Samsung 870 EVO 4 TB

[W1zzard]

The Samsung 870 EVO SSD has been on the market for a while and is still the fastest SATA solid-state-drive offered by Samsung. Right now it is available used for $150 for the reviewed 4 TB model, which makes this an interesting way to upgrade your storage, especially if you're out of M.2 slots.

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[SomeOne99h]

Thanks W1zzard, I have been using the exact 4TB for my main PC for more than 2 months now I think. Need to update my spces but I am lazy

 

[Chrispy_]

Wow, the 2400TBW rating for a 4TB drive is atrocious for a TLC drive with a DRAM cache. That's the sort of paltry endurance you'd expect only from DRAMless QLC NAND.

Is this Samsung's garbage-tier, leftover NAND from the factory floor sweepings? The performance is enough for SATA, but the endurance is very suspect to me.

 

[W1zzard]

endurance

Last paragraph of the conclusion

 

[Chrispy_]

Last paragraph of the conclusion

Yeah it'll be fine for a games library but 600 full disk writes is still very low endurance for TLC+DRAM and makes it a poor choice for use as a NAS cache or for any kind of actual workload.

Whilst I agree your average gaming/casual user is never going to get close to 600 full disk writes, 0.33DWPD just seems oddly low for either TLC or something with DRAM cache, let alone both of those things. Older SATA drives like the 850 EVO had 7000 P/E cycles, which with a generous WA factor is still 3-4x higher endurance.

 

[geniekid]

If you're in the market for a cheap (relatively), mediocre performance, high storage SATA SSD, I think the 8TB QVO is worth consideration.

 

[xSneak]

A m.2 drive in a 20 Gb/s usb enclosure smokes this ewaste if you need speed. Even a 10Gb/s encolsure should be enough.
If you need capacity I don't think 416 MB/s is worth the tradeoff in space compared to a modern mech HDD. Mech HDDs can get around 280 MB/s with sequential writes on the outer tracks.
I think the 8TB qlc drive is more interesting since they have dropped the new price to $350.

 

[Kapone33]

Where I live this is more expensive new than the Kingston NV2 4TB. While I admire SSD, NVME is where the focus is now.

 

[Minus Infinity]

The utterly appalling performance of the 870 QVO never ceases to amaze even after all this time. Even worse Scamsung don't appear interested in improving the situation with new models. Clearly even they have little interest in QLC garbage.

 

[mb194dc]

In most i/o use cases there are other bottlenecks than just the drive speed.

So often you'll barely be able to tell the difference between nvme and an ssd. Just depends what you're doing exactly.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Hell isn't there a thread of death of 870 evo's around here some where

Samsung 870 EVO - Beware, certain batches prone to failure!

Certain 870 EVO 4TB and 2TB drives are affected by early failures where they develop uncorrectable errors and some data just cannot be read from them anymore. This seems to primarily affect drives produced in January/February 2021. For example, i have three 870 EVO 4TB, only one is affected (so...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[trsttte]

Pitty there's no 8tb version, at current prices there's no reason for the QVO to exist except for the 8tb version.

 

[Wirko]

Older SATA drives like the 850 EVO had 7000 P/E cycles, which with a generous WA factor is still 3-4x higher endurance.

I have one, a 500GB model, and no, it doesn't come close to 7000 cycles.

600 cycles is actually pretty normal for a TLC SSD with DRAM, it matches the 2TB models of the SN850X, P5 Plus, KC3000, P44 Pro and 990 Pro.

 

[Selaya]

the fact that direct-to-tlc on contemporary m.2s is well north of 1gbps makes the 870 evo's incapability of reaching even half of that all the more sad.

also, have you tried something like a 860 pro? or something from the dc side of things like a s4620, sm883 or the likes? their pricing isn't all that bad on the used market either
would be an interesting/fun review, at the very least

 

[mechtech]

"Right now it is available used for $150 for the reviewed 4 TB model, which makes this an interesting way to upgrade your storage, especially if you're out of M.2 slots."

;(

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

We are living in the golden age of SSD storage. But prices still need to come down. I need a 10TB drive to be completely comfortable. There are some 8TB and 16TB drives out there but I need the price to slip under $500.

I've got about 2TB of personal files to back up, 1TB of Porn, and approximately 4TB worth of STEAM games.

10TB would be very comfortable for my 15900 build. I would have gone with 13900 or 14900 but it makes more sense to wait for the newer mother boards. DDR5 memory is cheap and bundles of CPU with motherboard and RAM at Microcenter are delicious.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Not sure what is the point of this re-review.
This drive is still everywhere at 225$, without taxes.
And no sane person would buy an used, 2nd hand drive...

 

[AKBrian]

This review prompted me to check prices for similar drives; while it is a smaller capacity model, it looks like the 2TB MX500 is down to $79.99 on Amazon at the moment. Not too bad, actually.

 

[chrcoluk]

on your summary, 850 pro and 860 pro I think can saturate max speed writes for full drive.

Not sure what is the point of this re-review.
This drive is still everywhere at 225$, without taxes.
And no sane person would buy an used, 2nd hand drive...

People do buy used drives, and SATA has market for older systems as well as they so much easier to manage vs clunky M.2. I will probably end up replacing my remaining spindles on main rig with 4TB SATA solid state. Easy slot in drive bay on my fractal define R4 case.

 

[W1zzard]

And no sane person would buy an used, 2nd hand drive...

I've bought half a dozen so far, very happy with my purchases

on your summary, 850 pro and 860 pro I think can saturate max speed writes for full drive.

850 Pro doesn't have a 4 TB model and 860 Pro 4 TB costs € 300-€450 used, so like 2-3x the price of 870 EVO

 

[ymdhis]

A m.2 drive in a 20 Gb/s usb enclosure smokes this ewaste if you need speed. Even a 10Gb/s encolsure should be enough.
If you need capacity I don't think 416 MB/s is worth the tradeoff in space compared to a modern mech HDD. Mech HDDs can get around 280 MB/s with sequential writes on the outer tracks.
I think the 8TB qlc drive is more interesting since they have dropped the new price to $350.

Unless something changed since the last time I checked, mechanical drives barely reach 200 MB/s unless you go for 7200rpm models which can do around ~250MB/s. However compared to SATA SSDs those models are extremely loud, four times the size, significantly heavier, use 40x as much power compared to this 870 Evo (yes, it's just a few watts, but when deployed en masse running 24/7 it matters), and most importantly mechanical drives have horrible random read performance. And the SATA SSDs can be run from USB without extra power bricks so they are more useful as externals too (this is without taking into account the problem that the NAND chips lose data if not powered on for several years).

Mechanical drives are only really useful if you are using them at large sizes. But this 4tb SSD is cheap enough that I've been considering getting two or three to replace my main documents drives in my work PC.

Yeah it'll be fine for a games library but 600 full disk writes is still very low endurance for TLC+DRAM and makes it a poor choice for use as a NAS cache or for any kind of actual workload.

Whilst I agree your average gaming/casual user is never going to get close to 600 full disk writes, 0.33DWPD just seems oddly low for either TLC or something with DRAM cache, let alone both of those things. Older SATA drives like the 850 EVO had 7000 P/E cycles, which with a generous WA factor is still 3-4x higher endurance.

Interesting, I was eyeballing the 870 Evo 4tb as my documents drives since the random read performance on my NAS is not sufficient (and keep the NAS drives as backups). If the Samsung model is so bad, what else would you recommend, with a similar price but better reliability?

 

[progste]

Hey, SATA still has a place on older PCs and for additional mass storage so it's nice to see some reviews.
It's also good that they still make a TLC version, I don't trust QLC enough.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

Yeah it'll be fine for a games library but 600 full disk writes is still very low endurance for TLC+DRAM and makes it a poor choice for use as a NAS cache or for any kind of actual workload.

Whilst I agree your average gaming/casual user is never going to get close to 600 full disk writes, 0.33DWPD just seems oddly low for either TLC or something with DRAM cache, let alone both of those things. Older SATA drives like the 850 EVO had 7000 P/E cycles, which with a generous WA factor is still 3-4x higher endurance.

Don't look at the MX500 endurance then you all have a heart attack, and its the best selling sata drive

 

[chrcoluk]

I've bought half a dozen so far, very happy with my purchases


850 Pro doesn't have a 4 TB model and 860 Pro 4 TB costs € 300-€450 used, so like 2-3x the price of 870 EVO

I didnt say they were as good value.

 

[Wirko]

This review prompted me to check prices for similar drives; while it is a smaller capacity model, it looks like the 2TB MX500 is down to $79.99 on Amazon at the moment. Not too bad, actually.

The Transcend SSD230S also belongs here close, it has a better endurance rating, you can get a 4TB model, and some people have a lot of respect for the brand.

Don't look at the MX500 endurance then you all have a heart attack, and its the best selling sata drive

For the 4TB variant, it's still one petabyte, at least if we believe manufacturers' numbers... Think about it, ~£$€ 200 is negligible next to the cost (or value) of one petabyte of any kind of meaningful data, no matter if you pay for it or produce it yourself.