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  • vladx - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    Wow hope the 2TB will be closer to $150.
  • danielfranklin - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    While i hate seeing these ship is high-end laptops as primary SSDs as well as being sold without letting the end users know what they are getting, im really starting to see the place in the market for them.
    Only issue if really you cant get anywhere near filling them, therefore you might as well buy a TLC drive unless you really need the ability to blow out space in the short term. Therefore the practical market is quite small for them. The realistic market seems to be everything because M.2 and SLC cache speed is apparently everything is marketing and semi technical users * rolleyes*
  • extide - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    I really want one for use as a Steam/Games drive. Seems perfect for large amounts of data that won't change much but where it's nice to have ~quick read speed. Should perform pretty well even mostly full. I'd like for them to come out with a 4TB version tho. Will probably pick up a 2TB one next year when the 665 2TB comes out tho.
  • Slash3 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    This and being used as a light OS/app drive are probably the best uses for a 660p. Few sustained writes, but fast enough during typical operation where the SLC cache isn't exhausted (even when near full). The other application is in laptops, as the 660p has extremely good power efficiency, especially at idle with Active State Power Management enabled (near 0W).

    They're not bad drives at all, but they are definitely not the weapon of choice if you're dealing with large files (eg, 4K video editing, archiving or drive cloning) on a regular basis. In these scenarios they'd ultimately be outclassed by even an old SLC/MLC/TLC SATA SSD.
  • Amandtec - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    It is the cheapest Toyota on the market. You are complaining it doesn't perform well against the Ferrari.
  • Slash3 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    It's not appreciably less expensive than a Phison E12 solution (~10%). We're comparing a Mazda to a Honda. They both make concessions to meet a price point, and should be weighed accordingly to their individual strengths and weaknesses.
  • jabber - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Yeah as a local IT support guy who gets to work on masses of 5400rpm HDD laptop junkers, I'll take ANY SSD over spinning rust any day of the year. No contest.

    Some of you have become too spoilt and forget what the real world is like out there.

    "Ohh boo hoo hoo it doesn't run at 3500MBps!"

    Big deal. Go back to 5400rpm/75MBps and massive latency then swap back to a standard SATA SSD and feel the boost.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Generally I'm in agreement, but it's worth noting that under certain circumstances the write (and/or mixed read/write) speeds on these QLC SSDs can drop to 7200rpm notebook HDD levels.
  • jabber - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Still not a problem for 99% of the ordinary domestic folks who might have them. The don't do much 'big data'. Trust me.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    If it could come close to saturating an x4 link for sequential IO I'd agree; but topping out at x2 speed is a rather large bottleneck I'd prefer to avoid even for quasi-readonly storage.
  • ksec - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    In the 2H 2020, Intel will introduce a 144 layers of QLC, I am wondering if that could bring the price of 2TB close to $100.
  • firewrath9 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    Honestly, a Phison E12 drive at 100$ is a better buy than this at 83$. You get TLC, and nearly 3x the sustained writes, and vastly better randoms.
  • extide - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    Yeah IMO these only really make sense at the 2TB point.
  • danielfranklin - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Unfortunately I bought a $2000 Asus gaming laptop (9750,2070,240hz,G-sync) and it came with a 500GB 660p in it, what a joke.
    Didn't last past the DOA check first boot for me, unfortunately most people don't have the understanding of what they are getting, nor the skill set to install and image a new disk, not that you should have to at this price...
  • Samus - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Here's hoping the 2TB is priced as such it is the only model you'd buy anyway. After all, the 1TB 660p can be had for like $80.
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Optane for consumers dead and forgotten.
  • FunBunny2 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    that's just cruel.
  • danielfranklin - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Gen 1 yeah, give it some time.
    That said, i my a 118GB Intel 800p as an OS drive in my laptop and it screams!
  • Ribbentrop - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link

    Which generation m/b is your laptop rocking? I have a Samsung Spin 7 (P100 m(b, Intel I5-7200u) running a 660p that Samsung claimed would only support an M.2 SATA.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Better endurance is nice, but that's still abysmal. I would hate to see what hitting a swap file on this drive would do to its longevity. As its a cheap drive, you could use the extra money saved to buy more RAM and disable virtual memory, but at that point though you're getting more RAM, you're probably shooting yoursel in the foot in terms of overall per system cost just to offset a problem that shouldn't even exist in the first place. Thanks TLC and QLC for giving us more capacity that we can't actually use.
  • dlum - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Meh, all these people grumbling endlessly about a product not fitting their use case, when it's clear & obvious that it is just that, e.g. not fitting their use case.

    I run a professional shop dealing with large remote sensing dataset analyses & machine learning, got a (small) cluster of machines and invested heavily in 660p SSDs and they're just ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for incredibly fast access to slowly-changing, large-file datasets, that are read many, many times. The expected endurance will last me for 4-8 years, they're dead cheap, and consume next to no power, esp. when idle. So 660p marked for me the first moment to move from HDDs to SSD for large part of my operations. The only pity being they max at 2 TB / some work required to a lot of them in the system.
    Perfect product for my use case. I will certainly enjoy the 665p upgrade as well.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Complaining about TLC is a bit of a "tell", as its performance these days is way more than high enough for 95% of use cases.

    Speak for yourself but I definitely benefit from drives larger than 500GB.
  • PeachNCream - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link

    Performance is not endurance.
  • Dragonstongue - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    ummm is the Samsung QDC not considered consumer class as they been on sale for many many months now, certainly targeted at similar price point of other consumer class SSD drives?

    maybe nvme I understand that side I suppose, thought Intel is likely not at all first and only consumer wise quad level cell?

    myself, for the price point ~$120 Canadian (if close to similar black friday pricing)
    for capacity that is pretty nice, however, the endurance of quad level overall vs 3d / TLC etc
    leaves much to be desired .. they are not nearly as fast nor have close to same endurance

    save the maker apprently big $$$$$$$$ to slap on shelf vs other types of NAND, certainly not see this reflected in the pricing for me and you though ( IMHO ) which is a crying shame

    so my sentiment, why bother even putting for consumers if we want speed / endurance / capacity best off to keep to the TLC - 3d - V-nand whatever "they" want to call it

    I quite doubt "these days" flash memory is anywhere close to the price they are charging (sole exception being the bleeding edge NVME / pci-e based stuff which is quite pricey likely much "waste" .. though I likely could be very wrong as well .. they charge whatever they want to, regardless if it costs .0000001$ to make it -- this why we cant all have nice things
  • andrewaggb - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    My samsung magician stats for my main computer show 22.7 TB written over 1.75 years of uptime for a 1 TB 850 EVO boot/system drive. I think that works out to 0.036 DWP. It's half empty and I don't have a steam or epic library on there and whatnot but it seems to me that many users (especially casual ones) should be just fine with a 660/665p.
  • vladx - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Agreed, My 840 Evo is still running without issues after almost 5 years.
  • Hurn - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    My 840 EVO has had read speed issues - voltage drift in the cell causes rereads. This was heavily commented on, back at the time (specs would show 550 MBps read, but after a couple of months, would be seeing more like 80 MBps read speed - this is when TLC was brand new). Firmware "fixes" didn't help much - only way to get full read speed back (temporarily) is completely reimaging (rewrite every block), so they made a tool which they added to their Samsung Magician app. Trouble with re-writing the drive every few months is that shortens the usable lifespan. Trade off: do you want it fast or want it to last?
  • vladx - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    That's unfortunate, in my case the second fix from Samsung completely solved any speed issues. Even with the write cycles used by the fix, my 840 Evo is still at 90% health so those consumed cycles have no real impact whatsoever.

    I've seen other people spreading FUD about the 840 Evo, I guess the world will always have gullible people who choose to believe it.

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