Meet the next great budget SSD. Intel’s 545s is an affordable yet reasonably fast SSD that finally demotes Samsung’s EVO from the top spot in the consumer space. At $180 for 512GB, the 545s offers all the capacity and cost advantages of TLC NAND plus the sustained write speed of MLC NAND.-
[h=Design and specs]2[/h]Our first glimpse of the 545s with its raised edges had us thinking ‘sardine tin’ in a positive way: sleek and shiny. The drive’s 7mm profile appears thinner thanks to the indented upper and lower surfaces.
Inside our test unit was a Silicon Motion SM2259 controller and 512GB of Intel’s new 256-gigabit, 64-layer stacked (3D) floating-gate type NAND. Perhaps it’s the gate that’s responsible for the performance—Intel wasn’t saying, and in fact the company didn’’t play up performance as much as it played up-the longevity and reliability behind the five-year warranty. Most drives this price are warrantied for only three years. The 288 TBW (TeraBytes Written) rating is also exceptional—the company apparently has a lot of faith in the controller and its NAND.-
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