Intel Launches Budget-Friendly 512GB SSD 545

Intel is not typically a company you associate with budget products. But the latest solid-state drive carrying the Intel name targets the value market, and it's all thanks to some extra dense memory chips.

The Intel SSD 545 is the first solid-state drive to use 64-layer TLC 3D NAND chips. Other manufacturers have talked about using these 64-layer chips, but Intel is the first to ship a commercially available drive containing them. And because each chip can store more, fewer are required to reach the typcial SSD storage capacities we all expect, meaning the drives are cheaper.

Initially, Intel will offer a 512GB SSD 545 for $180. A quick search on Amazon will show you a range of 512GB SSDs for around $150-$170, but comparing Intel's 545 with other value drives and even Intel's own old 540 drives isn't really fair.

Value SSDs are aimed at light workload scenarios and their performance falls off dramatically when they are put under a heavy load. As Anandtech found, these new SSD 545 drives from Intel may carry a low price point but they don't suffer the same performance bottleneck as other value SSDs. Also keep in mind that $180 price is set by Intel for guidance and retailers will likely drop it lower.

As for performance, you can expect sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s and sequential writes of up to 500MB/s. That's not record-breaking, but far better than a hard drive and at a much lower power consumption (4.5 watts average).

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For now, only the 512GB model is available from Newegg. However, according to Engadget, we can expect Intel to ship 545 drives with capacities ranging from 128GB right up to 2TB in the near future.