As many of you would have seen from our latest in-depth review, Intel has just introduced its new 520 (Cherryville) Series SSDs to market; these of which are the first Intel SSDs powered by a SandForce controller, the SF2281 controller to be exact.

Sporting Intel's own 25nm ‘compute-quality' NAND flash memory chips and a SATA 6Gbps interface, the SSD 520 series uses an Intel co-defined and validated firmware and delivers up to 80,000 maximum 4K random write IOPS (Input-Output Operations Per Second) and up to 50,000 4K random read IOPS. Read and write rates top 550MB/sec and 520MB/sec, respectively.

Capacity choices and respective pricing (based on 1000-unit quanitites) shape up like this: 60GB at $149, 120GB at $229, 180GB at $369, 240GB at $509 and 480GB at $999. Intel has also slapped a 5-year limited warranty on the new series.

For a full breakdown on the new SSD 520 series from Intel including tests in a wide array of benchmarks, you can read our review on the 240GB model here.

KitGuru says: Prices are a tad steep, but class leading performance combined with a 5 year warranty certainly add to its appeal.

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