Intel SSD 545s Series Solid State Drive Review: One Of The Best SATA SSDs Available

Name: Intel SSD 545S
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, July 05, 2017, 11:05 AM EDT

Performance Summary: The Intel SSD 545s was an excellent performer in our series of benchmark runs. It didn’t lead the pack in every synthetic benchmark, but it was the fastest SATA-based SSD we’ve tested in the trace-based PCMark tests and it similarly led the pack in the HD Tune benchmarks as well. In the rest of the tests, the drive offered solid performance that was competitive virtually across the board – winning some tests and trailing slightly in others. Access times and sequential transfers were particularly strong, however.

Intel SSD 545s Series - Find Them At Amazon

SATA-based solid state drives may not be as exciting as bleeding-edge PCIe NVMe-based offerings that boast multi-gigabyte per second transfers, but they remain one of the most effective upgrades available for the multitude of systems that might be currently hobbling along with much-slower hard disk drives, and that can’t accommodate M.2 or slot-based SSDs. We’ve been bumping into the limitations of the SATA interface for some time now, but with its new 64-layer TLC 3D NAND, SMI controller, and Intel optimized firmware, the SSD 545s still manages to incrementally improve overall performance versus older drives. The 512GB Intel SSD 545s featured here is available for $179.99, or roughly $0.35 per gigabyte, which is competitive with other drives in this class. Pricing for the higher (and lower) capacity drives will likely be similar in terms of cost per gigabyte, when they ship in the not too distant future.

Couple the Intel SSD 545s series’ strong performance, with Intel’s well-known reliability in the storage space, competitive pricing, and a 5 year warranty, and we’ve got an easy recommendation on our hands.


Affordable Pricing High Endurance Strong Performance 5-Year Warranty	Lightweight, thin enclosure Only One Capacity (512GB) Currently Available

Tags: Intel, SSD, SATA

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com