Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB Review

1. Introduction2. Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Throughput9. Performance Stability10. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark11. Real Life File Testing12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

We first saw Samsung's six-generation 1xx layer 3-bit MLC (TLC to you and me) V-NAND when we reviewed the PCIe Gen 4 SSD9 80 PRO drive (HERE), but now it features in a model series further down the food chain in the shape of the 2.5in SATA 6Gb/s SSD 870 EVO series. The SSD 870 EVO models pair up the new V-NAND with an in-house MKX eight-channel controller.

At 1xx layers, Samsung's 6th generation V-NAND has 40 per cent more cells than the previous 9x layered 5th generation Flash. Although Samsung doesn't actually state how many layers the new NAND is using when it was launched, they stated “This is achieved by building an electrically conductive mold stack comprised of 136 layers, then vertically piercing cylindrical holes from top to bottom, creating uniform 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells.”, so there's 136 physical layers but no mention of how many memory layers.

In terms of performance, the Sequential read/write performance for the SSD 870 EVO is pretty much what you would expect from a SATA 6Gb/s drive these days. Samsung quote read & writes figures of up to 560MB/s and up to 530MB/s respectively. We could confirm those figures with the ATTO benchmark, our review sample producing 561MB/s for reads and 531MB/s for writes.

Random performance is quoted as up to 13,000 IOPS for reads and up to 36,000 IOPS at a QD1 and up to 98,000 IOPS and 88,000 IOPS for read and writes respectively at QD32. We couldn't quite match those QD32 figures with our tests but got pretty close at 94,003 IOPS for reads and 84,058 IOPS for writes.

To boost the write performance of the SSD 870 EVO, Samsung has turned to its tried and tested Intelligent TurboWrite technology, a technology which was first introduced in the SSD 960 EVO. Intelligent TurboWrite assigns a chunk of the NAND to run in SLC mode to act as a fast cache. The technology uses two types of cache, one pre-allocated (similar to the static TurboWrite of previous versions) and the other, dynamic or Intelligent TurboWrite. The pre-allocated cache in the 1TB SSD 870 EVO is 6GB in size with an Intelligent TurboWrite region of 36GB for a total of 42GB.

As with previous generations of EVO drives, Samsung has given the SSD 870 EVO strong encryption features as it supports AES 256-bit, TCG/Opal V2.0 and IEEE1667 technologies.

We don't yet have a buy link for the drive, but the UK MSRP for the 1TB SSD 870 EVO is £135.49.

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Pros

• 5-year warranty.
• Strong built-in encryption.
• Overall performance.

Cons

• Price could do with a bit of tweaking.

KitGuru says: After the launch of the SSD 980 PRO, it hasn't taken Samsung very long to update the EVO series of SATA drives with their latest 6th generation of V-NAND. The introduction of 1xx layer NAND to the 2.5in drive format could open the way to some very large capacity drives in the not too distant future.

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