Overall and Final Verdict

The Intel 750 Series is a really interesting set of drives. I suspect a lot of people are going to be baffled the first time they see one of the 2.5 inch drives. At this point, most enthusiasts and gamers have seen or heard of PCIe drives, but a PCIe drive in a 2.5 form factor is interesting. I think it is a great addition though, as someone who builds far too many ITX builds having the option that leaves my PCIe slot open for a video card is still a requirement. Most ITX boards already have M.2 slots and at least a few even went as far as to make sure their M.2 slot had 4 lanes. A great example of this is the latest Asus Impact, they actually delayed its launch to change things around to fit 4 lanes to the M.2.

So how did the 1.2 TB PCIe model that we tested today perform? Well without a question it blew everything we have ever tested in the past out of the water. Even saying that doesn’t really give the drive justice. When testing at a high queue depth I saw results that were a 525% increase over the next fastest drive! Wrap your head around that one. This happened in every single benchmark, the 750 Series is without a doubt a monster. That said in all of our testing I did struggle to get even close to the results Intel suggests the drive is capable. I was able to see that and higher when doing specific testing, but my concern is that the drive does still tend to favor very high queue depth situations that I don’t think nearly anyone in a consumer or even enthusiast setting will run into. I’m not saying this isn’t a monster drive, but keep in mind that day to day you are going to be leaving a lot on the table, unless you are using this in a high workload server that is.

No surprises with the warranty, being designed after their enterprise drive Intel was able to put a solid 5 year warranty on the 750 Series. Something I didn’t talk about but the move to NVMe also means a little less load on the CPU when you are hitting the drive extremely hard with high IOPS. They say that you can see around a 36% increase in those situations. On the downside I was a little bummed that there isn’t a third model available. I think the 400GB model is good for some people, but a lot of enthusiasts will be looking for a little more but not as much as the 1.2TB offers. A 600 or 800 GB model would be great. This is especially important when we consider pricing as well. Here is the current breakdown on Amazon.

400GB $389 (Amazon)

1.2TB $1029 (Amazon)

Both are priced well when you take into account price per gig but the high capacity of the 1.2TB drive hits the wallet realty hard! So is this the drive for you? Well if you are looking at this as an upgrade you first need to make sure that it is going to work at all in your build. X99 and Z97 builds are good to go though. If you need the absolute fastest this is the way to go though. I know if my builds budget allowed I would be looking at one! 

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #36562 02 Apr 2015 18:59
Today I take a look at a monster of an SSD from Intel. It is available in both PCIe and 2.5 inch models so it will fit in your main PC or your LANrig as well!
Sideout's Avatar
Sideout replied the topic: #36572 03 Apr 2015 19:40
Maybe Intel will give us one to throw in the LANOC server for the lan parties??!!!! (Hint hint wish wish???)

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