Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD With 5Yr Warranty Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,353 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the Intel 520 series SSD I know it's another SSD
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unboxing and there's not much different because this is a sand Force Space drive
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and it's a 240 gig drive and these exist before but wait no no no this is other
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more different sand Force drive so while the Intel 520 series drive has a San
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Force SATA 3 6 GB per second controller in it okay so let's just see if there's
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anything else it has to say for itself on the outside of the box before we
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before we get into this okay so we got the data manufacturer which was sort of
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not that long ago we got a product code we got a capacity comes in a variety of
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capacities including 120 gig 240 gig okay we've got the Box contents which
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we'll see obviously cuz this is an unboxing that means we open the box
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super fast hard drive alternative and they right rugged silent and solid
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they're right about that too and it is SATA 6 GB per second and SATA 3 GB per
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second compatible comes with a 5year warranty Intel actually includes a
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5-year warranty with their San Force Drive which brings me to what is special
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about an Intel San Force SATA 3 6 GB per
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second drive and that is that well one
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why did it take them so long to get to Market I don't know if you guys remember
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this but there was a there was quite a bit of flak going around about San Force
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SATA 3 drives and not being reliable enough and etc etc etc and I'm going to
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let you guys in on on a little secret well my suspicion of a little secret
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anyway I suspect that Intel was planning
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a sand Force Drive ages ago but because
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they were the ones whose internal validation found that there were still
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problems with it they never released one until now so not only have they
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addressed the reliability issues that people were having with sand Force
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drives which by and large are resolved with the other manufacturers now as well
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okay so let's let's assume for a second that the reliability is equivalent which
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I don't know is necessarily true because at least at NCI Intel has the lowest
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return rate out of all SSD manufacturers like definitely the lowest although
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they're more expensive so bear that in mind as well Intel has also tuned the
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performance of their San for SATA 3 6 gbit per second drive to the point where
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it is now faster than anyone else's in spite of the fact that it only uses
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synchronous Intel flash it doesn't even use toggle flash so without the
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advantage of the fastest possible possible flash out there they're achieving better performance than anyone
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else so they have done reliability tuning and performance tuning on this
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controller in order to achieve the best possible drive to deliver to their
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customers so this is a replacement for the 510 series drive that performs
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better and I mean what else is there to really say about it beyond that so here
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we go let's have a look at the drive itself you can see there's four screws on the top that allow you to remove this
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plastic piece right here allowing you to install it in laptops that require a low
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profile 2 and 1/2 in Drive drive or laptops that require a full height uh 2
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and 1/2 in drive you got all your standard mounting holes on the bottom you can see this equipment is provided
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by the Intel demo Depot cool okay uh you
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got sorry did I say you have your mounting holes here and your mounting holes here I really don't know why they
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don't do something about like the finish on these drives cuz they're all kind of like this I wouldn't mind if they were
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sort of a little shiny Kingston does a great job with the Aesthetics of their
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drives um I don't know it just seems kind of
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it's very rugged so it depends what you're after guess if you're looking for something sort of rugged and corporate
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then that works uh what do we have for included accessories Intel is one of the
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best when it comes to uh well included
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accessories because they are very uh I
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mean that's that's kind of their thing it's like with an Intel product that you
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buy you expect it to come with everything you need you expect it to work 100% right out of the box it's
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their corporate expectation of themselves and that customers have of
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them so they include everything you need here we have the Intel data
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migration software can be downlo loed from Intel.com go/ SSD installation that
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only works on Intel drives and it actually does work I've used it in the
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past it allows you to quickly and easily transition your system from a hard drive
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to an SSD comes with a SATA cable made
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by foxcom there you go foxcon makes
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everything it's amazing uh then we've got five ha look at this I love it I
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love it when companies do this five desktop screws five um like notebook
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screws so this allows you to install it uh in whatever kind of configuration you
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require so if you're using an adapter then you'll use these screws to mount
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the adapter into your case and you'll use these screws to mount it to the adapter but why do they include five
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they include five just in case there's a miscount so no matter what happens
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you'll always have enough screws because they include five so even if you're one
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short you'll still have four which is what you actually need you also get a
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speed demon sticker you also get an Intel solid state drive important web
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links thing you get a Molex to SATA adapt power ad
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cable and you get an included 2 and 1/2
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in to 3 and 1/2 in Drive sled which gives you a lot of different flexibility
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more flexible options in terms of where you want to mount the drive on it maybe
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you got like a hot swap cage or something like that you're going to put it in you want to make sure everything
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lines up right so there you go so you'll use these screws to mount it to this and
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these screws to mount this to your case which has all the same mounting points
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as a 3 and half inch hard drive and is one of the more rugged and robust I mean
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here I'll contrast this with what comes with uh Intel's competitor drives I
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think I have one lying around over
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here so I'm not going to name any names but uh this one's made of aluminum and
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like look how much Flex it has which I'm not saying actually matters or anything
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but you know if you're going to be Intel and overbuild everything you might as
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well overbuild everything so there you have it this is the Intel 520 series SSD
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and the reason I have this is I'm actually going to be doing a 240 to 256
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gig SSD Roundup on my ncixcom channel so make sure you're subscribed to that one
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as well because we're going to have a look at this one a couple other sand
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Force drives we're going to have a look at an indel Link's Everest Drive and
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finally The crucial M4 and see how they all stack up don't forget to subscribe
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