Samsung SSD 870 QVO review: Stupendous 8TB capacity in a SATA SSD - joneswatelt

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Great workaday carrying out
Ahead to a stupendous 8TB of capacity

Cons

150MBps writing later on running out of SLC cache

Our Verdict

The Samsung 870 QVO SATA SSD offers great everyday public presentation combined with up to 8TB of capacity. However, spell it's faster than its predecessor, its spell execution after running KO'd of cache is extremely weak.

The Samsung 870 QVO ('Q' as in in 4-bit QLC), is our first look at a drive that will eventually send on with a whopping 8TB of NAND on board. Announced Tuesday, this is the new apical capability available, superseding a still-new flock of 4TB models. Samsung transmitted us the 2TB interpretation for testing. It's a great everyday performer; however, when you run out of cache (which shouldn't cost often), indite pace falls off drastically.

Specs and pricing

A standard 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps SSD, the 870 QVO is presently available for preorder in a few of its capacities: the 2TB we tested ($250 from Newegg), and 4TB ($500 from NeweggRemove not-mathematical product link). The 1TB electrical capacity is on sale now for $130 on AmazonRemove not-product data link or $130 from NeweggMove out non-product link. in $130/1TB, $250/2TB (tested), and $500/4TB flavors. The 8TB model wish be on tap in August for $900. That's substantially cheaper than the high-capacity 4TB OWC Aura P12 and 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe drives we recently covered, and a far greater nest egg delta than we normally undergo between NVMe and SATA.

samsung870qvo dynamic — Samsung's 870 QVO is a distinct improvement upon the older 860 QVO, and it offers excellent casual execution.

Samsung uses its own MKX accountant, and in that location's 1GB of Drachma cache for each 1TB of 96-layer, QLC (Quad-Level Cell/4-bit) stacked/layered/3D NAND on control board. The drives seemingly apportion about 4.5 percent of the NAND atomic number 3 SLC cache, if our tests with the 2TB drive are indicative.

SLC cache is MLC/Tender loving care/QLC treated as SLC by writing only one bit instead of four, surgery if you choose, happening/off rather than i of 16 possible states. This is much, often quicker mental process, as thither's little to no erroneousness-checking required. The contents of the SLC cache are later transferred to not-cache NAND.

The 870 QVO is warrantied for three years, and is rated for 360TBW (TeraBytes Written) per 1TB of capacity. Samsung bundles its Magician software, which provides control of overprovisioning (the amount of NAND set aside for replacement of dead cells), fail-safe erase, and nosology.

Performance

First, the good enough news about the 870 QVO's performance—and truly, good news is all the modal drug user bequeath meet. CrystalDiskMark 6 measured the drive as matching the speed of the competition. Most SATA SSDs already bump upwards against the bus's 6Gbps bandwidth limit—hence, the nearly identical scores.

870 qvo cdm6 — CrystalDiskMark 6 doesn't reveal a hatful of difference in functioning between the drives shown. For the most part because recent SSD capabilities largely exceed the bandwidth of the SATA jalopy.

In the real-world 48GB transfer tests, the 2TB 870 QVO improved over its sr. 860 QVO sib. However, the 860 QVO we tested was a 1TB drive that ran out of cache at about the 45GB mark (I discussed the 4.5 percent cache), dropping to 75MBps for the last leg of the race.

870 qvo 48gb — With 48GB information sets, the 2TB 870 QVO is a match for Seagate's Barracuda SSD. The 1TB version likely would've poop out of cache before the final stage of these transfers and turned in a longer time in the 48GB single file write. Shorter bars are better.

The 1TB 870 QVO would no question have run out about the same time, but it probably withal would have turned in a slightly faster score than the 860 QVO because of its faster pen plac, off cache.

Where things turned a bit oblique was in the 450GB write, a test we've been running for a while as motor capacity and the quantity of memory cache provided skyrocket. As you can see below, the 870 QVO was faster than its predecessor, but still far slower than the other drives.

870 qvo 450gb — While the 870 QVO is twice as fast as the 860 QVO writing a 450GB file cabinet, it's far, far slower than the competing Tender loving care drives. It's not the drive for heavy workloads.

You tush see in the capture below precisely why the Samsung QVO drives are much slower writing the unneeded large 450GB file. When out of memory cache, the 870 QVO drops to 150MBps, spell the 860 QVO drops even further to a paltry 75MBps.

samsung 870 qvo5 — The 870 QVO's sustained write performance drops to more or less 150MBps when information technology runs out of cache. The big displace at the beginning of the copy is the Windows and Drachma caching having effect.

While the 870 QVO clearly International Relations and Security Network't the drive for writing lots of turgid amounts of information, how oft will you actually do that? Once in a blue moon, if the least bit. The slowdown is achy when it occurs, but you'll likely not see it in the larger capacities. The DRAM makes the drive very answering while running an operating system, with its myriad small lodge calls.

Examination is performed connected Windows 10 64-bite linear on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99 Luxurious system with four 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (Nvidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) card. Also along board are a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Bolt of lightning 3 card and Softperfect's Ramdisk 3.4.6, which is used for the 48GB read and write tests.

Conclusion

The Samsung 870 QVO's capacity is great, as is its everyday operation. You'll likely be perfectly happy with the drive if you install it in your laptop or Microcomputer as the main drive. But 8TB? Come on now. That's beautiful sweet. Just cost remindful of the nonindulgent dropoff in speed when authorship outside of the cache.