Introduction

Intel has been the leading company in the semiconductor industry for many years, so it's not surprising that they are involved in the SSD business too. Besides their joint flash-producing venture with Micron, the company also offers a range of consumer and enterprise SSDs.

The Intel SSD 600p was released quite a while ago, but it marks an important milestone in NVMe technology development and is still widely available, so we chose to review it, also to get some comparison data against more recent and upcoming drives.

For the 600p, which is positioned as an entry level NVMe M.2 SSD, Intel chose to combine an SMI 2260 controller with Intel/Micron 3D TLC NAND flash. In addition to a DRAM buffer, the drive also features pSLC (pseudo-SLC), which runs a portion of the MLC flash in SLC mode for increased write performance.

The Intel 600p Series SSD is available in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB (our drive in this review), and 1 TB. Warranty is set to five years for all these models.

Packaging and Contents

Inside the package, you will find just the SSD; no other accessories or documentation is included.

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 80 mm long. A heatspreader is not installed.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Intel 600p uses the PCIe x4 3.0 interface.


You will find the SSD controller and three flash chips on the PCB. A single DRAM chip is also present to provide the SSD controller with RAM and soak up write bursts.


It seems the Silicon Motion SMI 2260 controller has been customized by Intel—note the logo in the bottom-right corner.


The three 3D TLC NAND flash chips are a product of Intel's and Micron's joint venture.

Test Setup