How SSD Technology Keeps Getting WORSE! - Intel 660p Review

The video opens by outlining a trend in solid state drives where the controller and firmware have become increasingly sophisticated, but the foundational NAND flash memory has actually degraded in usefulness for certain workloads. The host explains the evolution from SLC to MLC to TLC and finally to QLC, emphasizing that QLC can store four bits per cell, which enables lower costs but reduces endurance and write performance. The narrative builds a framework of three main drawbacks of QLC based NAND: endurance decreases as cell wear accumulates from repeated program erase cycles, read and write speeds degrade as the number of states increases with more bits per cell, and the drive uses a portion of the QLC cells as a cache (SL C) to speed writes, which can backfire when the cache fills up. Visual explanations and basic physics are used to illustrate how voltage thresholds and charge accumulation in the floating gate affect reliability and speed, and the presenter admits that the theory needs to be tested in practice. The section transitions from theory to real-world testing, where synthetic benchmarks show the cache behavior and how performance can drop below HDD-like levels once the SL C cache is exhausted or forced to write directly to slower QLC cells. The performance story is then contrasted with a higher-tier sibling drive, the 760p, which maintains better write speeds but still experiences cache-related slowdowns after cache flush events. The video includes a practical, real-world file transfer test where a 250 GB Steam folder is copied, and the results starkly illustrate the dramatic difference in sustained write performance between the 660p and a faster TLC-based drive like the 840 EVO, with the 660p taking significantly longer to complete the task. The host concludes with a balanced assessment, noting that for typical usage, many users may not notice the differences, but the 660p is unlikely to be a great fit for heavy daily writes, and the five-year warranty does not fully mitigate the risk of hitting the drive’s write limits. The video ends by acknowledging that the product targets a niche use case such as caching, while acknowledging that Intel’s pricing and firmware tricks play a crucial role in the perceived value. A call to action follows, encouraging viewers to consider alternatives for mainstream needs and to explore related content and community discussions.

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