Intel Expands DC S3500 SSD Lineup

Intel introduced the DC S3500 Series of solid state drives to us last year and now that lineup got a refresh in the form of more capacities. Intel has added two more 2.5-inch drives and three M.2 2280 models to the series and also improved slightly upon the firmware.

The 2.5-inch form factor will get a 1.2TB as well as a huge 1.6TB version, that is a double up from previous 800GB maximum capacity. The speeds are rated to 500MB/s for reads and 460MB/s for writes on both models. The bigger 1.6TB model can perform random IOps of up to 65.5K/18.5K read and write while the smaller 1.2TB model can perform 65K read and 14.6K write.

All DC S3500 drives are rated for 0.3 full drives writes per day for the length of five years. This equals an endurance of 880TB total bytes written (TBW) for the 1.6TB model while the smaller 1.2TB has an endurance of 660TB. These two drives won’t come cheap as they have an MSRP of $1499 and $1099.

The three new M.2 models in the S3500 series consist of 80GB, 120GB and 340GB capacities. These small form factor drives use the same hardware as the bigger brothers, just in a more compact form and are designed to be boot drives in small embedded systems and micro servers.

The performance varies some depending on capacity in these SSDs. The 80GB model has a 300/110MB/s sequential and 67/8.8K IOps random performance, the 120GB model can do a 440/160MB/s sequential and 67/12K IOps random performance, and finally the 380GB model has a performance of up to 480/355MB/s sequential reads/writes and 67/14.5K random IOPS. The MSRP for these three new drives is set to $99, $124 and $314.

While the price might seem high, we have to remember that these are enterprise class drives with 256-bit AES hardware encryption, end-to-end data protection and a capacitor-based power-loss protection. All the new capacities should become available at retailers shortly.

Thanks to Intel for providing us with this information

Images courtesy of Intel