NVMe? Well, quite. Now Intel, too, is pumping out consumer QLC SSDs

Intel has launched two QLC (4bits/cell) SSDs – one for consumers and one for data centre use. Intel's Navin Shenoy Intel: Yeah, yeah, 10nm. It's on the todo list. Now, let's talk about AI... READ MORE This follows Samsung's recent announcement of a QLC SSD for the consumer market. Intel, as you'd expect, has noted that these …

[Snowy]

Some things is not quite right.

It does not have 256GB of DRAM on board not at that price anyway, looking around I see it should be 256MB of DRAM.

[earl grey]

that's not the only strange thing

"52GB, 1TB and 2TB"

i know it's just a typo, but does anyone look at these any more?

[ArrZarr]

Re: that's not the only strange thing

Considering the 1TB clocks in at $199, compared to a 1TB Samsung 960 evo at $500, you can bet your bottom dollar I was looking. I certainly wouldn't mind switching out my old 256GB NvME and also getting rid of four mismatched SSDs and HDDs for a 2TB 660p and some 4-8TB HDD for storage.

Oh, you meant the editors...

[Anonymous Coward]

My understand is there's not an "SLC write cache"

Instead it uses some of the QLC as SLC when there's free space, until it gets to something like 60% full. So if you choose to use only half the device, it will be VERY fast for writes thanks to the SLC write cache. If it fill it up, it loses that advantage and is up to 88% slower. Pretty clever, and a good compromise between price and performance.

[David Roberts]

Re: My understand is there's not an "SLC write cache"

So to put it another way, beyond 60% full the performance drops off a cliff?

Makes me wonder if you would be better off with a smaller (or more expensive) drive and a proper SLC write cache.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My understand is there's not an "SLC write cache"

Well yes, where "cliff" = "still orders of magnitude faster than any hard drive, and competitive with SSDs from just a few years ago". How fast do you need your SSD to be? Most people could use one of those Intel 320 series SSDs from almost a decade ago - which I still do as boot & /home - and not notice if they got the 10x or more speedup possible from the latest and greatest.

If you regularly copy multi gigabyte files, or run an Oracle DB for fun, then yeah you probably want to make sure you don't run into the 88% slowdown.

As for "better off with a smaller or more expensive drive with a proper SLC write cache"...you already have that with this Intel one. You want one that's smaller, use only half its capacity (by leaving half unpartitioned) and you're fine, or you could buy one of Intel's that's twice the size for presumably twice the price, and again use half of it. The nice thing about using half of a drive is that you have some spare storage in case you ever need it in a pinch, something you don't have if you buy a smaller or more expensive one and use its full capacity.