Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD

Here we get our first look at the drive. Making its way back into the client drive is the 2mm black ring used to turn a 7mm drive into a 9mm. This wasn't used on the 510 Series products, but has appeared several times on Intel's SSD products.

The 520 Series uses the standard mounting positions on the back of the drive. These are mainly used in notebook drive sleds and desktop adapter brackets.

The side mounting points are also where they should be. The 520 Series uses an aluminum cover just under the plastic 2mm ring.

The SATA power and data points are offset to the left side where they should be to meet the 2.5" spec, but the desktop adapter bracket doesn't offset the drive to the left. If you are using a case with a backplane and drive sleds not built for 2.5" drives this can be an issue. You will need to purchase a new backplane, one that installs the drive to the far left side so the SATA power and data connectors are In line with the backplane.

On first inspection the Intel 520 Series PCB isn't that much different than the reference design SandForce used at the launch of the SF-2281. There are a few changes from what I can see, but Intel didn't do anything crazy with the design. On this side we see the SandForce SF-2281 controller and eight of the sixteen total 25nm synchronous flash chips.

The other eight NAND flash chips are on the back of the PCB.