Lexar NM790 4 TB

[W1zzard]

The Lexar NM790 is one of the fastest SSDs we've ever tested, being able to match the Samsung 990 Pro. It is still priced very competitively, at just $210 for the 4 TB version. Not long ago that only got you 2 TB. Thanks to a highly optimized controller design, the NM790 runs very efficiently and doesn't put out a ton of heat.

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[ARF]

This will be my new drive.

I have the XPG Gammix S11 Pro 512GB PCIe 3.0 in my PCIe 4.0 M.2_1 slot on my MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WIFI board, but it should get replaced by this soon.

 

[nomdeplume]

Price is interesting if only due to Samsung and others ↑ in the last month or so.

Performance seems to scale with Samsung 980 Pro 1TB. Meaning it directly aligns with that drive a considerable amount and leaps ahead where NVMe four times larger should.

 

[Bwaze]

Sorry, but 2011 called and asked why is 4 TB "tons"...

Even if we just look at the SSD drives we already had this capacity in average consumer market since 2018.

 

[ARF]

Sorry, but 2011 called and asked why is 4 TB "tons"...

Even if we just look at the SSD drives we already had this capacity in average consumer market since 2018.

This is because the fashion is to have cloud space... I agree that this a very weird behaviour of the society. There is pressure for more storage space, but the customers don't know how to express their demands.
I mean look at how many people have multiple smaller drives... five or six, or even more sometimes... instead of one or two large ones to consolidate...

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Sorry, but 2011 called and asked why is 4 TB "tons"...

Even if we just look at the SSD drives we already had this capacity in average consumer market since 2018.

There was nothing "average" about 4TB SSDs 5 years ago. They were rare, expensive, and few owned them. Even today, most people's PCs do not use drives of this size.

This is because the fashion is to have cloud space... I agree that this a very weird behaviour of the society. There is pressure for more storage space, but the customers don't know how to express their demands.
I mean look at how many people have multiple smaller drives... five or six, or even more sometimes... instead of one or two large ones to consolidate...

Unless you are an archiver, you dont really need that much space. Most console owners have 1TB of storage and do just fine, most PC owners will not have as many large games installed at once. Streaming has obliterated the home media market, most who buy blu rays just watch from the blu ray. Few rip everything into digital format and have terrabytes of data on hand.

for those of us that do, we have NASs with RAID arrays and secondary backups somewhere else.

 

[80251]

To think I paid $366 for my Samsung QVO 4 TiB.

 

[Bwaze]

I paid 165 EUR for my Super Talent Ultradrive ME 64GB SSD in 2009, and in the next 10 years the available size really exploded to 4 TB (actually, 8TB)! And now we'll soon be at 5 years of same available capacity, and everyone acts like this is completely normal...

Imagine, from 64 GB to 8.000 GB in 10 years, that's 62% growth every year, at that rate we would be at 55TB now, 4 years later!

 

[nomdeplume]

This is because the fashion is to have cloud space...

Was, in 2018. Then it suddenly got uninteresting paying through the nose for tiny amounts a fraction of 4TB. Strictures on reclamation, access, legal ownership....

I appreciate TPU and their SSD reviewer making the effort to sort out what is possible instead of squabbling with the industry. 4TB is not excessive for an actively used drive operating within peak %. 400TB at accessible prices would dry up the market and let everyone go focus on commerce or wherever they are abandoning us for.

 

[Marcus Vinicus]

Ordered one of these Lexar's online just now (all prices in New Zealand dollars).

Price comparison's from PBTech New Zealand (largest computer retailer in NZ)
Lexar NM790 4TB = $299 ($74.75 per TB)
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB = $299 ($149.5 per TB)
Samsung 980 PRO 2TB = $239 ($119.5 per TB)

 

[zmeul]

DRAM-less junk

 

[mouacyk]

How resilient are these for long term storage? Are they more or less prone to lose data vs spinning drives?

 

[ARF]

Ordered one of these Lexar's online just now (all prices in New Zealand dollars).

Price comparison's from PBTech New Zealand (largest computer retailer in NZ)
Lexar NM790 4TB = $299 ($74.75 per TB)
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB = $299 ($149.5 per TB)
Samsung 980 PRO 2TB = $239 ($119.5 per TB)

I have never liked Samsung as a company. Its competitors are always better. The thing is that when you grow such a monster similar to Apple, nvidia and intel, it's very hard to change their profit margin intentions and make their lineups more earthly priced.

Lexar just blows the competition out of the water. Not only because of the price. It's overall a superior product.

 

[Assimilator]

Sorry, but 2011 called and asked why is 4 TB "tons"...

Even if we just look at the SSD drives we already had this capacity in average consumer market since 2018.

Sorry, but 2011 called and asked for its stupid comments back.

DRAM-less junk

Another one that didn't read the review. If this was my site I'd start banning such ignorant idiots.

 

[Athlonite]

Ordered one of these Lexar's online just now (all prices in New Zealand dollars).

Price comparison's from PBTech New Zealand (largest computer retailer in NZ)
Lexar NM790 4TB = $299 ($74.75 per TB)
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB = $299 ($149.5 per TB)
Samsung 980 PRO 2TB = $239 ($119.5 per TB)

shit that's a pretty good price for here when we usually see double or more the US dollar price for stuff we buy here

DRAM-less junk

Are you really that strapped for system DRam that you're going to miss 40MB

 

[Tomorrow]

I see the price difference is not that big compared to S70 Blade 4TB. NM790 costs 215€ here. S70 Blade costs 235€. About 9% difference in price.
NM790 does seem to have better power efficiency so for portable devices it's likely better.

But overall it does seem like race to bottom.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

@W1zzard

Are we going to get reviews of the more budget orientated Lexar drives like the 710 or NM610PRO?

 

[Bwaze]

How resilient are these for long term storage? Are they more or less prone to lose data vs spinning drives?

How long is long term? SSDs still loose their "charge" over time, so without regular power up it's usually not recommended for storing for over one year. It's apparently also temperature dependant:

Warning: apparently this only holds true for drives that have exceeded their endurance rating, so nor really relevant!

"For this chart, you can see that while working, within the normal temperature range from 25°C to 55°C, the lifespan of an SSD increases (from 58 weeks to 404 weeks) with the increase of temp. While, when powering off, the data retention time is inversely proportional to the temp.

If an SSD commonly works at a temperature of 40 °C while staying in an environment of 25 °C when power off, it is expected to last 105 weeks (about 2 years). Yet, if the SSD keeps working in the same temp of 40 °C while the temp when power off increases 5 °C and reaches 30 °C, its data retention period halved to 52 weeks (around 1 year)."

 

[authorized]

Do you think those bad random writes/latency could be fixed in firmware, or is it inherent?

 

[W1zzard]

How resilient are these for long term storage? Are they more or less prone to lose data vs spinning drives?

Easily "years", but it doesn't matter. All your storage eventually fails, so either you have a 2nd (or 3rd) backup, or you are willing to lose your data.

Personally I stopped using HDD RAID 1 recently and use non-RAID SSD for everything, with daily incremental backups to cloud storage (encrypted of course, software is called Duplicati)

Do you think those bad random writes/latency could be fixed in firmware, or is it inherent?

Lexar got back to me "Lexar adjusted firmware on 4TB due to the higher capacity; therefore, 4TB has a slightly lower IOPS"

I'm discussing with them about HMB sizes, and will probably ask for a 2 TB sample, because it should be interesting to review, too.

 

[ARF]

How resilient are these for long term storage? Are they more or less prone to lose data vs spinning drives?

I had an old mechanical Seagate ST1000VX000 HDD just several months after purchasing it brand new, it stopped working, it simply malfunctioned and was RMAed.

About this Lexar NM790:

The TBW of these drives scales with capacity, offering 500TB on the 512GB drive, 1000TB on the 1TB and 1500TB on the 2TB. I’m not sure why the 2TB drive isn’t rated for 2000TB TBW, but 1500TB is a decent lifespan. To put that in perspective, writing the 50GB contents of the Blu-ray drive each day to the 1TB drive should be possible for 20,000 days, or nearly 55 years. And, even if you write 1TB each day, the 2TB drive should last five years or more before the NAND is exhausted.
Using the 2TB drive as an example, the NM790 has a better TBW than the Samsung 990 Pro, nearly double that of the Kioxia Exceria Pro, and only 100TB less than the Kingston KC3000.

Lexar NM790 SSD review: Excellent and affordable

A highly affordable Gen 4 NVMe that PS5 and PC owners should both be keen to purchase

www.techadvisor.com

 

[Assimilator]

How long is long term? SSDs still loose their "charge" over time, so without regular power up it's usually not recommended for storing for over one year. It's apparently also temperature dependant:

View attachment 309445


"For this chart, you can see that while working, within the normal temperature range from 25°C to 55°C, the lifespan of an SSD increases (from 58 weeks to 404 weeks) with the increase of temp. While, when powering off, the data retention time is inversely proportional to the temp.

If an SSD commonly works at a temperature of 40 °C while staying in an environment of 25 °C when power off, it is expected to last 105 weeks (about 2 years). Yet, if the SSD keeps working in the same temp of 40 °C while the temp when power off increases 5 °C and reaches 30 °C, its data retention period halved to 52 weeks (around 1 year)."

Imagine if you bothered linking to the original page: https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/is-ssd-good-for-long-term-storage.html

But that page is nonsense anyway. The image that it shows is from a presentation that's at least 8 years old, and the presentation itself is for drives that have already exceeded their endurance rating. AnandTech covered it here but the long and short of it is that this is nonsensical alarmist BS. Stop perpetuating it.

 

[W1zzard]

The TBW rating is just a warranty number that you will never reach with normal usage anyway. If the drive fails and they send you a new one, it doesn't come with your data. Really, the only way to secure your data is to make backups.

 

[randomUser]

How long is long term? SSDs still loose their "charge" over time, so without regular power up it's usually not recommended for storing for over one year. It's apparently also temperature dependant:

View attachment 309445


"For this chart, you can see that while working, within the normal temperature range from 25°C to 55°C, the lifespan of an SSD increases (from 58 weeks to 404 weeks) with the increase of temp. While, when powering off, the data retention time is inversely proportional to the temp.

If an SSD commonly works at a temperature of 40 °C while staying in an environment of 25 °C when power off, it is expected to last 105 weeks (about 2 years). Yet, if the SSD keeps working in the same temp of 40 °C while the temp when power off increases 5 °C and reaches 30 °C, its data retention period halved to 52 weeks (around 1 year)."

So judging by this graph, one would heat the NANDs up to 55C before turning them off. And after turning off, you need to cool NANDs down to 25C in order to have a highest data retention time.
But PC reports controller temperatures as far as i know, and not the NAND, so you don't really know how hot/cold it is. And after turning off, how fast does NAND chip has to reach 25C temp? or is it irrelevant if it takes 1 minute or 1 hour to cool down.

Another point: if heat and cold is the main factor of data retention, then, one could use a heat gun to heat up the NAND (to ~55C) and then let it cool down, thus extending retention by another 404 weeks without even connecting to PC, right? Otherwise the graph might be misleading.
SSD controllers do not refresh each and every storage bit while they are powered on/working continuously, so 404 weeks of retention might only be true for the last block that was written. Other pats of NAND will have lower retention time depending on the temperature they were written at, and how long did they stay at that temperature before being turned off.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It goes for NT$4,999 in Taiwan, or US$157, including 5% VAT.

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