Intel SSD 750 Series 1.2TB PCIe X4 NVMe Card Review

There are three main SSD form factors available today. The first is the standard 2.5 inch SSD, the second is the stick-of-gum sized M.2 PCIe SSD, and finally we have PCIe SSD cards, which are more commonly found in servers in enterprise. 3.5 inch SSDs are most popular, offering great performance and value, and the new M.2 PCIe SSDs have homes in both new motherboards with the new slot, and even come with adapters, allowing you to reinvigorate an older system.  Finally, we have the PCIe NVMe SSD cards that fill a large void for pro users willing to spend more for top performance for desktop use.

The recently announced Intel SSD 750 Series fills that void, and comes in two flavors: A PCIe 3.0 X4 card  for top performance, and a 2.5 inch version. Today we’ll looking at the PCIe version that goes up to 1.2TB, and offers high performance without the enterprise cost. Just how high a performance and cost? Let’s get some answers!

Features and Specifications

Intel SSD 750 series PCIe 3.0 X4 1.2TB card is best suited for your empty PCIe X4 and above slots, found on most motherboards made within the last five years at least. Naturally, the performance of the card is going to be higher than the 2.5 inch version, and thus, will be the focus of our performance review.

As you can see above, the PCIe version out-muscles the conventional 2.5 inch version in the same series, but it does put up a fight. Intel also launched two new cables to pair with the 2.5″ SSD. One is the SFF8639 (small form factor) desktop cable option and even smaller SFF8643 cable option for mini-ITX systems. These will properly power the 2.5″ SSD and help save a little space. That’s all we’re going to say about this one for now.

The Intel SSD 750 PCIe utilizes NVM Express high performance 20nm NAND best suited for multi-core systems. If you recall your SSD history, Intel launched similar NAND in their SSD 520 which was necessary in order to stack chips for higher capacities. With the PCIe 3.0 X4 card, space isn’t a problem. However, the 20nm NAND should make higher capacities feasible in the 2.5″ SSD. Could we see a higher capacities later? It’s very plausible.

All Intel SSD 750 PCIe 3.0 X4 cards will ship with both a PCIe low profile and conventional slot cover. This is useful for installing into systems with low profile slots only. The only thing you need to do is make sure you have an appropriate PCIe x4 and above slot to plug the card into.

The final specification is of course the price. With 1.2TBs of storage onboard, the Intel SSD 750 series PCIe x4 card will retail for around $1000 US. So you’re looking at about a buck a gigabyte, putting it on the more premium side of the consumer fence. However, you also get an enterprise grade 5 year warranty to go with that.

Test System Setup

In order to test out the Intel SSD 750 series PCIe x4, we assembled the following test system, on an Intel X99 platform.

• Processor: Intel Core i7-5960X Sandy Bridge-E
• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A
• Memory: Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 (@ 2133MHz)
• Storage 1: Kingston HyperX 3K 480GB SSD (Single and RAID0)
• Storage 2: Intel SSD 750 1.2TB PCIe (as tested)
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
• Power: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 850W 80Plus Platinum
• Cooling: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3
• OS: Windows 8.1 (patched)
• Case: be quiet! Silent 800 Enclosure

We updated all software to the latest versions, including the latest motherboard BIOS, Intel’s Management Engine software, Chipset driver from ASUS and the very important Intel NVMe Driver 1.1.0.1004-x64 driver.

Installation and Software Setup

Since we have seen the 2.5 inch SSDs a thousand times, we’re happy to look at something different for a change. The card has an attractive aluminum heat sink stretching across the length of the card. Our unit came pre-installed with the shorter PCI bracket. However, just a couple Philips screws later, and the adapters were switched, allowing us to mount it into a conventional ATX test bench.

Besides just installing the card and loading drivers, like you would any graphics card or audio card, you have some options that you can tweak with the included software.

Intel’s SSD Toolbox is a very handy tool to use with the SSD 750 PCIe card. It’s proven useful keeping SSDs clean and running at optimal speeds despite capacity loads. It’s just too bad that so few intuitive tools like this are bundled with SSDs.

Performance Benchmarks

To better understand the Intel’s SSD 750 series PCIe’s performance, we used a number of benchmarks including, CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, AS SSD Benchmark and a copy/paste time trial using a 12GB VM, to give you an overall idea of performance. RAID0 SSD results, using two HyperX 480GB SSDs, were included in CDM and ATTO benchmarks, giving you an idea of what the fastest conventional 2.5 inch SSDs, in their fastest configuration, can do against a component like this.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4

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Despite CDM’s crushing compression tests, the Intel SSD 750 PCIe 1.2TB performs more like a RAID0 array with four 2.5 inch SSDs, crushing our two drive RAID 0 setup.

ATTO – Disk Benchmark

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Don’t let ATTO’s bar colors or shapes fool you. If you look at the IO numbers, the Intel SSD 750 PCIe kicks out noteworthy write IO but also impressive read IO.

AS SSD Benchmark

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Taking things back to basics, here we see the Intel SSD 750 PCIe 1.2TB against a single 2.5″ Kingston HyperX 3K 480GB SSD. The SSD 750 is about 4 times higher in sequential performance. Also, note the Access Time. In the human mind, .018 ms versus .191 ms is incomprehensible. But in computer calculations, that’s a drastic difference as a computer can accomplish a lot in that time frame. It’s almost not fair.

SSD File Copy Test

With some data to weight down the SSDs, I created 12GB VMs, and copied from one to the other. Once the buffers fill up, speeds always come down. However, the Intel SSD 750 PCIe held higher sustained transfer rates making quick work of each task. In contrast, it would take quad 480GB SSDs in RAID0 to get to that same kind of performance. However, you are adding a level of risk when working with so many drives. When one drive fails in RAID 0, your data is gone. Not to mention, all the extra space, and cable management required, to tidy that up.

Final Thoughts

The Intel SSD 750 PCIe 1.2TB in a word, would be speed. It’s a PCIe SSD capable of making excellent use of the PCI Express bus where all the bandwidth is readily available. In fact, it’s essentially RAID 0 on a card using one volume. That bandwidth reached as high as 1.6 GB/s for several seconds for certain tests, and maintained a strong 800+ MB/s in many other loaded transfer tests. In fact, it finally took four or five enterprise level Kingston E50 SSDs in RAID0, to match its performance, offline.

The positioning of the Intel SSD 750 PCIe 1.2TB is a rather unique one at the moment. There are limited options currently available and many carry high price tags inherited by their enterprise pedigrees. Intel’s own P3600s costs $2400 to $2600 for similar capacities, while the SSD 750 PCIe will only set you back around $1000 US, depending on the retailer. For regular desktop users or gamers, that’s a pretty penny. However, at around a buck a GB, that’s in line with premium 2.5 inch SSDs, and you’re getting a ton more performance, in a smaller package.

As it stands, the Intel SSD 750 PCIe 1.2TB is the fastest workstation, quasi-enterprise PCIe NVMe SSD available that doesn’t carry an enterprise price. It’s still expensive by mainstream consumer standards, but the price shouldn’t deter if you want that enterprise level performance, at a pro-sumer price. It’s definitely a “high performance” piece of gear.

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