 Welcome to my unboxing of the Intel 520 series SSD. I know it's another SSD unboxing and there's not much different because this is a Sanforce based drive and it's a 240 gig drive and these exist before but wait no no no this is another more different Sanforce drive so while the Intel 520 series drive has a Sanforce SATA 3 6 gigabit per second controller in it okay so let's just see if there's anything else it has to say for itself on the outside of the box before we before we get into this okay so we got the data manufacturer which was sort of not that long ago we got a product code we got a capacity comes in a variety of capacities including 120 gig 240 gig okay we've got the box contents which we'll see obviously because this is an unboxing that means we open the box super fast hard drive alternative and they're right rugged silent and solid they're right about that too and it is SATA 6 gigabit per second and SATA 3 gigabit per second compatible comes with a five-year warranty Intel actually includes a five-year warranty with their Sanforce drive which brings me to what is special about an Intel Sanforce SATA 3 6 gigabit per second drive and that is that well one why did it take them so long to get to market I don't know if you guys remember this but there was a there's quite a bit of flack going around about Sanforce SATA 3 drives and not being reliable enough and etc etc etc and I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret well my suspicion of a little secret anyway I suspect that Intel was planning a Sanforce drive ages ago but because they were the ones whose internal validation found that there were still problems with it they never released one until now so not only have they addressed the reliability issues that people were having with Sanforce drives which by and large are resolved with the other manufacturers now as well okay so let's let's assume for a second that the reliability is equivalent which I don't know is necessarily true because at least at MCIX Intel has the lowest return rate out of all SSD manufacturers like definitely the lowest although they're more expensive so bear that in mind as well Intel has also tuned the performance of their Sanforce SATA 3 6 gigabit per second drive to the point where it is now faster than anyone else's in spite of the fact that it only uses synchronous Intel flash it doesn't even use toggle flash so without the advantage of the fastest possible flash out there they're achieving better performance than anyone else so they have done reliability tuning and performance tuning on this controller in order to achieve the best possible drive to deliver to their customers so this is a replacement for the 510 series drive that performs better and I mean what else is there to really say about it beyond that so here we go let's have a look at the drive itself you can see there's four screws on the top that allow you to remove this plastic piece right here allowing you to install it in laptops that require a low profile two and a half inch drive or laptops that require a full height two and a half inch drive you got all your standard mounting holes on the bottom you can see this equipment is provided by the Intel demo depot cool okay you got sorry did I say you have the mounting holes here and your mounting holes here I really don't know why they don't do something about like the finish on these drives because they're all kind of like this I wouldn't mind if they were sort of a little shiny Kingston does a great job with the aesthetics of their drives I don't know just seems kind of it's very rugged so it depends what you're after I guess if you're looking for something sort of rugged and corporate then that works what do we have for included accessories Intel is one of the best when it comes to well included accessories because they are very I mean that's that's kind of their thing it's like with an Intel product that you buy you expect it to come with everything you need you expect it to work a hundred percent right out of the box it's their corporate expectation of themselves and that customers have of them so they include everything you need here we have the Intel data migration software can be downloaded from Intel.com slash go slash SSD installation that only works on Intel drives and it actually does work I've used it in the past it allows you to quickly and easily transition your system from a hard drive to an SSD comes with a SATA cable made by Foxconn there you go Foxconn makes everything it's amazing then we've got five haha look at this I love it I love it when companies do this five desktop screws five like notebook screws so this allows you to install it in whatever kind of configuration you require so if you're using an adapter then you'll use these screws to mount the adapter into your case and you'll use these screws to mount it to the adapter but why do they include five they include five just in case there's a miscount so no matter what happens you'll always have enough screws because they include five so even if you're one short you'll still have four which is what you actually need you also get a speed demon sticker you also get an Intel solid state drive important web links thing you get a molex to SATA adapt power adapter cable and you get an included two and a half inch to three and a half inch drive sled which gives you a lot of different flexibility more flexible options in terms of where you want to mount the drive on it maybe you got like a hot swap cage or something like that you're gonna put it in you want to make sure everything lines up right so there you go so you'll use these screws to mount it to this and these screws to mount this to your case which has all the same mounting points as a three and a half inch hard drive and is one of the more rugged and robust I mean here I'll contrast this with what comes with Intel's competitors drives I think I have one lying around over here so I'm not going to name any names but this one's made of aluminum and like look how much flex it has which I'm not saying actually matters or anything but you know if you're gonna be Intel and overbuild everything you might as well overbuild everything so there you have it this is the Intel 520 series SSD and the reason I have this is I'm actually going to be doing a 240 to 256 gig SSD roundup on my NCIXCOM channel so make sure you're subscribed to that one as well because we're going to have a look at this one a couple other San Force drives we're going to have a look at Indolink's Everest drive and finally the Crucial M4 and see how they all stack up don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos.