TheOverclocker Issue 29 | Page 24

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