Intel Unveils SSD 5 Series Solid State Drives

Intel unveiled the SSD 5 series (SSD 540s) of mainstream solid-state drives. The SSD 5 Series is part of Intel’s new nomenclature for its consumer SSD lineup. The SSD 7 Series leads the pack with the highest performance, leveraging exotic interfaces such as M.2 PCIe, U.2, or PCIe add-on card, and NVMe protocol; the SSD 5 Pro series retains conventional 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s and M.2 SATA interfaces, but with the fastest MLC NAND flash memory. The SSD 5 series, however, offers TLC NAND flash memory, and is designed to be cost-effective.

The series comes in capacities of 180 GB, 240 GB, 360 GB, 480 GB, and 1 TB, and in two form-factors – 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch, and 80 mm M.2 with SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Transfer rates vary by model, but you’re looking at read speeds of up to 560 MB/s, with write speeds of up to 480 MB/s. The SSD 5 Series is perhaps the only TLC NAND flash SSD in the market to ship with a 5-year warranty.