The value perspective
Welcome to our famous value analysis, which adds capacity and pricing to the performance data we've explored over the preceding pages. We used Newegg prices to even the playing field for everything but the Intel 520 Series, and we didn't take mail-in rebates into account when performing our calculations. For the 520 Series SSDs, we've used Intel's 1,000-unit pricing.

First, we'll look at the all-important cost per gigabyte, which we've obtained using the amount of storage capacity accessible to users in Windows.

So, yeah, the Intel 520 Series is a tad expensive. The 60GB model costs $0.65 more per gigabyte than the equivalent Corsair Force Series GT. At 240GB, the 520 Series commands at 56-cent premium per gigabyte. The graph plainly illustrates that this is just the latest in a string of pricey Intel SSDs.

Our remaining value calculations use a single performance score that we've derived by comparing how each drive stacks up against a common baseline provided by the Momentus 5400.4, a 2.5" notebook drive with a painfully slow 5,400-RPM spindle speed. This index uses a subset of our performance data described on this page of our last SSD round-up. Some of the drives were actually slower than our baseline in a couple of the included tests, so we've fudged the numbers a little to prevent those results from messing up the overall picture.

The Intel 520 Series 240GB slots in between the Corsair Force Series GT and the Samsung 830 Series overall. Those three, er, series are around 100 percentage points ahead of their closest rival, the OCZ Octane. The 520 Series' advantage over the Force Series GT is razor thin in both the 60 and 240GB capacities, though.

Now for the real magic. We can plot this overall score on one axis and each drive's cost per gigabyte on the other to create a scatter plot of performance per dollar per gigabyte. To cut down on some of the clutter, I've dropped the labels from the mechanical drives, which are cloaked in gerbilesque anonymity. Their data points have been included only to illustrate the overall trend.

Good luck making a case for the Intel 520 Series from a value perspective. Despite performance that is slightly better than or equivalent to competing products, the high cost per gigabyte of the 60 and 240GB variants sours the deal.

Although this analysis is helpful when evaluating drives on their own, what happens when we consider their cost in the context of a complete system? To find out, we've divided our overall performance score by the sum of our test system's components. Those parts total around $800, which also happens to be a reasonable price for a modern notebook.

Even within the context of a complete system, the Intel 520 Series' price premium is readily apparent. The 240GB model looks particularly expensive on this plot.