Intel Core i9 buyers can add a 280 GB optane SSD for $1 at Amazon

Amazon has put together an almost irresistible offer for those who are interested in acquiring one of Intel’s Core i9-12900K or Core i9-12900KF processors. The site is bundling a 280 GB Intel Optane drive with these powerful processors for ‘almost free’ – i.e. the bundle costs just $1 more than the processor on its own.

We published our extensive review of the Intel Core i9-12900K back in July 2022, noting that this processor allowed Intel to retake the gaming crown. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, and PC enthusiasts and gamers now have even better choices if money is no object – like the 6 GHz Intel Core i9-13900KS, for example – but they aren’t bundled with almost free Optane SSDs.

The Intel Optane 900P SSD that is part of this Amazon bundle comes as a PCIe add-in card and has a capacity of 280 GB. We reviewed both this 280 GB capacity version and the larger 480 GB capacity card back in 2017. Yes, that is a long time ago, but when it arrived we noted that it was “purportedly the fastest consumer SSD known to mankind.” This drive also came with a price premium due to the speed on offer and the use of the scarce 3D XPoint memory. Intel’s Optane 900P SSD offers a sequential transfer speed that are would not be amazing in 2023 (max 2.5 GB/s) but it still achieves PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD challenging low queue depth performance.