The price of flash is plummeting, which is great for us. Case in point: Newegg on eBay has the 512GB Intel 545s on sale for an outstanding $54.99. That's a great deal considering it usually retails for $99. If this wasn't a solid enough deal already, you get free shipping.

As with all Intel SSDs, the five-year warranty and industry-leading reliability alone are a big draw, but this drive also has plenty of kick to power your PC.

The Intel 545s serves up to 90,000/75,000 random read/write IOPS, meaning it is plenty snappy for desktop applications. It also pushes the SATA interface to the fullest with up to 550/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, so moving large files, like videos and high-resolution images, is a snap with this agile SSD.

The SSD comes with Intel's 64-layer 3D TLC flash and the SATA interface grants compatibility with all motherboards and many laptops. For the security conscious, the drive comes with AES 256-bit encryption, too. A simple, intuitive, and free toolbox comes with the drive to simplify firmware updates and management tasks.