Gadgetory

today I'll be doing a quick unboxing of something that looks quite plain and ordinary on the outside but is actually a pretty sweet product so today we have the intel SSD 320 I have only one capacity low does come in a variety of capacities including 40 gig 80 gig 120 gig 160 gig 300 gig and even 600 gigabytes of total capacity now the SSD 320 is not meant to be a performance King successor to the Intel 510 series Drive that was just released no rather this is meant to be a value segment part so unlike the 510 which does not use 25 nanometer flash for higher densities the SSD 320 does okay so it uses higher density flash it doesn't use as advanced a controller as some of the other drives on the market so it doesn't do any data compression while it's reading and writing for example which means that it does not offer the same performance but it should offer outstanding reliability as we've come to expect from Intel products of all sorts be it motherboards CPUs and now SSDs and should offer a good price to performance ratio now performance is a little bit better than SandForce then the older last generation SandForce drives using the same force 1200 controller but it is not up to par with something like a 510 or with a newer SandForce 2281 controller SSD drive alright so the first thing we find inside is an installation guide designed for easy installation they can be quickly incorporated into a computer getting started handling precautions and installation instructions very nice speed demon sticker and shiny - yes SSDs are fast even this a mainstream SSD is really friggin fast it uses a SATA 2 controller which means that it doesn't have the benefit of doesn't include a two and a half to three and a half inch adapter so you'll need to buy one if you're going to install it in the desktop and you have a case that natively support student half-inch dreads so while it is a mainstream drive remember it was only last generate the last generation of products where the vertex to reigned supreme and this is faster than a vertex - so we're only one generation behind the high-performance parts in terms of performance on this mainstream part so the drive looks pretty typical this looks pretty much oh this is kind of interesting actually check this out so compared to the you know what I actually have a 5-10 handy I apologize for the state of my workbench here right now but there's my 510 with kind of a Goldy finish on it on my test bench you see that okay so look at the 510 now look at the 320 so the 320 brings back this little plastic piece here which increases the compatibility of this drive so you can install it even in notebooks that require a slim-to-none inch profile just by taking out the four screws which are not marked with warranty void if remove tabs you just take those four out take off this plastic piece and put the four screws back in and now all of a sudden you have a slimmer profile drive so this spacer here is so that it'll also install easily in computers that do not require the slimmer drive so on the front you'll find information like the part number basically think of this you guys as an X 25m Gen 2 refresh so think of it as X 25m Gen 3 it's still stated - it's still a performance drive by all means but it is not necessarily meant to be the performance crown holder ok Intel's own products actually Eclipse it in terms of performance remember the 510 series not only features a more advanced controller but also SATA 3 and 34 nanometer flash which does not provide the same density this 25 nanometer but in general does perform better at this time so here we go we've got our standard SATA power interface as well as our SATA 2 data interface all the mounting holes that we've come to expect are here with 2 on the side here two on the side here and four on the bottom thank you for checking out my unboxing of the intel SSD 320 series drive don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos