Intel 545s cache: Intel SSD 545s Series Review — Tom’s Hardware

74 Comments

InroductionAnandTech Storage Bench — The DestroyerAnandTech Storage Bench — HeavyAnandTech Storage Bench — LightSYSmark 2014 SEPower ManagementLooking Forward

Today Intel is introducing their SSD 545s, the first product with their new 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory and, in a move that gives Intel a little bit of bragging rights, the first SSD on the market to use 64-layer 3D NAND from any manufacturer.

The Intel SSD 545s is a mainstream consumer SSD, which these days means it’s using the SATA interface and TLC NAND flash. The 545s is the successor to last year’s Intel SSD 540s, which was in many ways a filler product to cover up inconvenient gaps in Intel’s SSD technology roadmap. When the 540s launched, Intel’s first generation of 3D NAND was not quite ready, and Intel had no cost-competitive planar NAND of their own due to skipping the 16nm node at IMFT. This forced Intel to use 16nm TLC from SK Hynix in the 540s. Less unusual for Intel, the 540s also used a third-party SSD controller: Silicon Motion’s SM2258. Silicon Motion’s SSD controllers are seldom the fastest, but performance is usually decent and the cost is low. Intel’s in-house SATA SSD controllers were enterprise-focused and not ready to compete in the new TLC-based consumer market.

The Intel SSD 545s continues Intel’s close relationship with Silicon Motion by being one of the first SSDs to use the latest SM2259 controller. Since the SATA interface is now a dead-end technology, the SM2259 is a fairly minor update over the SM2258 controller used by last year’s Intel SSD 540s. The only significant new feature enabled by the updated controller is hardware end-to-end data protection that includes ECC on the controller’s SRAM and on the external DRAM. This will make the 545s more resilient against corruption of in-flight data, but it should not be mistaken for the power loss protection that is typically found on enterprise SSDs.

The flash memory used in the Intel 545s is Intel’s second generation 3D TLC NAND, a 64-layer design with a floating gate memory cell. Intel did not use their first-generation 32-layer 3D NAND in a consumer SATA SSD, but the 32L 3D TLC is at the heart of Intel’s SSD 600p, their first M.2 NVMe SSD and one of the most affordable consumer NVMe SSDs.

Similar to the strategy Micron used last year when introducing the Crucial MX300, the Intel 545s initially brings a new generation of 3D NAND to the market with just a single SKU. The 512GB 545s is available now on Newegg, with other capacities and the M.2 SATA versions to follow over the next few weeks. The full lineup will include capacities from 128GB to 2TB in both 2.5″ and M.2 form factors.

Intel will be using their smaller 256Gb 64L TLC die for all capacities of the 545s, rather than adopting the 512Gb 64L TLC part for the larger models. The 512Gb die is not yet in volume production and Intel plans to have the full range of 545s models on the market before the 512Gb parts are available in volume. Once the 512Gb parts are available we can expect to seem them used in other product families to enable even higher drive capacities, but it is reassuring to see Intel choosing the performance advantages of smaller more numerous dies for the mainstream consumer product range.

Meanwhile, over the rest of this year, Intel plans to incorporate 64L 3D NAND into SSDs in every product segment. Most of those products are still under wraps, but the Pro 5450s and E 5100s are on the way as the OEM and embedded versions of the 545s.

Intel seems to be in a hurry to get this drive out the door so they can claim to be the first shipping SSDs with 64-layer 3D NAND. At Computex we saw Western Digital announce their first 64L 3D NAND SSDs due to be available in Q3, and Toshiba is already sampling the XG5 M.2 NVMe SSD to OEMs. Earlier this month, Samsung announced the start of volume production of their 64-layer 256Gb V-NAND. By launching with retail availability this week, Intel has narrowly secured first place bragging rights. (It seems Intel and Micron might have an agreement to take turns introducing new 3D NAND, given that Micron was first to ship the 32L 3D NAND last year with the Crucial MX300.)

The downside is that this is a rushed launch; I’ve had the drive in hand for less than five days as of publication time, and that time spanned a weekend. Intel’s press briefing on this drive was a mere fifteen hours before the embargo lift, and the slides included some changed specifications relative to the product brief that was delivered with the drive last week. As with several of their recent SSD launches, Intel is only providing the one-page product brief and is withholding the full specifications document from the general public and the press, but this time it might genuinely be due to the latter document not being ready instead of motivated by the questionable IP security concerns Intel cited earlier this year.

Intel SSD 545s Specifications Comparison
Model		545s 512GB	540s 480GB
Controller		Silicon Motion SM2259	Silicon Motion SM2258
NAND Flash		Intel 256Gb 64-layer 3D TLC	SK Hynix 16nm TLC
Sequential Read		550 MB/s	560 MB/s
Sequential Write	Burst	500 MB/s	480 MB/s
	Sustained	475 MB/s	40 MB/s
Random Read IOPS		75k	78k
Random Write IOPS		90k	85k
TCG Opal Encryption		No	No
Power Management		Slumber and DevSleep	Slumber and DevSleep
Form Factor		2. 5″ 7mm (M.2 later this year)	2.5″ 7mm and M.2 2280
Write Endurance		288 TB (0.3 DWPD)
Warranty		5 years	5 years
Launch MSRP		$179	$174

Buy Intel SSD 545s 512GB on Newegg

The most significant performance improvement Intel cites for the 545s over the 540s is in sustained sequential transfers where writes exceed the size of the drive’s SLC cache. In the briefing for the 545s Intel claimed the 480GB 540s would drop to 40MB/s while the 512GB 545s is capable of maintaining 475MB/s. The numbers given for the 540s are lower than what the full product specifications from last year list (125 MB/s). Without access to the comparable document for the 545s we can’t entirely explain this discrepancy, but the most plausible reason is that Intel is no longer measuring sustained write speed restricted to an 8GB span of the drive and that they are now instead using a more sensible test where the drive is full or nearly so. Either way, the 545s should be able to perform much better after its SLC cache is full.

Externally, the 545s looks like a typical Intel SATA SSD with only minor design variations. Internally, the density of Intel’s 3D NAND is readily apparent from the PCB that occupies less than half of the case and features only four NAND packages. With 256Gb (32GB) per die, this works out to four dies per package. Even the largest 2TB model should be able to use this PCB with sixteen dies per package and populating the empty pad for a second DRAM package. The Intel SSD 545s uses thermal pads on all four NAND packages and on the controller.

The 512GB Intel 545s debuts with a MSRP of $179. This is slightly higher than the launch MSRP of $174 for the 480GB Intel 540s, but on a price per GB basis the 545s is cheaper, and since its launch the MSRP of the 540s has been driven up to $189 by the onset of an industry-wide NAND flash shortage. In this narrow context the MSRP for the 545s may seem reasonable, but its true street price will need to be substantially lower. Intel’s 600p NVMe SSD is currently only $175 on Newegg. Since the 600p outperforms any SATA SSD for typical real-world desktop use, the 545s needs to do better than 35¢/GB. The competition based on Micron’s 32L 3D TLC includes the Crucial MX300 for around 30¢/GB, and the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB happens to be on sale on Newegg today for $165 (33¢/GB).

This launch comes at a bit of an awkward time for us. I’ve retired our aging 2015 SSD testbed and moved all the custom and homemade power measurement equipment over to a new system. Windows 8.1 is out and Windows 10 is in, and our IOmeter synthetic benchmarks are being replaced with Linux-based FIO tests that are more suited to modern TLC SSDs with SLC caches. For the past few weeks I’ve been focusing my efforts on validating the new testbed and test suite against NVMe SSDs, so the arrival at short notice of a new SATA SSD left me with no relevant comparison data. Given the time available, I chose to prioritize the benchmarks that are most relevant to real-world usage and to run a small selection of competing drives through those tests. This review will be updated with more benchmarks as the drives complete them, and the new SSD 2017 section of our Bench database will be going live soon and will be populated with results from the dozens of drives in our back catalog over the coming weeks.

For now, this review includes our three AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) workloads run on the new testbed, SYSmark 2014 SE and idle power management tests. The Intel SSD 545s is pitted against its predecessor the Intel SSD 540s, and most of the SATA SSDs with 3D NAND that have been on the market: Samsung’s 850 EVO and 850 PRO, the Crucial MX300 and the ADATA Ultimate SU800.

AnandTech 2017 SSD Testbed
CPU	Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5
Motherboard	ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
Chipset	Intel C232
Memory	4x 8GB G. SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15
Graphics	AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920×1200@60Hz
OS	Windows 10 x64, version 1703

• Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E3 1240 v5 CPU
• Thanks to ASRock for the E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
• Thanks to G.SKILL for the Ripjaws DDR4-2400 RAM
• Thanks to Corsair for the RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler

AnandTech Storage Bench — The Destroyer
InroductionAnandTech Storage Bench — The DestroyerAnandTech Storage Bench — HeavyAnandTech Storage Bench — LightSYSmark 2014 SEPower ManagementLooking Forward

Tweet

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Overview of 256GB and 512GB Intel 545s SSDs with 3D NAND TLC Memory

Test Methodology
2016 SSDs

The introduction of the Intel X25-M family of drives about 10 years ago has significantly changed the balance of power in the SSD market . You can even say that he created this market from scratch. Not because it was the first device of its kind — in fact, SSDs were already widely used in computer technology by that time. But earlier they were used only in certain niches where it was impossible to do without them. The new development was focused on the mass consumer, even though it had a high price for widespread use. The company managed to create a productive and reliable device based on inexpensive MLC-memory, using the most advanced (at that time) controller, leveling its shortcomings. In many ways, it was a demonstration of the possibilities of what a consumer SSD could be. nine0006

This segment of the market is also booming. More and more new players began to develop controllers, the production of flash memory grew like coffins after the leader , with a corresponding price reduction. As a result, in some niches, the competition between mechanical and semiconductor drives simply stopped: once manufacturers tried to install hard drives even in pocket computers, and today many series of laptops simply do not support HDDs. In general, the expansion into the computer market was not radically noticeable (since prices are still the weak point of SSDs), but every fifth PC of one form factor or another already has a solid state drive, and in every tenth there is no other at all. nine0006

But Intel’s position in the market as this market grew, became more and more modest. One gets the feeling that, having “showed a bright path” to other manufacturers, the company simply moved away from the most competitive areas, concentrating on the most marginal ones. For example, on server products. Or on the introduction of new interfaces. And even on the development of new types of memory. In general, the recent announcement of the Optane SSD 900P line is indicative — NVMe devices based on 3D XPoint memory. They have practically nothing in common with mass SSDs. Although, in principle, the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and the NVMe protocol are also found in NAND flash drives, but for the latter it is still somewhat exotic. The biggest sales still come from the «old-fashioned» SATA, which Intel already recommends ditching. However, due to the presence of demand for such solutions (we repeat — the maximum in the segment), the company continues to sell them, although it is not necessary to release them — first of all, Intel’s own controllers «dropped out» of this line, and in the 540s family, co-produced memory by Intel was no longer used. and Micron, and ODM-manufacturers took up the direct production of these devices. In general, it turned out to be one of many SSDs on the market based on the Silicon Motion controller and TLC memory. True, unlike most budget devices (and such a bundle is widely used in them), representatives of the 540s line are sold with a five-year warranty, and even without a limit on the total amount of recorded data, but you have to pay for it — in the truest sense of the word. For a slightly higher price, you can get a 600p of similar capacity, which comes with the same five-year warranty (albeit with a TBW limit of 72 TB for every 128 GB of capacity, but in practice this is still too much for typical personal use), plus a trendy and forward-looking interface . In principle, most likely, it was intended 🙂

However, the installation base for SATA devices still outnumbers NVMe-enabled systems, especially in the retail market, where SSDs are often purchased to upgrade older computers. Accordingly, it is useful to “keep” at least one such line in the assortment. But focusing exclusively on third-party supplies means not having flexibility in terms of pricing policy and other issues. Actually, if IMFT had no problems with mastering 3D NAND TLC, the 540s family might not have appeared on the market. However, there were problems, so the company chose to skip the first generation of 32-layer chips and go directly to new chips with 64 layers. At the same time, a slightly modified Silicon Motion controller arrived in time. As a result, these components met in the new family of Intel SSD 545s. nine0006

Intel 545s 256 and 512 GB

There are currently six models in the family, two of which we tested. The third has a capacity of 128 GB and was announced this quarter — primarily for the needs of the OEM market, since such devices are too small for retail. In addition, all capacitive modifications have analogues in the M.2 form factor (256 GB in this version appeared in the last quarter), which is gradually turning into the main industry standard. The interface is the same in all cases — SATA, since the company uses the Silicon Motion SM2259 controller. It differs from the already well-known SM2258 only cosmetically: ECC support for the DRAM buffer has been added. In principle, the capacity of this buffer can already reach a gigabyte or more, so this innovation will not hurt, but it cannot be called significant: this line of Silicon Motion controllers is entirely aimed at the budget segment of the market, since they all continue to be single-core four-channel. Thus, even the new models in this line are not too fundamentally different from the good old SM2246, which during the reign of MLC memory did not have enough stars from the sky. But his heirs, in connection with the transition to TLC, quickly acquired support for LDPC encoding and «dual mode» (SM2259, as well as SM2258, «can» write data directly to an array of flash cells «past» the cache buffer, and if there is free space — in fast SLC mode), turned out to be one of the best offers on the market. In principle, this is not surprising: the direction of SATA controllers is generally recognized as a dead end, you won’t earn big money on it. Actually, Silicon Motion didn’t even have free numbers for the (theoretically possible) appearance of new models in the family: the SM226x line is already a PCIe and NVMe interface. However, this is unlikely to be necessary: ​​at least half a year remains before the introduction of QLC memory (according to optimistic forecasts), but we will not be surprised if it turns out that SM2259suitable for her too.

It is worth noting that, despite the possibility of equipping these controllers with a large amount of DRAM, this possibility is not used in the Intel 545s line: the 256 and 512 GB models are equipped with one DDR3L chip with a capacity of 4 Gb (i.e. 512 MB). True, the capacity of these SSDs is also small from the point of view of modernity, but this is explained by the NAND chips used. The fact is that the 64-layer 3D NAND TLC has two modifications: with 256 and 512 Gb crystals. By the first generation of the company’s memory (and 32-layer 3D TLC crystals, we recall, have a capacity of 384 Gbit), there were many complaints about the speed of work, including due to greatly increased pages and blocks. At the same time, even the capabilities of budget controllers such as the same SM22xx line in devices of “typical capacity” usually remained not fully utilized (as a rule, three channels out of every four), which reduced the degree of parallelism in operation. Within the limits of the SLC cache, performance was not bad (especially considering the «dynamic approach» to it in SM2258), but in general, work with the flash memory array was very slow and with long delays. New 256 Gb crystals should solve this problem, which is especially important for low-capacity drives, and 512 GB can already be considered such. More capacious models will use 512 Gb crystals, which will not hurt them — there are still a lot of such crystals 🙂

The warranty for the new series remains five years, which is rare for drives based on TLC memory — Intel is true to itself in this. But the limit on the total amount of recorded data has appeared, but remains purely theoretical, as in 600r: the same 72 TB for every 128 GB of capacity. The record set by the Plextor M7V (80 TB for every 128 GB of capacity) continues to hold, but the “record holder” himself does not aim at it, “assigning” a TBW value of 70 TB to the new S3 512 GB — this is less than even declared for the younger 128 GB Intel 545s! In any case, in practice, for the buyer, the length of the warranty period and how easy it is to use is more important for the buyer — and in this regard, Intel has always been doing well. Here with the prices — it happened sometimes, so we will not touch on them. Well, let’s mention that the drives were tested with firmware version LHF002C, and let’s move on to a practical test of their abilities. nine0006

Competitors

To evaluate the new SSDs, we will need the results of three previously tested ones. First, the AData Ultimate SU800 and the «related» Transcend SSD230S: both use the Silicon Motion SM2258 controller and Micron’s «first generation» 3D NAND memory (i. e. with 32 layers). Secondly, we can’t do without Intel 600p, where the same memory is adjacent to the Silicon Motion SM2260H controller: formally, this is a different class, but in fact the drives are comparable, so in the eyes of many buyers they will be direct competitors. If we compare Intel 600p with Intel 545s, they have different memory and controller, and functionally SM2260H is inferior to SM2258/SM2259in everything except the interface: it has neither direct recording to flash, nor LDPC support. Therefore, the replacement of the «six hundred» is planned, and it will be the one that will be as similar as possible to the 545s — differing only in the interface. But so far it is not only in stores, but also in our laboratory 🙂

Note that all three reference drives have a capacity of 512 GB, and we have Intel 545s with both 512 GB and 256 GB. But that makes it even more interesting: to see how much the younger model (we are no longer inclined to take 128 GB seriously outside the OEM market) is inferior to the older one is also useful. Especially if you want to save money. nine0006

Testing

Testing procedure

The procedure is described in detail in separate article . There you can get acquainted with the hardware and software used.

Performance in applications

As has been said more than once (and not only by us), all SSDs are approximately the same as a “system drive”, but radically differ only from the “mechanics”. Which is understandable — at the moment, solid-state drives are not a «bottleneck» in the system, so some differences between them can only be looked for when other software and hardware environments «do not interfere.» However, with this approach, it is simply obvious that the existence of the entire segment of SATA devices in itself no longer makes sense: all the same, flash memory makes the main contribution to the cost of the device (which has always been, there are will be ), so that an inexpensive «replacement» of the controller alone can achieve much more. Which is inapplicable only to those cases when NVMe devices will not work normally at all (in an old computer, for example), but there’s no time to compare performance 🙂 And when it can be compared at all, then SATA devices are always in ( a little ) laggards. The advantage of which is low price and high compatibility, but not potential performance. Moreover, anyway, the latter remains at the same level as before. Not bad, of course — both the SU800 and the SSD230S are fast devices in their class, but nothing more. nine0006

Sequential operations

Sequential read speed naturally «rests on the interface» whenever it can. Therefore, there is no competition within the class of SATA devices. Between different classes of SSD, it also does not and cannot be: although 600r is one of the slowest NVMe drives, this is enough.

And when writing data, the flash memory itself is a limiting factor, but this can be corrected with SLC caching. It works fine in this scenario because the data area is limited to 2 GB. As a result, the only thing that makes sense to pay attention to is a small loss of 545s at 256 GB to other test participants. But it is really small — in practice, you can ignore it. nine0006

Random access

The benefits of the new memory are clearly visible when reading with a single queue length — this is the most common scenario in a personal computer, and not amenable to any intensive ways to improve performance, with the exception of a radical one: a complete change of media. Therefore, in such conditions, the 545s turns out to be the leader — albeit with a slight advantage over the others, but, we repeat, it is impossible to get «big» here without switching to 3D XPoint, for example. Accordingly, this is not bad, but otherwise — nothing special. But nothing special was expected. nine0006

Working with large files

As well as reading large amounts of data — as expected . Reading is good with flash memory — regardless of the type, so only the interface (when it does) is holding it back.

But it’s impossible to cope with recording in a normal way without the operating modes that appeared in the SM2258 (and remained in the SM2259, of course), but are absent in the SM2260H and the vast majority of controllers on the market. The difference between the two groups is radical, and the 545s falls into the «fast» category. Naturally, this is true primarily for the 512 GB model — the younger version is noticeably slower simply because of less parallelism. nine0006

But when writing simultaneously with reading at pseudo-random addresses (which in practice will be more common than “pure” sequential operations), “two-mode” is no longer a panacea, and SLC caching generally does not help much due to the limited size of the cache itself. We noted this in the AData Ultimate SU800 review, and since then, of course, nothing has changed — except for the appearance of a slightly faster memory, which is just used in the new series of Intel drives.

Ratings

In terms of low-level performance, the 545s series is unimaginative, and Anvil’s Storage Utilities integral evaluation brings these numbers together. To get the maximum number of «parrots» it is better to use other controllers, since the price of the finished SSD is basically still determined not by them, but by the memory itself.

In general (taking into account the results of high-level tests), two representatives of the new Intel family are confidently integrated into the dense rows of other SATA devices, and closer to the top of the list. This is not surprising: such solutions have a «ceiling» reached a long time ago. But earlier this “ceiling” was achieved for a lot of money, but now the same speed indicators can be achieved cheaper. However, if you overdo it with «cheaper», you get something like the GoodRam CX300 or WD Green — although this is better than the Intel X25-M, which once cost several hundred dollars. Given these factors, the main competition between SSDs is on price and warranty — especially since this is the main factor holding back the expansion of solid state drives. And the performance was enough before. nine0006

Prices

The table below shows the average retail prices of SSDs tested today, as of the time you read this article:

Total

The main task that manufacturers set themselves when implementing TLC memory was to get the same thing that was achieved using MLC, but cheaper. And it can be argued that, in general, this problem has been solved. Some users still have a prejudice against this type of memory, but this is nothing new — exactly the same thing happened with the introduction of MLC. It’s just that then the market was smaller, so the processes were less noticeable 🙂 Well, in the near future, we expect the appearance of devices based on QLC memory, and even manufacturers are somewhat less optimistic about it. But in any case, the level reached now in the SATA segment will probably turn out to be the best: in the future, the main passions will boil in completely different parts of the market. In that sense, the 545s may forever be Intel’s best SATA offering. Moreover, the company is ready to sell its drives with a five-year warranty, which many manufacturers did not even in the days of the MLC. So, in general, the Intel 545s family is interesting, but the final choice in retail will depend, of course, on specific prices, as it always happens. nine0006

SSD Intel Original SATA III 256Gb SSDSCKKW256G8 958690 SSDSCKKW256G8 545s Series M.2 2280 — 1072667

• Laptops and tablets

• PC accessories

• nine0002 Peripherals

• Network equipment

• Consumables

• nine0002 Televisions and media

• Portable electronics

• Household appliances

• nine0002 Auto goods

• Tools and equipment

• Sports, recreation, hobbies

Home > Catalog >
PC Accessories >
SSD drives >
M. 2

SSD Intel Original SATA III 256Gb SSDSCKKW256G8 958690 SSDSCKKW256G8 545s Series M.2 2280

nine0092 N/A

Price: 2850 ₽

Last sale price. Specify the possibility of ordering and the current price in the store.

Features

EAN code	735858342988
Key features
Interface	SATA III
Storage capacity	256 GB
Form factor	M.