Intel 660p SSD with QLC officially released. Incredibly cheap, but less durable

The battle to offer faster, more powerful SSDs at lower prices has begun. After months of reports, the Intel 660p was officially launched by Intel.

Intel 660p: QLC memory and price of destruction, but what about reliability?

Intel 660p, Intel 660p SSD with QLC officially released. Incredibly cheap, but less durable,
Intel is crowned with this new SSD in terms of capacity/speed/price, and that is the price of the first unit we will talk about: these M.2 NVMe drives will sell for $99, i.e. less than 100 Euros for the 512GB version that interests us most, as this is the approximate price of an SSD SATA with TLC 3D of the same capacity. We compare the performance figures that Intel offers with the potentially biggest competitor, the Samsung 860 EVO:

	Sequential reading	Sequential writing	IOPS Random reading	IOPS Random Write
Intel 660p 512GB (<100 €)	Up to 1500 MB /s	Up to 1000 MB/s	Up to 90,000 IOPS	Up to 220,000 IOPS
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB (€ 100)	Up to 560 MB/s	Up to 530 MB/s	Up to 100,000 IOPS	Up to 90,000 IOPS

The secret to impressive performance with high capacity at such a low price lies in the QLC memories, let’s see what it’s all about.

Intel 660p, Intel 660p SSD with QLC officially released. Incredibly cheap, but less durable,
(Image source: Panasonic)

The NAND flash memory (on which SSDs are based) is divided into several cells that store a certain number of bits depending on the memory type. The SLC memory stores 1-bit information in each cell and allow a maximum of two states (0, 1). These memories are very expensive and are only used as a small cache in some SSDs. The MLC memories, 2 bits, and four states. TLC, 3 bits, and eight states. Finally, we have the new QLC memories with 4 bits and 16 possible states.

This means that QLC memory has the highest data density per cell and is therefore much more cost-effective than TLC and MLC. However, this density leads to a lower reliability of the memories. If many people are already sceptical about the use of TLC memories in favor of MLC, QLC can be even more questionable. Higher density also means poorer performance, but here the 660p offers big numbers for its price, also thanks to its built-in SLC cache.

Specifically, we compared the Intel 660p guaranteed durability with the 860 EVO and the 860 PRO (which uses MLC), and the data are as follows: 100TBW, 300TBW, and 600TBW accordingly. It is only the manufacturer’s guarantee that it could more or less hold, but it is a good indicator of what the QLC means.

Intel was the first manufacturer to introduce QLC memory to the domestic market, and other manufacturers will follow in the coming months.

However, the warranty is valid for 5 years (or up to 100TBW), so that the user can decide to what extent it is a reliable SSD. Remember that it’s difficult to reach 100 TB within 5 years, so it’s probably a really attractive option for home users who don’t use it “extensively” as compared to business customers or store critical data.

The price of the 1TB unit is $199 and the 2TB unit would be $400 with $200TBW (compared to $1200TBW for the Samsung 860 EVO and $2400TBW for the PRO, but much cheaper than both) What do you think, do you think it will be reliable enough?

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