Intel took the SSD realm by storm this week with the long awaited release of their first 510 series SATA 3 SSD. Although consumers were anxious for the news, reviewers had to remain tight lipped having received their pre-release sample a day or so prior and being sworn to silence until Intels release date of 29 Feb 11. We can say first hand that this was a very difficult task as Intel floored reviewers on their disassembly of the SSD itself. Situated front and center was a Marvell 9174 SATA 3 controller soldered to the SSD circuit board (PCB) rather than the Intel controller that everyone had expected.

Intel certainly treated this as the 'Colonels Recipe' and, outside of Intel, their wasn't a person who had the information prior to opening the drive. In fact, Intel even waited until the very last minute to get samples to reviewers which was a bit uncharacteristic as we learned with our review of the Intel 310 mSATA SSD a few weeks prior.