 The Cooler Master Glacier 240L CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler. Click now to learn more. The last time Intel made their own consumer-grade SSD, top to bottom, including the controller, firmware, and NAND flash, was back in 2008. Yes, the era of the X25M and its descendants. That architecture was with us for almost two and a half years of product refreshes, including a move to halogen-free manufacturing, changes to the accompanying RAM cache, and upgraded firmwares with encryption and trim support. But Intel never dramatically updated the controller itself, leaving it struggling along at the end of its life cycle as a SATA II product amidst a sea of SATA III competitors. Never to return. Why so emotional Linus? Okay, but why so emotional Linus? There are tons of good SSD options on the market. Well, Intel SSDs have always been, I'm holding this backwards, on the expensive side for their performance, but their reliability is legendary. Aside from being aware of the reputation they've built with their other products and their competitive warranty periods, I've also had the pleasure of touring their Folsom campus where much of the SSD work is done. And let me tell you, when Intel says validation, they mean it. They had SSDs that were many months from release being torture tested using equipment that smaller SSD manufacturers at the time that I talked to hadn't even seen before. So while I don't actually use an Intel SSD in my own desktop PC, I do use one in my home server and I do use one in my wife's PC. Because let me tell you guys, and the married ones of you can probably relate to this, when it comes to your own, you know, boot drive dying, it sucks, but you're probably prepared. When your wife's drive dies and she loses all her junk because she wasn't using the bleeping NAS like you told her to, she will find a way to make it your fault and it really sucks. And that is what keeps me excited about this drive, reliability, because frankly the performance is not earth-shattering. At PAX Prime 2013, Intel was hinting at a user overclockable SSD with unheard of performance and at the time I said, that's insane. I hope they just tune the hardware to bring a competitive performance oriented drive to market, but don't compromise data integrity. And Intel, predictable to a fault, did just that. An on-text review, which I'll link in the video description for your convenience, covers the bases pretty well as far as performance goes. The quick summary though is this, the drive builds on the same DNA as the S3500 and S3700, which are both enterprise products. And while peak performance isn't at the top of the charts, the 730's ability to consistently perform its best, even when it's full or being hit with a lot of data over an extended period of time, is top notch. The extended summary is a bit more complicated and includes a longer series of consumer versus enterprise trade-offs. First up, Intel is using the same controller and NLC HET for both uses and is using the same combination of die screening and an increase in the drive's page programming cycle to achieve up to six times better endurance than regular NLC NAND. That's where the five-year warranty comes from. But for the consumer version, they are also aggressively ramping up the clock speed of the controller by 50% and they increased the interface speed on the NAND flash as well. Next up, we get robust power loss protection with a pair of capacitors that will allow the 1GB of RAM cache to dump its data to the flash. But we are sacrificing full drive encryption and the normally low power that SSDs consume to the PC hardware gods. So the 730 will keep your data safe as long as no one physically steals it, which they probably won't since you won't be putting this drive in a laptop. It actually consumes more power than a 1TB 2.5-inch notebook hard drive. And finally, the drive delivers excellent write performance, more important in an enterprise or workstation environment, but lags behind in reads, which are unfortunately more common in a consumer's daily life. So I guess the conclusion for this drive is this. All those trade-offs are either making you groan and wonder why Intel even bothered putting a super duper Skull graphic and speed demon sticker on this thing, or those trade-offs are making you super excited because like me, you still have a handful of first-gen X25Ms deployed out there that are all humming along. And it's more about the long-term viability of a product to you than the day one performance. Anyway, guys, like and share this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and leave a comment on the Linus Tech Tips Forum linked in the video description if you want to discuss this product or if you have any constructive criticism for me and my team. Also linked in the video description is our support link with options to buy t-shirts, give us a monthly contribution, or give us a kickback whenever you buy random junk on Amazon.com. Check it out if you enjoy our videos, it helps us out a whole bunch, and as always, guys, thanks for watching, and don't forget to subscribe.