# Intel 660P SSD for Sample Drive?



## composingkeys (Aug 29, 2019)

I am reading a lot of reviews saying the Intel 660P can have major slowdown do to the cache filling up however it is unclear to me if this is at all a factor when using it to playback sample library's? The capability looks amazing but then it looks like it isn't consistent at least in the case of transferring files or writing to the drive. If the capacity of the drive is 85% full lets say, will the read performance drop? Is it better to get a Crucial MX500 or Samsung Evo 860?


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## Zero&One (Aug 29, 2019)

I just have the EVO's, but it' been mentioned a few times that capacity isn't a factor for sample library reads. All 4 of mine are bloated to the max and I've seen no drop in performance in real time or with bench tools.
Hopefully an Intel 660P owner might offer you better advice.


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## composingkeys (Aug 29, 2019)

Hi James,

Thank you very much for responding! Here is the reference in this review that is making me think reading time is affected when the capacity is fuller and maybe even if it isn't completely full. See this review where they show the drive empty and then with it full which I think they have at near 100%: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-review-qlc-nand-arrives/5

Any Intel 660P users in particular would be nice.


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## kavinsky (Nov 10, 2019)

composingkeys said:


> Hi James,
> 
> Thank you very much for responding! Here is the reference in this review that is making me think reading time is affected when the capacity is fuller and maybe even if it isn't completely full. See this review where they show the drive empty and then with it full which I think they have at near 100%: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-review-qlc-nand-arrives/5
> 
> Any Intel 660P users in particular would be nice.


I'm interested in getting the 2tb 660p aswell.
any updates on the topic?


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## LinusW (Nov 10, 2019)

I got a 660p for samples. Haven't had any problems. Much faster read speed than my SATA SSDs.


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## floydian05 (Nov 10, 2019)

I got a 2 TB 660p for Samples, so i looked into all of this myself in depth. 

As for it slowing down this won't happen unless you use up all of the drive cache. The more full the drive is the less cache it has. These drives run with 2 types of NAND. a fast SLC cache that gets you up to 1800 mbps. there is 24 GB built in of cache so that is the minimum (if you filled the drive up completely) the rest of it is converted from empty space on the QLC NAND. The attached chart shows how much cache you will have depending on how full the drive is. (the more space on the drive the more cache) a large project with libraries that are RAM heavy may use up all the cache, especially if you are opening multiple projects in a row before the drive can clear out the cache again. (if the drive is idle it will clear the cache. Not sure exactly how long it takes but it would be in minutes or hours not days)

So to conclude I would say that you will most likely be okay with this as your sample drive, unless you plan on filling it up completely and you often open multiple projects in a row. It is the cheapest commercial 2 TB SSD and as long as the cache is not filled up you will get good speeds. When the cache is filled up it will still read/write, but at around HDD speeds.

Its worked fine for me so far I have I think 1.3 TB on it-all samples. If you are using as an external drive you won't be able to get more than about 1000 mbps because of limitations of SATA, no affordable external controllers for Thunderbolt speeds that I know of exist. If you get a cheap external enclosure for it as I apparently did.... you won't even see that. I got one from Sabrent and my read speed is about 540 mbps (baically the same as a standard SSD) I Wish they made one at 4 or 8 TB so i could fit more on it and get rid of some of my other drives....


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## kavinsky (Nov 11, 2019)

hey thanks for a detailed reply!
yes I have 2 m.2 slots on my MB, so I'm not using any external controllers.

as for filling it up completely - well I planned to leave 50Gb since SSDs require some free space for longevity, should it be fine ?
I don't need crazy fast speeds, just something close to the SSD realm

if not I might look for an alternative


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## floydian05 (Nov 11, 2019)

With the M.2 slots you will get the full speed! If you leave only 50 GB free there will be very little additional cache next to the 24 GB that is built in. You get the full speed until you run out of cache so In many circumstances this will be fine but if you are opening large projects one after another you will see things slow down a lot. A good way to tell how much you are loading from the sample drive is to look at your RAM useage in a project using Activity monitor. If your RAM useage increases by 20 gigs when you open a project you are likely reading most of that from your sample library hard drive. If you do that and then try to open another project of the same size it will load much slower. If you worked for a few hours on that project the cache would clear and you could quickly open another project file. 

So unfortunately its not a clear yes or no. In Many circumstances it would be totalyl fine with teh 660p, and you may get slightly faster load times because it is 3x faster than a SATA (though i don't think things will load 3x faster as there are other factors) 

In other circumstances you would fill up the cache and then have a hard drive that still works but at HDD speeds. If that seems likely i think you would do better to get the MX500 2 TB for the same price as the 660p, or the Samsung, or there are 2 TB M.2 options that are SATA speed as well. If money is no object you can get the M.2 Samsung 870 EVO that is built on TLC. It is faster than the 660p (3500 mbps) and since its built on TLC NAND it doesn't rely on cache for its speed. In most tests that extra speed has not really proven useful unless you are transferring a small number of very large files, but i don't have that drive personally so I've not been able to test it with sample library loading. 

Might be prudent to wait 2 weeks for Black Friday and see if some SSD deals can be had. Maybe you could get that Samsung for under $400. Others make fast NVM drives for cheap but none goes above 1 TB except Samsung right now unfortunately.


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## WorshipMaestro (Nov 11, 2019)

The whole cache argument for this discussion is irrelevant. He's not writing to the drive except for the initial sample library installs.


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