Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) 2.5" 250GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSC2MH250A2K5

Pros: Speed, speed, speed. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Using with an older Asus P5E Deluxe motherboard in a desktop configuration with a Seagate 1TB drive for user data. An Asus U3S6 add-in card is used for the USB 3.0 and SATA 6G/s interface. Benchmarks: HD Tach: 300 MB/s average read, 2690 MB/s burst (?) HD Tune: 283 MB/s average read, 1600 MB/s burst (?) Command Prompt - winsat disk: 360 MB/s sequential 64 read, 173 MB/s random 16 read, 184 MB/s sequential 64 write.

Cons: Cost.

Overall Review: The add-in card is a 4x PCIe in a 16x slot. The motherboard is supposed to run both 16x slots at the full 16x. And the card is supposed to take advantage of the 4x to give 50% performance over a 1x card. A single lane (1x) bottle necks at 320 MB/s burst. So according to ASUS I should see 480 MB/s from this card. Others have stated that you cannot get full SATA 3 (6Gb/s) performance from this card no matter what - it will perform closer to SATA 2 (3Gb/s), which is what I am seeing. It could also be that the Marvel chip on the card has only one lane to the PCIe bus - as most of the early implementations. So I guess I may have to wait until I get a motherboard upgrade in the fall to see the full performance from this drive. But even so, this drive is smokin' hot. I will never want to go back to a spinning HDD for my main drive. Time will tell if the reliability stacks up to all the reviews - especially since it is using the Marvel chip set and not an Intel.

Pros: Great speed and large size

Cons: Crazy expensive ... never would have paid for myself but work was willing.

Overall Review: I'd recommending going with their new consumer line that came out just after this one. The consumer line uses an older Intel controller instead of the Marvel one on this SSD and is quite a bit cheaper. But I do so love the speed. We had 6 OCZ SSDs that all died, and all the replacements died. Appears to be Dell laptop compat issue but OCZ said they wouldn't do anything. Intel it is!

Pros: Fastest Intel SSD, no problems at all, decent storage space

Cons: Spendy

Overall Review: This drive completely blows away my previous 300 GB Velociraptors in RAID 0. I don't even need RAID with this solution. Computer boots in about 15 sec. The included Intel tools make formatting and optimizing a snap. I bought this drive because the general consensus on the internet was that Intel is the most reliable brand of SSD. If you're looking for the highest performance possible for gaming and you have the money, but this drive. Don't bother with mechanical drives anymore.

Pros: Okay, even though Intel has a fairly obscure RMA process they did handle my RMA quickly and the return was pretty fast.

Cons: I still think Intel needs to build in an RMA process on to their web site instead of leading you through multiple pages until you find the phone number to call.

Overall Review: In any event they got me a new SSD quickly and thats what matters. They did not make me jump through hoops like some companies do.

Pros: I upgraded from a 7200 rpm hard drive and its insane the deference. It gives a windows exp score of 7.8 !enough said Boots my windows 7 ult in 30 seconds. Amazing.

Cons: none

Overall Review: Im really impressed with solid state drives. I thought about going with a different one (other than intel) due to the price.. but I decided I wanted reliable product.. never doubt intel!

Pros: With all the fuss around SATA III SSDs, I was hesitant to purchase one. I settled on the Intel for reputation of stability and reliability. It is fast, compatible, and stable. The Intel SSD Toolbox has some diagnostic features and TRIM to optimize drive performance. The drive also has some novel SMART parameters, such as lifetime cumulative total amount of GB written to the drive. Windows 7 does a good job maintaining the drive.

Cons: Performance reviews show this drive to be slower than competitors (i.e. Oz or Crucial), but the bad reliability reviews pushed me towards Intel.

Pros: I loved the speed. Got a fast score from Windows 7

Cons: , but it died in 9 months. That's too fast for me and too expensive to have dud out like that. Of course I expected for the huge amount of money that it would last longer than that. Big Bummer.

Pros: This SSD has been very reliable, no problems at all so far. I also like Intels SSD toolbox, it has many options to monitor the drive as well as SSD optimizing options. I bought this drive approx. 6 months ago. I used HD Tune to check performance both then and now. When new I tested it both on a Marvell 9123 6Gbs controller and the Intel ICH10R 3Gbs controller and received 485mbs and 250 mbs respectively running W7 x64. I ran it again last week with a fresh OS install and I also used the SSD toolbox to do a secure erase before re-installing windows and now I am receiving a max of 300 mbs on the Marvell controller and 225 mbs on the Intel. It has slowed down somewhat but mostly on the Marvell controller (latest drivers installed). I still like this SSD and would purchase again. It is much slower at least on the benchmark tests than a OCZ Vortex 3 which I also owned.

Cons: My biggest reservation is of course price. The benchmark performance may not be the best but in real world use I don't think that makes all that much difference.

Overall Review: I chose Intel because of their reputation for reliability. The 510 series SSD has not let me down so far. As I said earlier the other brands may offer higher performance, some almost double but I still prefer the rock solid reliability Intel SSD's provide.