Intel 730 Jackson Ridge 240GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Intel 730 240GB SSD3. Intel 730 240GB SSD (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. PCMark 89. IOMETER10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

The Intel 730 ‘Jackson Ridge' has been an interesting Solid State Drive to analyse, as it is using a controller lifted from Intel's enterprise market. To make the product more interesting for the enthusiast sector, Intel have overclocked both the controller and NAND flash memory.

The performance of the 730 is excellent, it is a clear indication that Intel are still able to create a controller which can compete in 2014. The Intel 730 also deserves special praise for its ability to deal equally well with both compressible and incompressible data.

While the 5 year warranty of this drive may be matched by some of Intel's competitors, the data throughput warranty rating is class leading. The Intel 730 has some clear and strong selling points.

Competitors have quoted 20GB writes per day, while OCZ have upped this recently to 50GB a day with their Vector 150 Solid State Drive. The Intel 730 is rated to 70GB a day which could be beneficial if you have a very high daily workload, such as editing high definition video or rendering large 3D scenes.

We also appreciate the 47 μF rated capacitors which will ensure data gets transferred from the cache to flash memory, during a power failure. There are situations when the Intel 730 would successfully store critical data when other drives would fail.

The main negative with the smaller 730 drive is the reasonably weak write performance. The 480GB drive is rated at 470MB/s sequential write, but the 240GB capacity sadly takes a substantial hit, dropping to 270 MB/s. If write performance is very important we would recommend you spend the extra cash and get the larger 480GB version of the drive.

Overclockers UK have the 240GB unit available for pre-order at £179.99 inc vat, and the 480GB unit at £349.99 inc vat. If long term reliability and incompressible data performance is important then the 240GB has a lot to offer.

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Pros:

• 5 year warranty with 70GB of data rated per day.
• incompressible and compressible performance is very strong.
• IOPS performance.
• Intel drives have proven to be very reliable since they launched.
• built in capacitors act as a data safety measure.

Cons:

• A little more expensive than some leading competitor drives at same capacity.
• 240GB drive takes a 200 MB/s write hit compared to the 480GB drive.

Kitguru says: An excellent drive from Intel and one geared for long term reliability with balanced all round performance. If you move a lot of data around every day, this should be right at the top of your shortlist.

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