible
performance numbers.
The stand out feature for
this drive is the Powerloss protection which as
far as we know is a feature
that doesn’t exist on any
other SSD on the market,
at least at this level. Oddly
absent however from the
730 drives is support for
AES encryption. One would
think this would be a key
feature for INTEL when
selling a drive like this
one. Especially at this price
where every other competing
drive has this feature. That
will obviously invalidate
this drive for several usage
scenarios but for those who
are not concerned, this is a
really fast drive.
The NAND is obviously
INTEL’s own 20nm NAND
and its custom 3rd
generation SSD controller
(PC29AS21CA0). Together
with some smart firmware,
all these parts come
together to make a truly
compelling performance
SSD for those who are
unwilling to compromise
on performance or rather
at sustained, reliable and
predictable performance
numbers. For the 480 GB
model that we tested INTEL
claims a maximum read
IO performance figure of
89,000 IOPS and 75,000 for
writes. Sequential read
figures are at a respectable
550MBps and 470MBps. Not
the highest we’ve seen but
these days sequential read
and write performance are
all but meaningless as they
don’t really tell you anything
about a drives performance.
Drive reliability to
perhaps better stated,
drive endurance has gone
up dramatically with the
730. Whereas the previous
530 was rated at 36TB, the
730 has increased that by a