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Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

2011 has certainly been the ‘Year Of The Solid State Drive', with many manufacturers vying for sales in various, competitive sectors. Today we are looking at the new Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD which embraces the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, claiming speeds up to 520 Mb/s read and 400 Mb/s write. Is this drive capable of going head to head against the latest Sandforce powered 2281 units? Today we aim to find out.

Samsung are not new to the Solid State Sector, having made memory and logic controllers now for some time, specifically for the OEM market. We reviewed their 470 series 256GB drive last week, and while good, it seemed rather overpriced considering the SATA 3 Gb/s bandwidth limitations. It makes sense therefore that they want to step into the high performance league.

The 830 Series is being sold in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. All four drives feature the same 520 Mb/s read performance, but due to the architectural design the 128GB drive is rated at 320 Mb/s write and the 64 GB model just 160 Mb/s write. The 256 GB and 512 GB models are both rated at 400 Mb/s write.

All drives are shipped with a full 3 year warranty for peace of mind.

Technical Specifications

  • Dimensions (L* W* H): 100 x 69.85 x 7 (mm)
  • Interface: SATA 6Gb/s (compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s)
  • Form Factor: 2.5 inch
  • NAND Flash Memory: 2x nm Samsung Toggle DDR MLC NAND Flash Memory
  • Performanc: Sequential Read: Max. 520 MB/s (64GB/128GB/256GB/512GB)
  • Sequential Write: Max. 400 MB/s (256GB/512GB)
  • 4KB Random Read: Max. 80,000 IOPS (128GB/256GB/512GB)
  • 4KB Random Write: Max. 36,000 IOPS (256GB/512GB)
  • TRIM Support: Yes (Requires OS Support)
  • Garbage Collection: Yes
  • S.M.A.R.T: Yes
  • Weight: Max. 62.5g (256GB/512GB)
  • Reliability: 1.5 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
  • Power Consumption: Active : 0.127W (Typical) Idle : 0.078W (Typical)
  • Shock: 1500G & 0.5ms (Half sine)

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17 comments

  1. A complete solution from Samsung, very interesting indeed. strange to see a non sandforce drive today.

  2. Very nice indeed, I like it. Not this size however, 256mb might be good for an upgrade in 2012.

  3. Nice drive, but I still think Sanforce 2281 has the edge in all the performance benchmarking. its a tough one to beat. still good to see competition, drives down prices, right?

  4. Samsung will have a really hard time selling these to consumers, they work well in OEM market, for Dell machines etc, but enthusiasts are slightly more educated and want Sandforce. thats my views on it anyway, based on forums like anandtech and hardocp.

  5. The price isn’t bad,and uncompressed performance is very strong as the test have shown. the issue is that the more affordable drives are slower and Samsung dont seem to be sending samples to review sites (64GB model for instance looks slow as molasses in write test).

  6. I think Samsung are better than any other maker, for the warranty and professionalism of the company. sandforce drives have failed MANY times, remember that.

  7. 1st fact: today there is no one type of SATA SSD dominate the market to replace HDD.

    2nd fact: current SATA SSD maker more focus on speed rather than reliability, it make many people afraid to invest their money on SSD.

    3rd fact: only Intel and Samsung whose making NAND flash, Controller, and Firmware in an integrated way to assure reliability.

    4rd fact: Intel has shown weakness in SSD reliability (remember ‘Bad Context 13X Error’), only Samsung who still holding record for reliability almost perfectly.

    This is just from my point of view.