The Intel SSD 540s Series is a compact, secure and low-power storage solution, designed for a range of devices from Ultrabooks to desktops and laptops. It delivers a perfect combination of performance, Intel quality and reliability, and power efficiency to optimize your computing experience across a variety of computing devices. Moreover, the 540s Series offers increased value as Intel's first TLC-based drive in the Intel SSD 5 Series family.
Accelerating Your Performance
The 540s Series accelerates platform performance with sequential reads of up to 560 MBps and sequential writes of up to 480MBps, and random read and write input/output operations [IOPS] of up to 78K and 85K respectively.
Performance that Matters
The 540s Series is architected to optimize performance for a 70%/ 30% 4KB random read/write mixed work load, the most utilized workload across common applications, delivering performance where it matters.
TLC Done Right
Utilizing a uniquely architected combination of single level cell [SLC] cache and triple level cell [TLC] NAND Flash Memory, the 540s Series delivers an optimized balance of performance and value.
Encryption Technology to Secure Your Data
The 540s Series features AES 256-bit encryption technology to encrypt your data and help keep your personal files secure.
Lower Power Consumption
Managing tasks efficiently, the 540s Series reduces the drain on your battery. It reduces idle consumption by >90%, compared to a typical hard drive disk, reducing power consumption from watts to milliwatts. When coupled with a 6th Gen Intel Core-based platform, the advanced power mode settings reduce power consumption another order of magnitude - from milliwatts to microwatts.
Flexibility for Any Solution
The 540s Series is the first Intel 5 Series drive to deliver up to 1 TB of storage capacity. Available in both the 2.5" and M.2 80mm form factors, and with storage capacities ranging from 120 GB to 1 TB, the 540s Series accelerates performance across a variety of computing devices.
The drive was very easy to install and is performing like a champ. This is the first Intel SSD that I have purchased and I couldn't be happier. I migrated from a Samsung that was doing great as well but it was just too small at 120G. I have to say the price I paid for this 480G was just a bit higher than the 120 cost me a couple of years ago.
It's an excellent product for the price.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2017
Beware. Its a toss up if you will get the M.2 drive or the 2.5" drive. I ordered 2 of these. One was a 2.5" drive, the other was a M.2 drive. Other than that, I have been really happy with the Intel SSD's in 2.5" form factor.
The mixed random I/O benchmark starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. The queue depth is 3 for the entire test and each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. As with the pure random write test, this test is restricted to a 16GB span of the drive, which is empty save for the 16GB test file.
On the mixed random I/O test the Intel 540s has a stark advantage over almost all other planar TLC drives, and is close to the low-end MLC drives and SanDisk X400.
Power consumption is middle of the road, so the Intel 540s comes out at ahead of most of the TLC drives in terms of efficiency, though the SP550 is not far behind.
The performance of the Intel 540s never dropped as the proportion of writes in the workload increased, but it also didn't show the common big jump in performance during the final pure-write phase of the test.
Mixed Sequential Read/Write Performance
The mixed sequential access test covers the entire span of the drive and uses a queue depth of one. It starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. Each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The drive is filled before the test starts.
The mixed sequential I/O performance of the Intel 540s is significantly improved over the SM2256 drives, but that still only brings it up to par for planar TLC.
The power usage of the Intel 540s is relatively high, so it doesn't have great efficiency even by TLC standards.
The Intel 540s is both faster and more power hungry than the SP550 at every point during this test. Performance still doesn't bounce back appreciably with the pure writes phase of the test, which keeps the average down despite the good read performance at the beginning.