Intel was kind enough to send one of their Optane SSDs to me. Here’s my thoughts on it so far. Note: this review is a work-in-progress! My thoughts are NOT final. The reason why this is a work-in-progress is, well, I’ve had this drive for about a month-and-a-half so far. Normally a hardware review doesn’t take me any longer than two weeks once I receive the product. But I have just been bombarded with other things that came in: Steam Deck accessories, the Thelio, review keys for games, etc.

A few weeks ago I had talked about Intel’s Optane SSD (the 905p in particular). It’s a ridiculously fast SSD – perfect for reducing the loading time in your games (twice as fast than traditional PCIe NVMe x4 in some cases). Both the 905p and P1600X are back in stock on Newegg: 905p, 960 GB, $399.99 (these use a U.2 connection, you’ll need to use the included M.2 adapter if your power supply doesn’t have the necessary connector type) If you’re looking for something a little less expensive (P1600X uses M.

Intel recently sent me their Optane 905P solid state drive, consisting of 480 GB of storage. They’re the fastest, yet also the most expensive, SSDs that you can buy. Unfortunately Intel will no longer be manufacturing these drives (presumably since they couldn’t compete in the SSD market at their price point), but I happen to have the right friends who pointed me in the right direction. Rather than sending the remaining drives into the landfill, I happened to be one of the lucky few who managed to snag one as part of a review unit.