Intel 80GB 530 Series M.2 SSD On Linux

Our latest solid-state storage Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at Intel's 530 Series SSD within the M.2 form factor.

M.2 is the successor to mSATA for internal expansion cards and is quickly gaining adoption for SSD M.2 modules with being a petite implementation of SATA Express with offering SATA 3.0, PCI Express 3.0, and USB 3.0. The Intel SSD 530 Series is offered in 80mm M.2, mSATA, and 2.5-inch form factors with our review unit today being the M.2 model. The Intel 530 M.2 SSDs are currently offered in 80GB, 120GB, 180GB, and 360GB capacities with the one being tested at Phoronix today being the smallest version.

The 80GB Intel 530 M.2 SSD is Serial ATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) rated and features reads up to 540MB/s and writes up to 480MB/s. The random 4KB reads are rated at 24,000 IPS and the writes up to 80,000 IOPS.

I picked up this drive for another system going into our automated benchmarking test farm for the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org, but prior to commissioning it I ran some benchmarks on the drive using the same setup as last week's Corsair Force LX SSD review.