Intel SSD 660P M.2 NVMe SSD Review (1TB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

We also wanted to see how performance was in a real-world use when transferring large files to the SSD. For this test, we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of a 250GB Samsung 960 EVO to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.

Thanks to Intel’s large dynamic SLC cache, the Intel 660p wrote our 30GB test folder at an average rate of 1313MB/s, which places it up with some of the fastest SSDs.

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now, we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.

First up we have our results with Active State Power Management disabled. Here it consumed on average 669mW of power, which is one of the best results we’ve seen and less than the 600p it replaces.

In the chart above, with ASPM enabled, we can see that it consumes even less power. At just 26mW, the 660p even outdoes the SATA based Samsung 850 EVO and attains the lowest idle power consumption we have seen out of an NVMe SSD yet.

POWER EFFICIENCY

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in write transfers. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.

With an average of 381MB/s per watt, the Intel 660p nearly ties the WD Black for efficiency and is more power efficient than the Samsung 970 Pro!