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Samsung 850 evo series solid state drives

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The model preceding this family was the SSD 840 EVO, which was part of the Samsung SSD 840 family of SSDs. Khổng lồ say these SSDs were popular would be like saying Gangnam Style has a few views on YouTube. These SSDs took the market by storm, catapulting khổng lồ the đứng đầu of our (and many others") benchmark charts and establishing the SSD 840 EVO as one of the most popular all-around consumer SSDs ever conceived. The drives offered blistering performance, outstanding reliability, và a top-notch software package, which made them well-rounded và tough to beat in the marketplace. Samsung even threw in a secret sauce named RAPID mode, which allowed the SSD khổng lồ cache files on system memory, enabling its SSDs khổng lồ show theoretical performance well beyond what"s possible on a traditional SATA 6Gbps SSD.

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Now, the SSD 840 EVO did hit a slight roadblock in longer-term use, which we"ll get khổng lồ in a moment. Khổng lồ follow up its success with the SSD 840 EVO, though, Samsung released the SSD 850 EVO, putting it out first in the traditional 2.5-inch khung factor. It was an all-new drive that used first-to-market 3 chiều NAND that first appeared in the company"s flagship consumer-grade SSD, the SSD 850 Pro. (Samsung"s competitors, notably Toshiba & Intel/Micron, are coming lớn market with similar 3 chiều technologies, too, mind you.) In the simplest terms, this means the NAND chips mustn"t necessarily be laid side-by-side or end-to-end lượt thích the center strip of paint on a road, but rather, at the manufacturing level, can be layered on đứng top of each other. This allows Samsung to lớn compress more NAND in a smaller space, which in turn reduces manufacturing costs and makes possible higher capacities in smaller size factors.

Doing so also allows Samsung to increase the size of the fabrication node instead of shrinking it, so it"s gone from a 19nm process on the SSD 840 EVO to a 40mm process in the SSD 850 EVO. This change might seem counterintuitive, and a move backward, but this actually increases endurance và performance. Together, the benefits of this new giải pháp công nghệ are easy lớn sum up: more speed and more life, at a lower cost.

The 2.5-inch version of the Samsung SSD 850 EVO also made use of a new controller dubbed MGX (at least in its 120GB, 250GB, & 500GB models; the 1TB version of the drive used Samsung"s existing MEX controller). The drives came with a class-leading five-year warranty as well.

So much for the "ordinary" 2.5-inch drives. Here on March 31, 2015, Samsung revealed the SSD 850 EVO in two new khung factors: M.2 và mSATA. (See our primer Buying a Solid-State Drive: trăng tròn Terms You Need lớn Know for more on these.) In a nutshell, both of these are compact SSD designs meant, for the most part, for laptop upgrades and certain mini-PCs such as the hãng sản xuất intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) series & those in the Zotac Zbox và Gigabyte Brix lines. Some cutting-edge desktop-PC mainboards also support M.2 drives, though their use is much more compelling in tiny PCs và laptops. M.2 và the older mSATA are essentially 2.5-inch drives with the lid off, tiny bare circuit boards that fit into much smaller spaces than their 2.5-inch brethren. That"s what makes them especially appealing to máy vi tính makers.

The new SSD 850 EVO drives come in seven initial models. For M.2 & mSATA, each comes in 120GB, 250GB, và 500GB versions; plus, Samsung offers a 1TB version of the mSATA. (There is no terabyte version of the M.2 drive, alas.) The danh sách pricing is the same at each capacity, regardless of whether M.2 or mSATA.

Samsung sent us the 250GB version of the M.2 drive for testing, và it"s that model we"ll be concentrating on in the course of this review, including in our testing. We requested the 250GB capacity, even though larger ones were available, because we consider that today"s sweet spot và the minimal acceptable capacity for a boot drive. M.2 drives will be used mainly as boot drives, in practice, because they"re found in most situations (so far, anyway) in space-cramped laptops.

With the basics out of the way, let"s take a closer look at 3d NAND and the other special features of the SSD 850 EVO M.2.

Design and Features

One of the main differences between Samsung"s EVO SSDs & the rest of the drives on the market is that the line uses what"s called TLC NAND, which stands for "Triple-Level Cell." Put simply, this means that the NAND modules use three bits of memory per cell. This is different from almost all other consumer-level SSDs, which use Multi-Level Cell (MLC), which means two bits per cell. Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND, which uses one per cell, also exists in SSDs, but this is expensive memory, và it"s found only on enterprise-grade drives.

MLC NAND is commonly used for consumer SSDs because it provides an excellent compromise between reliability & performance. When Samsung first announced TLC NAND with its SSD 840 EVO series drives, pundits cried that it might over up being unreliable, as its base specifications showed it provided roughly one-third the lifespan of more traditional MLC NAND. Of course, Samsung said it had worked out the kinks, & that its TLC NAND was still more than reliable enough for any consumer workload throughout the drive"s warranty period of three years. One thing that did arise was a slowdown issue with the SSD 840 EVO that arose in isolated cases as the drives were filled and refilled. (See this overview of the issue on Anandtech.) The company eventually patched this problem, and while some users online have reported ongoing issues, the company says it is actively addressing the issue, presumably in an upcoming version of its utility software. On the whole, though, the drives have proven to be reliable, & in general, consumers have embraced the giải pháp công nghệ due to lớn its lower cost & excellent performance.

For the SSD 850 EVO, Samsung is claiming its TLC 3 chiều NAND is more reliable than the TLC NAND used in the previous drive, the SSD 840 EVO. To back this up, Samsung has increased the warranty period from three to five years. It has also increased the rated endurance numbers, going from 44TB worth of writes for the warranty life of the drive (on the SSD 840 EVO) lớn 75TB (for the 120GB và 250GB SSD 850 EVO drives), & 150TB (on the 500GB và 1TB SSD 850 EVO). This is well more endurance than the average consumer would ever need or want, so if you"re worried you"ll write more than the drive can handle, you"d need khổng lồ be writing upward of 40GB a day khổng lồ the drive khổng lồ exceed its rated limits within the warranty period. Most demanding consumers might write 1GB a day—if even that.

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Now, let"s concentrate on the M.2 drive we received. (At this point, an mSATA tăng cấp is only a consideration for those using an older máy vi tính or a mini-desktop with an mSATA interface; things are moving quickly toward M.2.) The packaging is simple and plain, a box containing just the drive in a protective carrier.

In terms of performance, even though this drive uses the now-familiar M.2 khung factor, it is still at heart a SATA-bus drive, và thus is limited by the bandwidth provided by that bus, which tops out at a theoretical 600MB per second.

This is a key thing to lớn understand. As we"ve discussed in nhận xét of other M.2 drives (such as the Plextor M6e SSD & ADATA Premier Pro SP900 M.2), the M.2 shape does not indicate the internal bus—electrical pathway—that the drive makes use of to transmit data. & that can make all of the difference in the world in terms of speed. M.2-form-factor drives come in SATA và PCI Express flavors. A SATA-bus SSD will still be limited to the same tốc độ ceiling as a 2.5-inch SATA drive. The real tốc độ comes in with M.2 drives if the drive is based on the PCI Express bus, lượt thích the Plextor mentioned above. These drives, so far, are few and far between (though they"re coming). The thing is, the system you"re installing the drive in will support one or both, & you need khổng lồ buy an M.2 upgrade based on what your system will support.

Samsung specifies the SSD 850 EVO as being capable of delivering 540MB-per-second sequential-read speeds và 500MB-per-second sequential writes. When it comes to 4K random writes with a queue depth of 32 requests, its IOPS rating is 89,000. All these specs are par for the course when it comes lớn high-end SATA drives, as they are able lớn saturate the bus completely and top out at these speeds, or close khổng lồ them.

The 250GB drive we tested is itself an M.2-2280 model, meaning that it measures 22mm wide & 80mm long. It"s designed to be fitted inside ultra-thin laptops and installed inside PCs with late-model motherboards that tư vấn the M.2 interface. In the case of desktops, that"s primarily boards based on Intel"s Z97 và X99 chipsets. Not all such boards have an M.2 slot, though—check first! You can find out if your motherboard supports M.2 by looking at the manual or online support materials. But basically, you can be pretty sure that if the motherboard is not based on one of those two chipsets, you are out of luck. (A few isolated Z87 boards had M.2 slots, but they are very few and far between.)

Meanwhile, for a máy vi tính upgrade, you"ll want lớn make sure the M.2-module length is the right one for your machine. (M.2-2280 is the longest kind widely available; we"ve also seen shorter ones on the market.)

TurboWrite và RAPID Mode

One of the ways Samsung has been able lớn boost performance of its TLC-equipped SSDs is through a giải pháp công nghệ it calls TurboWrite. Three-bit NAND is usually slower than two-bit or single-bit NAND because the additional bit per cell requires more signal processing và error correction. To compensate for this, Samsung reserves a portion of the NAND flash to be used as a high-speed buffer that simulates the tốc độ of fast SLC NAND. The size of the buffer varies depending on the kích cỡ of the drive, but writes are cached & sent from the buffer, then, when the drive is idle, they are written to lớn the regular NAND on the drive.

According lớn Samsung, this technology allows it khổng lồ increase write speeds on the TLC-based SSD 850 EVO lớn 500MB per second on the new M.2 drives (or 520MB per second with the mSATA ones). It also allows IOPS to lớn increase from 37,000 khổng lồ 89,000—quite a performance bump.

RAPID mode is another giải pháp công nghệ that allows Samsung drives to lớn perform theoretically faster than the competition in certain applications. RAPID mode is an optional operational mode you can select for the drive via the company"s Samsung Magician software utility. This mode allows the SSD lớn use a chunk of your system"s super-fast DRAM for caching, varying between 1GB and 4GB according to the amount of memory in your computer.

Using DRAM as a buffer results in, seemingly, wildly fast file transfers that look really good—in benchmark testing, at least. In the real world, however, the impact is less dramatic, & it introduces a minor danger of data loss. When caching files lớn DRAM, they"re sitting in volatile RAM; if the system suddenly loses power, the data will be lost. Overall, it"s a neat feature, but not something that is a massive boost to lớn the drive"s performance. It"s fine lớn use for casual use, less so if you"re always working with mission-critical data in a time-sensitive environment.

Software

The Samsung SSD 850 EVO is accompanied by an excellent downloadable software package that includes data migration software along with a very slick SSD-management utility named Samsung Magician. Though you could theoretically just install the SSD và go about your life with few worries or hiccups, the software is fun lớn use if you"re a gearhead & lets you optimize & manage the drive via a polished, intuitive interface. In addition lớn tweaking, you can examine the drive"s overall health and quickly check basic settings, such as whether AHCI is enabled và whether or not the drive is connected lớn a SATA 6Gbps interface. RAPID mode is also managed here, & you can also optimize your OS for operation with the drive and change other useful settings.

One particularly useful feature: You can control the amount of overprovisioning the drive uses. That"s space phối aside for management of the drive"s NAND flash. The more you set aside, the more endurance the drive will have, as it will always have fresh NAND to lớn use when performing maintenance on itself. (It can use the reserve cells to lớn swap out ones showing faults.) By default, 10 percent of the drive is used, but you can adjust a slider khổng lồ your liking.

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In addition khổng lồ overprovisioning and general drive statistics, the Magician software also lets you secure-erase the drive, mix up data security (if you"re the paranoid type), enable the aforementioned RAPID mode, & update the drive"s firmware. On the whole, it"s the best bundled SSD utility we"ve seen from any SSD maker, though OCZ"s new Guru software, introduced with the OCZ Vector 180, comes close.

SSD Performance Basics

If you"re new lớn the world of solid-state drives, a few things are worth noting when it comes to lớn performance.

For starters: If you"re upgrading from a standard spinning hard drive, any modern SSD will be a huge improvement, speeding up boot times và making programs launch faster. Though the drive on hand makes use of the M.2 size factor, most of today"s SSDs vày not; but they do use the same base interface, which is called SATA 3.0 (also called "6Gbps SATA"), to lớn achieve maximum speed.

We kiểm tra all of our SATA 2.5-inch SSDs on a SATA 3.0-equipped testbed PC to show their full performance abilities, & you"ll see a subset of those numbers here as a comparison for this Samsung M.2 drive, which was tested on our newer M.2 testbed. That system employs an MSI Z97 motherboard with a 240GB SATA 6Gbps SSD as its boot drive. (The M.2 drives, lượt thích the 2.5-inch SSDs we test, are tested as secondary storage drives, not boot drives.)

You"ll note, in the charts below, that we didn"t include the 2.5-inch version of the Samsung SSD 850 EVO we tested. That"s because its performance results mapped quite closely lớn those of the M.2 version of the drive, except for a significantly better showing by the M.2 in AS-SSD 4K Write test.

PCMark 7 Secondary Storage Test

The Secondary Storage thử nghiệm is a subtest under Futuremark"s larger PCMark 7 benchmarking suite. It employs a different approach khổng lồ drive testing than pure speed tests lượt thích AS-SSD, which we"ll get lớn in a moment. PCMark 7 runs a series of scripted tasks typical of everyday PC operation và disk accesses. It measures tiện ích launches, video-conversion tasks, image import, và more. The result is a proprietary numeric score; the higher the number, the better.

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This score is useful in gauging everyday, general performance versus other drives. We secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running PCMark 7"s Secondary Storage Test.

Though the Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 is supposed khổng lồ be slower than its higher-priced sibling, the SSD 850 Pro, in this test it proved a smidgen faster, và it was surpassed here only by the three Plextor PCI Express-bus-based drives we"ve tested. In a wide-ranging test like this, though, a few points don"t mean all that much, & all of these drives in the vị trí cao nhất third of this chart are as fast as you can get today on SATA or PCI Express consumer-grade drives.

AS-SSD Sequential Read and Write Speeds

The AS-SSD benchmark utility is designed specifically to test solid-state drives (as opposed lớn traditional hard drives). It reports a variety of scores, but the ones we are reporting in these two charts below measure a drive"s ability to read & write large files. Drive makers often quote sequential speeds, as a theoretical maximum, on the packaging or in advertising. Sequential speeds are important if you"re working with very large files for image or clip editing, or you play lots of games with large levels that take a long time to load with traditional hard drives. Again, we secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running this test.

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Once again, the Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 rang up impressive scores on this test, hitting 516MB per second on the read test, among the top-tier drives here that use SATA, though all were surpassed by the various mighty PCI Express Plextor M6e drives. Và it topped all SATA comers here in the write test.

AS-SSD 4K Read và Write Speeds

This test, also a part of the SSD-centric AS-SSD benchmark, measures a drive"s ability to lớn traffic small files. Often overlooked, 4K performance, particularly 4K write performance, is quite important when it comes khổng lồ boot speed and program launch times.

When an SSD is booting up and launching programs, many tiny files get accessed & edited frequently. The faster your drive can write and read these kinds of files (especially dynamic liên kết library, or DLL, files in Windows), the faster your OS will "feel." Since these small files are accessed much more frequently than large media or game-level files, a drive"s performance on this kiểm tra will have a greater impact on how fast a drive feels in everyday use.

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The Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 really excelled in this test, taking the đứng top spot with a blistering 45MB per second result. Nothing more needs khổng lồ be said—this is one fast drive.

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Here we see Samsung"s TurboWrite giải pháp công nghệ really making a difference, as the SSD 850 EVO M.2 was able khổng lồ tower over the competition by writing at 140MB per second. This is almost double what some of the 2.5-inch competition was able lớn muster, making it an extremely impressive showing.

AS-SSD (Overall Score)

The Overall Score in the AS-SSD benchmark balances the various tests that the utility runs & summarizes them as a composite, proprietary score that"s useful (like PCMark 7) as a gauge of comparative performance across drives.

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Keep in mind when looking at these results that this EVO SSD is a midrange drive, not a flagship model. The drives that it is competing against, and appearing to lớn be a bit slower than, are more expensive, PCI Express-based high-end models. In that light, the SSD 850 EVO"s performance is absolutely đứng top of the charts for a midrange drive. In many tests it"s actually faster than Samsung"s own SSD 850 Pro, which uses MLC NAND & is tuned for maximum performance. It is certainly slower than the Plextor PCI Express SSDs, but so are all the other SATA-based drives we"ve tested, as that interface simply has more bandwidth. For a midrange, TLC-based SSD however, the 850 EVO"s performance is extremely impressive, & right at the vị trí cao nhất of the charts in the overall thử nghiệm for SATA drives. It literally could not have performed any better than it did, making it the fastest SATA-based M.2 SSD we"ve tested using this benchmark.

Crystal DiskMark (QD32 Testing)

Crystal DiskMark uses incompressible data for testing, which stresses most modern SSDs quite a bit since they rely on data compression khổng lồ achieve their maximum cấp độ of performance. This particular test is designed to lớn replicate the duties of an SSD located inside a website server, as it"s asked to lớn perform a smattering of small reads, which are 4K in size. While it"s reading these files, there is a queue of 32 outstanding requests lined up, as well, which is normal for a high-volume website server, which has to lớn fulfill requests that all come in at the same time from various clients.

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In both the read và write tests, the Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 came in as the second-fastest SATA-based SSD we"ve tested here, losing out only to lớn its much more expensive sibling, the SSD 850 Pro. This is lượt thích a $200 đoạn phim card performing slower than a $400 one: It"s expected, in other words. That said, the technologies that Samsung employs lớn help its TLC-based SSDs perform like MLC drives are effective, as we see in this test and others. Despite its midrange status và pricing, this is one drive that truly punches above its weight.

Conclusion

The Samsung SSD 850 EVO family as a whole was a stellar follow-up to lớn the already outstanding SSD 840 EVO, providing a class-leading mixture of high performance, longevity, and software. It"s a tough combination lớn beat, và we certainly can"t wait to see the competition try. The M.2 version doesn"t thảm bại a step off of the 2.5-inch version of the drive, and if you have a desktop motherboard, mini-PC, or notebook that supports M.2, it"s hard lớn go wrong with the M.2 versions of this drive.

The only real question in our minds (and probably yours), is whether or not the all-new 3d V-NAND used in the Samsung 850 EVOs will suffer from any longer-term issues like the previous generation of TLC NAND. Samsung has worked hard khổng lồ iron those issues out, but the fact that the drives came to market with issues that affected performance is troubling. We certainly hope this new type of memory will be trouble-free, but, as always, we will have to wait và see.

One thing we really appreciate about the 850 EVO, however, is that it brings some fresh competition into a very small marketplace, as M.2 and mSATA SSDs are still scarce. As we wrote this, the selection on the market was rather thin when it came khổng lồ M.2 SSDs that you could actually buy. The khung factor really only began hitting the streets in earnest about two months ago. Looking online, we see only a few other options, và the pricing on the Samsung SSD 850 EVO is quite competitive, as it"s significantly less expensive than the PCI Express-based (though faster) Plextor M6e drives, but in the same ballpark as the also-new Crucial MX200 M.2 series. (We"re in the process of reviewing one of those Crucial M.2 drives now. More soon.)

If it were our money, we"d go with the Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 for two simple reasons: It"s the full package, và Samsung has shown in the previous ren that even if anything untoward crops up longer-term, it will make an effort to lớn stand by its product. Price, performance, longevity, software—this baby has it all. The only other question—and it is a big one—is whether your system can tư vấn it. But if it does, or you"re building out a new mini-PC with a compliant motherboard, this drive is your best current choice.

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