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  • WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Impressive drive. We've definitely hit the point where the SATA bottleneck prevents any serious performance improvements. Looks like the 860 EVO nearly matches the PRO's speeds (at least on paper) and costs 33% less at all capacities. It seems like the trend will continue of recommending the latest Samsung EVO drive to anyone who needs a SATA SSD and people with extra money to spend can upgrade to the PRO. Almost no reason to buy any other drives unless you can find them at ridiculous sale prices.
  • generaldwarf - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    the 860 evo is 33% cheaper and 50% less endurant = 860 pro is cheaper on the long run
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Unless you're doing insanely high write levels (for anything in the consumer/prosumer space) both drives will probably fail in 5-10 years of old age without coming anywhere near their endurance limits. The pro just has extra overkill on that number.
  • Flunk - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Definitely, for client loads you're not going to hit that write endurance before the drive dies from something else.

    But if the Samsung 860 PRO dies within 10 years it's still under warranty. I recently had a 4.5 year old Samsung 840 PRO die on me and Samsung shipped me an essentially brand new 850 PRO as a replacement. The EVO comes with a 5 year warranty, which while good, is not as good.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    The 860pro is down to the same 5 years as the 860 EVO.
  • chrcoluk - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link

    My 850 pro almost died at 4 years and 10 months (mirroring your view that a 5 year warranty is pushing it close).

    Sent to samsung RMA, they ran what was clearly a very basic test only (they completed RMA testing in just 40 mins according to status page) and returned as non faulty.

    They returned a drive that was randomly not appearing at post and had corrupted boot files as non faulty. I didnt trust it so put it in a spare rig, installed windows on it, and ran some i/o tests, on the first test it locked up during heavy i/o load. After giving it a while to recover I rebooted and the drive was gone in bios, but this time it hasnt recovered at all now seemingly completely dead.

    For the curious the erase cycles are extremely low only 40 or so erase cycles, data written was at over 20TB, nowhere near the 150TB warranty.

    Given these figures I would say a higher amount of years on the warranty is far more valuable than a higher TBW limit, so the 860 pro's are a nerf. The fact samsung are no longer willing to offer 10 years on their pro units is quite telling. If the 10 year policy wasnt costing them money then they wouldnt mind doing it, which must mean the failure rate at 4+ years is high enough to warrant the change.
  • Alistair - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    MX500 is cheaper, performs almost the same. And they actually provide warranty service in Canada properly, unlike Samsung.

    Check this forum:

    https://forums.redflagdeals.com/has-anyone-dealt-s...
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Yeah, hard to ignore the MX500 and BX300 (if looking for a smaller capacity drive) because they are so easy to find, inexpensive, and the support is solid. I’ve had great luck with crucial/Micron drives, especially models with Marvell controllers, for nearly a decade. I’ll never forget when I installed the C300 in my laptop in 2010, my first experience with 500MB/sec data transfers and 5 second windows startups.
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    The long run of what? By the time the drive warranty is up SATA will go the way of PATA/IDE. Does anybody seriously think SATA will be around in 5 years? We already have consumer hard drives bottlenecked by SATA2!
  • smilingcrow - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    I fully expect SATA3 to be still around in 5 years. Hard Drives and even DVDs aren't going away and it would seem pointless to replace SATA for those types of devices as it offers sufficient bandwidth for years to come.
  • StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Or. We could finally transition to Sata 3.3 which offers 1,900MB/s.
  • PixyMisa - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    SATA Express is dead. U.2 is twice as fast and better supported.

    I'd like to see internal drives move to USB-C. Better connector, faster, universally supported, and any internal drive just works as an external drive.

    Would need USB RAID controllers though.
  • peevee - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link

    You mean 3.2, SATA Express, with 2 PCI Express lines? Seems like it is the past, U.2 superseding it.
  • Roen - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link

    SATA Express has been a non-starter and DOA.

    This is why people use M.2, U.2 and other non-SATA PCIe interfaces.
  • Roen - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link

    M.2 NVMe I should be more specific.
  • Roen - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link

    PCIe 3.0 x4 beats PCIe 3.0 x2 from SATA 3.2
  • Gastec - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link

    I have an 8 year old PC that was designed from the start without an internal DVD drive as I had no need for one, having used an external USB DVD unit since like 2009. I have not plugged in the external DVD for more than a year, maybe two years. The PC sports 2 SSDs (one for the OS and the other for games) and only one old and annoying HDD that I seriously consider replacing with a SSD to have a more relaxed, vibration-free computing experience. I this day and age a computer enthusiast is more stressed than ever and values a quiet, vibration-free system. So the HDD must go!
  • appliance5000 - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link

    What are DVDs?
  • chrcoluk - Friday, April 12, 2019 - link

    unless ssd's can match spindles price per gig, then yes sata will most definitely still be around in 5 years as its what powers spindle drives. Also good luck in finding boards that support 8 nvme devices.
  • generaldwarf - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    And the mx500 is the new king of TLC, less expensive than the evo for the same thing.
  • Flunk - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    I agree, the low price makes the mx500 a really good buy. It certainly qualifies as "fast enough" while delivering very low cost/GB.
  • GreenMeters - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Looking like it. The 850 EVO was on sale over Black Friday for less than the MX500 (at 1 TB size anyway), but outside big discounts like that (and assuming there's no simultaneous discount of the MX500) then it looks like Samsung is about to be irrelevant when it comes to SATA. Disappointing in some ways (have four 850 EVOs in various systems now, two of them picked up at the aforementioned sale, and they've been great) but as long as PCI is becoming more affordable I guess it's not a big deal.
  • Alistair - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    You are comparing with the launch price of the MX500. I've bought 5 x MX500 1TB drives for $242 USD each. I'm pretty sure the Samsung 850 is more expensive.
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    If you are going to compare sale prices of Samsung drives to the competition, it becomes even more obvious Samsung is a bad buy when you see the sale prices of competitors. The BX300 256GB drives were on sale for $70 at one point. No Samsung 250GB drive has been under $90 in over a year, even on sale.
  • bug77 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    SATA does not prevent performance improvements. 4k random reads are what give a drive its speed for home usage and we're not even at 100MB/s in this aspect. Plenty of room for improvement right there.

    In other news, if you have ~$250 to spend, you can either get a 512GB 850 Pro or a 1TB MX500. Imho, as good as Samsung is, there's no contest here.
  • zodiacfml - Sunday, February 11, 2018 - link

    I agree. The only limit is in sequential. However, we have seen the performance/capabilities of the Intel Optane drives and that even that doesn't improve a desktop experience by any noticeable level.
  • Round - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Sorry, but I disagree. What's so impressive about this, because I'm not seeing it? They improved the power spec, but for real world use, especially in a desktop, I'm just not seeing any benefit at those prices.

    I can't see buying any more Samsung drives (I have 6 850 Evos) or recommending them to anyone. The price/performance from Crucial is superior, and I doubt anyone is ever going to notice a performance difference between the MX500 and 850/860 Evos (the 860 Pro is priced ridiculously high and is not a wise purchase for any average user).

    I find myself hoping Samsung gets punished in the market place....
  • StrangerGuy - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Yup, I fail to see whats so great about this SSD either for consumers either. MX500 beats it in 4K random IOPS while having a much higher GB/$. The extra endurance and warranty length is also completely irrelevant for 99.99% of consumers out there; I myself have a Crucial M550 1TB since 2014 and I still only have 11TB total writes on it.
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    While I don't find this drive particularly impressive (not much room to impress on SATA anymore), it does have the distinction of likely being the last MLC drive available on SATA. While normal consumers can (in theory) use TLC drive with no negative effect, there are cases of people who have experienced a TLC SSD failure and aren't too eager to get another. I've personally been involved with 7 TLC SSD failures (3 different Crucial models, 2 Sandisks, and 2 Samsung). While the NAND was not likely responsible for any of these failures and this makes up a pretty low percentage of total TLC SSDs deployed within my purview, it does start to leave a less reliable image when compared to the zero MLC SSD failures (Crucial, Intel, Samsung, Sandisk, Corsair, etc.) I've seen in my client base. Granted, this is all anecdotal and I use global data (including HDD vs SSD failure rates) to color my recommendations. However, clients who've experienced the drive failures have universally decided that TLC was not an option for them. I haven't sworn off TLC drives personally, but entirely coincidentally, I have yet to purchase one since I burnt one out under heavy load (improper cooling on the controller I believe).
  • chrone - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Could you guys perform synchronous write test in Linux as well?

    ```
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=4K count=100 oflag=direct,sync status=progress
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=4M count=100 oflag=direct,sync status=progress
    ```

    Sadly, the synchronous write for older Samsung SSD 850 Pro is similar to HDD. Synchronous write are used by OS and app for data consistency and reliability in Linux environment.
  • rocky12345 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Great review as always Thank You. I am happy to see my 850 Pro 512GB drive still hanging in there and able to perform with the big guys still in the Sata based drives that is. I am thinking that when I do my whole platform upgrade in the fall of 2018 I will be picking up a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB drive for my new build and most likely keep my current drive in my current system and pass it all on to my wife I am sure she will like the great speed increase going from a 750GB HDD to the Samsung SSD & well all the other goodies in the system as well.
  • WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    If you're building an entire new system in the fall I would seriously recommend moving to a PCIe M.2 drive. The 1TB 960 EVO will blow the 1TB 860 PRO out of the water for the same price. The only trade-off is the shorter warranty (3 years vs 5 years).
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    I would agree with you, except Rocky said he'll be picking up a 960Pro not an 860Pro.
  • lilmoe - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    I weep every time I see those prices... F'ing ridiculous.
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Only after you go over 512gig. These prices are pretty tame compared to when the old version came out without the higher end models. You would be paying $500 for that entry one for 256gig.

    Considering that most people really don't need more than 512gig or even 256g for the average users its pretty nice price. Media is what takes most space on drives, and most stream it or have on separate drive that is bigger.
  • lilmoe - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    It gets on my nerves to see price actually *increase* per GB for the higher capacities instead of the opposite, which seems to be common place among drives from all vendors.

    I don't know. I still find it hard to justify a "premium" SSD above 512GB, when you'd want the peace of mind, oh well. Feel my pain?
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    It is especially frustrating to pay more per GB when you see models with the same controller, memory, PCB, and type of NAND chips, but one model has a few more of the NAND chips to get the capacity. Their cost to build (per GB) would come down seeing as they don't need to spend any more on any components except the extra NAND chip. In situations where a different (and low quantity) controller and/or different NAND chips are used, there is some justification, but the premium presented to customers is sometimes disparate to the costs incurred by the manufacturer.
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Since when a simple MLC 4TB is not a mainstream product? That should be the aim for sata SSD's.

    Now they try to seel you MLC like it was SLC. For less than $1k we get the 2xCrucial MX500 2TB, yeah TLC, but why MLC needs to be that costly...
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Now that all the other manufacturers have stepped away from MLC, there is both no direct competition and an artificial shortage (or the appearance there of) for people who want MLC. I imagine the MRSP will not stick around for very long if they want to sell these. Unfortunately, I also imagine that they will settle in to the (still high) price bracket that their 850 series counterparts are at now.
  • comma - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Could you clarify what capacities are correlated with what size PCB?
    Are the 256gb and 512gb pcbs the smaller pcb? The anandtech 850 evo review has a section on "inside the drives" where it compares the pcb sizes to the capacity. If you could add something like that for this review, that would be awesome. Many thanks!
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    "Are the 256gb and 512gb pcbs the smaller pcb?"

    Correct. The small PCB shots are the 512GB drive, and the large PCB shots are the 4TB drive.
  • comma - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    Awesome. Thanks for continuing to take apart the drives and showing us the innards :D
  • will2 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    You included some data on the EVO 860 but no consumption figures ! As the EVO 860 otherwise appears the more cost-effective than the Pro, any chance of adding the 2 Idle figures and the power efficiency for the EVO 860 ?
  • cfenton - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    At this point, I usually recommend whichever drive from a major manufacturer has the lowest $/GB. It's been a while since that was a Samsung drive. I would be astonished if anyone could tell the difference between an 860 Evo and an MX500 in typical client usage, so I don't think it makes much sense to buy the more expensive drive. I'm sure there is a small market that, for some reason, needs the fastest and most durable SATA drives possible, but it's unnecessary for most people.
  • Magichands8 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    What a joke. Another SSD release crippled with the SATA interface? CHECK. Another SSD offered at the ridiculous $0.50/GB price point? CHECK. Another SSD with woefully low storage capacity? CHECK. Another customer convinced to avoid buying their SSDs? CHECK. Now my money isn't going anywhere near one of these so I admit I didn't read the whole article but just from reading some of the comments it appears that Samsung also managed to reduce both durability AND warranty coverage for this tripe. Samsung's really on a role these days. It's not all bad though, apparently someone in their corporate structure has been using their brains as Samsung has managed to avoid the M.2 format for each of these offerings. What they should have done in addition to giving buyers that special feeling of owning an SSD with the letters "PRO" on it is wrap the drives with flashing multicolored LEDs so the kids can really get their bling bling on! Samsung is definitely taking on 2018 by storm!
  • Round - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    While I agree with most of what you just said, I disagree on SATA. I think SATA drives are great for 90%+ of the population. They work everywhere, they're cheaper, and besides running some fake bench mark tests and moving files on the drive, they give people the same feel/real world performance.

    NVME is the real rip off in SSDs IMO. Same memory, same format for M.2 SATA/NVME, different controller, but the NVME is significantly more expensive. Why charge so much? No reason other than they can get away with it.
  • Magichands8 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Anyone moving around any data over a couple hundred MB will notice the difference IMMEDIATELY. And there is absolutely, positively, no excuse whatsoever for hogtying a storage technology NATIVELY capable of vastly better performance. The "it's good enough" argument doesn't work any better for SATA vs. PCIE than it did for HDD vs. SSD. We all moved from 32 bit to 64 bit, from HHD to SSD and now we are able to move from SATA to PCIE because the technology for the latter is here, it's present and it has, literally, made SATA obsolete.
  • chrcoluk - Friday, April 12, 2019 - link

    if you think sata is obsolete then I assume you dont use netflix, youtube, and other mainstream media services as these services run of spindles not flash storage, the reason been flash storage cannot compete on capacity.

    For a home user nvme offers little benefit vs sata for ssd's, for a datacentre user, its good for performance sensitive loads such as database caching, but doesnt shine in raw storage capacity.

    SATA as long as its good enough for spindles will survive.

    For NVME to wipe out SATA ssd's the pricing needs to be improved to match SATA pricing, in addition m.2 form factor is a step backwards, board manufacturers are struggling to fit even only 2 slots per board, and they are a pain to install vs simply slotting in a sata drive into a drive bay.

    How often do people move enough data around that the performance of nvme really matters? Most of my writes to my ssd are me downloading games, and the bottleneck in that case is the speed of my internet.

    NVME is faster but thats its only win at the moment, it loses on many other things, and because of that SATA is not obsolete.
  • overseer - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    My Intel X25-M was bought before wedding and it still has 90+% writes left. Guess I may pass it to my grandson...
  • Hixbot - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link

    What is with the PM981 idle wake up latency. Almost 8 seconds to wake up?!
  • MayDayComputers - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    It wakes up in 8 milliseconds. The graph is in nanoseconds.
  • MayDayComputers - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Yikes. Actually I was off, it wakes up in 8 nanoseconds, not milliseconds. Even at 8 milliseconds, you would never notice. This is 1000x faster than that.

    “A microsecond is equal to 1000 nanoseconds or 1/1,000 milliseconds. ” -source Wikipedia
  • stux - Saturday, February 17, 2018 - link

    Actually a million times faster.
  • letmepicyou - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    So...tests were done a while back that showed that 2x 850 EVOs in RAID 0 outperformed a single 850 Pro. The allure of putting 2 500gb EVOs in RAID for $300 and getting better performance than a single PRO 1TB for $450 was a no-brainer IMO, and boy does it scoot. My question is, what do RAID numbers look for the new 860's? Will it still make sense to RAID the EVO's? Or will the 860 series price/perf/space metric slant more towards the single PRO drive?
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link

    Given that the 860 Pro struggles to distance itself from its EVO counterpart in a straight up comparison, I think its safe to say 2x860EVO will outperform 1x860PRO in the same metrics that 2x850EVO outperforms 1x850PRO. Also, MSRP shows 2x860EVO 500GB costing $340 vs $480 for the 1TB 860PRO. Your price/perf/space metric will not be slanting towards the PRO drive.
  • Luckz - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link

    SATA SSD RAID0 only makes sense if you need 'left to right copying' and can't do NVMe (which is much faster).
  • Roen - Monday, January 29, 2018 - link

    I'd like to see what Enterprise SATA / SAS SSDs the author has in mind that is a better balance of specs and price, especially price.

    The cheapest Seagate Nytro SAS SSD I've found with 1700 / 850 Sustained R/W is > $1500.
  • peevee - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link

    There is absolutely no point paying twice as much compared to other drives.
  • JokerzWild - Sunday, February 11, 2018 - link

    Good review, but it seems like there’s a “missing link” in the data presented. You mention in the Introduction that you are using a 512GB 850 PRO from, “the original generation using 32L 3D NAND and LPDDR2 DRAM, rather than the updated model with 48L 3D NAND and LPDDR3.” You also say that you are using the test results from the 2TB 850 Pro review, which I believe still used Samsung’s 2nd-generation (32L) 3D MLC NAND with LPDDR3 in the controller rather than their 3rd-generation (48L) product. I can’t tell which version of the 500GB 850 EVO is being presented for this review, but I suspect it is V1 as well based on its power usage compared to the 4TB 850 EVO (which was offered in V2 only) numbers. In your recent reviews of other current SSDs (e.g. the SanDisk Ultra 3D and the Crucial MX500) it also appears that you are using the 32L/LPDDR2 versions (which I’ll call V1) rather than the 48L/LPDDR3 (V2) iterations of the 850 PRO and EVO.

    Would you please add the data for 850 EVO/PRO V2s to your test results? Alternatively, it would be interesting to see an article that looks at the progress of Samsung’s NAND and controllers in V1 (32L/LPDDR2) and V2 (48L/LPDDR3) of the 850 EVOs and PROs along with the 860s (64L/LPDDR4), preferably in the 1TB configuration since that configuration seems to yield the highest overall performance (at least in the 850s) and is a popular choice. I’ve seen a couple of articles that compared V1 and V2 of the 850 EVO, and it appeared that both performance and power consumption improved in V2. I have yet to seen any comparison of V1 and V2 of the 850 PRO. I seem to also recall reading that Samsung was claiming a 30% reduction in power consumption was one of the benefits in switching from its 2nd-generation to its 3rd-generation NAND, which would wipe out most of the power management gains claimed for the 860 PRO. The changes between V1 and V2 of the 850s appear just as significant as the changes between 850 V2s and the 860s (1 generation DRAM, +16L each), so why not add this data to the mix? Using V1 of the 850s probably overstates the differences between a recent 850 EVO/PRO and an 860 EVO/PRO. Presenting data on V2 of the 850s would also give users of 850 V2s a better idea of what they may be missing. It would also help bargain hunters who want that last little bit of performance from a top performing SATA drive decide if it’s better to buy a marked down 850 or a new 860 for their use cases.
  • Lady Fitzgerald - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    SATA will be around for a long time, most likely well past 5 years from now. It's plenty fast for storage. Not everyone needs blazing speed for storing music, videos, documents, pictures, etc.
  • Lady Fitzgerald - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    DVDs are those coaster like things that have over 600 of my movies on them. I don't plan on getting rid of them anytime soon.
  • Lady Fitzgerald - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Wow! What did Samsung ever do to you?

    A roughly 50% decrease in idle current usage is huge if one has very many of these in use (I currently have four 4TB 850 EVOs in my desktop machine but will probably replace them with five 4TB Pros later this year), even if one doesn't factor in the reduction in heat output that will likely occur. Even when in use, the 860 Pros will draw roughly 30% less current.
  • mapesdhs - Tuesday, December 29, 2020 - link

    Hello from the future! :) I was just curious, did you indeed in the end replace those 850 EVOs with 860 Pros?

    I was hunting for info on the 860 Pro (I bagged a 256GB on ebay a year ago), found this old review. I'm upgrading my daily desktop to a 2700X just now, was wading through my SSD pile to decide on the C-drive, use the 860 Pro I hadn't done anything with yet, or move stuff around and use an 850 Pro, or maybe a Vector (my existing system has had a Vector 256GB running for 7 years. :D)

    S'funny actually looking back at what the landscape used to be before the 850 era began:

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/6363/ocz-vector-rev...

    OCZ of course took some hefty brand image flak from earlier times due to dodgy early fw releases for its older Vertex models, which is a pity because its much later Vertex4 and Vectors were rather good, indeed the older Vertex2E/3 were fine with fixed fw (I used dozens of 2Es and 3s, still do for general testing/benching).

    I buy used 840 Pro units when I can, they're very good even today. Won a fair few 850 Pro 512GB/1TB units aswell. Was particularly pleased to nab four 1TB 850 Pros from a photo company which bought them for backup, because every drive had less than 50GB written. I look at modern QLC SATA products and it baffles me why anyone would buy them, I just hunt for used 850 drives, whether EVO or Pro, or an 840 Pro (I avoid the 840 EVO due to its data retention problems which thankfully never affected the 840 Pro). Sometimes I bid on an Extreme Pro aswell, they're still good.

    I have a lot of Samsung SSDs, but over time the focus of many comments here have proven true, pricing has become kinda crazy. Moving on to NVMe, I bought a few 950 Pro, 960 Pro and 970 EVO/Plus drives (the former two mostly via the used market), but after that the competition could no longer be ignored. My more recent 1TB/2TB NVMe purchases have all been Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, just 100 UKP for the 1TB model as I write this (vs. 170 for the 970 EVO Plus, or a completely ridiculous 289 UKP for the 970 Pro). I found the Adata to be faster, which in my case involves substantial sustained sequential writes (which naturally rules out all QLC models); it's also more power efficient. The Adata is TLC of course, but then so is the 970 EVO Plus, and the former actually has a higher write endurance rating (both have 5yr warranties).

    Samsung hasn't much moved their pricing though, so I guess despite the competition they're still able to sell the products they make, but I can't figure why anyone would buy a 970 Pro when it's almost three times the cost of the Adata or other models (they really are milking the perceived MLC advantage). I know the Sabrent Rocket is very popular, but so far I've not bought one as I've been unsure of the 4K block size issue, plus I've been able to find the Adata cheaper anyway.

    I just wish the capacities would properly get a move on. Seems to me vendors are not releasing anything better because they don't have to, people are still willing to pay solid premiums for existing 2TB/4TB models. It's all a far cry from Sandisk's old promise of an 8TB SATA3 SSD way back. I guess nobody wants to rock the boat; why release an 8TB NVMe when the market is happy to splurge on 4TB and below?

    I just think it's a shame how QLC has taken over, a race to the bottom via DRAMless designs, SATA and even NVMe models that tank once their SLC emulation phase is exceeded, in some cases giving performance slower than a rust spinner. It's bizarre to think that with modern benchmark suites an old SATA like a Vector, Vertex4, 840 Pro, Neutron GTX or Extreme Pro would actually be better in some cases, heck even the Samsung 830 would probably be quicker. Modern large capacity dies are killing performance by using so few memory channels. This could easily be resolved by allowing capacities to properly increase, but they just won't do it, not yet. They'll milk the 4TB for all its worth before considering 8TB. Makes me think the margins on modern SSDs must be very high vs. models from years ago, with the former using so few ICs on the PCB. Many modern SSD PCBs contain just a controller and one flash die.

    Btw, good comment below about halving the time for a particular task being less relevant if the duration is very short in absolute terms.
  • Lady Fitzgerald - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Again, SATA is plenty fast for data storage. NVMe is an advantage only when used for the OS and programs; even then, it isn't all that much of an advantage. If you have a task that takes ten minutes to perform and you double the speed, that's taking it down to five minutes, which is huge. If you have a task that takes 10 seconds to perform and you double the speed, that will be now be five seconds, an improvement but nowhere nearly as as noticeable. If you have a task that takes 10 milliseconds to perform and you double the speed so it now takes only 5 milliseconds, you won't notice the difference. It won't be advantageous unless you move enormous amounts of data frequently.

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