Samsung 870 EVO Internal SSD (MZ-77E2T0B/AM) 2TB 2.5" SATA III

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The numbers we saw out of the overall PCMark 10 score are quite promising, putting this SATA drive in the same leagues as M.2 PCI Express 3.0 NVMe drives like the ADATA Spectrix S40G or Crucial P2. Newer NAND in existing SATA models is far more likely to bring benefits to consumers. Maximum throughput cannot increase, but latency and performance at lower queue depths can still be improved marginally. Newer NAND also tends to bring power efficiency improvements, which means that upgrading the storage capacity in a laptop that's a few years old shouldn't hurt battery life even though larger drives tend to be more power-hungry. Let’s see what are the key offerings given by the manufacturers of these SSDs. Comparing them will give you a good idea of what you can expect from them. Specification But for new system builders, this is an SSD to put on the shopping list. I've been using Samsung SSDs for many years and have never once been let down or disappointed in any way. And the 2TB model I have here is good value, too. When the 860 EVO launched you were paying the same for 1TB as you now are for 2TB with the 870 EVO. Sequential Write Up to 530 MB/s Sequential Write * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration ** Measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated

That said, it’s been a while since we’ve seen another EVO release (the last one being the 970 EVO Plus in the summer of 2019 and even longer since a 2.5-inch release), so we are certainly happy to get our hands on it. The 870 EVO uses TLC (or 3bit MLC, as dubbed by Samsung) 3D V-NAND, is available in capacities from 256GB up to 4TB, and features the company’s newest in-house controller. The 870 EVO also offers an endurance of up to 2,400TBW for the highest capacity model. We are seeing the usual upgrades in the spec table for the 870 EVO compared to the 860 EVO from 2018. The controller is now Samsung's MKX, a minor iterative update to the 860's MJX. The NAND flash memory is a more significant jump: the 870 EVO is using Samsung's 128-layer 3D TLC, first seen on the 980 PRO. More specifically, our 1TB and 4TB 870 EVO samples are using the 512Gbit dies that were introduced on the 2TB 980 PRO, a model that arrived much later than the smaller capacities built around 256Gbit dies. The preceding Samsung 860 EVO launched with Samsung's 64L 3D NAND, and they appear to have skipped over their 92L generation with their TLC SATA drives.Random Read (4KB, QD32) Up to 98,000 IOPS Random Read * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration ** Measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated Each capacity should measure similar to that of the 860 EVO - typically, it will have a 6GB-12GB of static SLC cache paired with a dynamic SLC cache that spans tens of gigabytes. Speed degradation was not apparent in our testing of the 1TB and 4TB model, but it may impact the smaller models. From both aesthetic and functional standpoints, Samsung Magician stands well above the rest. The software features an elegant design that helps to demystify some of the more complex storage-management tasks, such as using Secure Erase or defragmenting the drive.

It is worth noting that the enterprise SATA SSD market has seen somewhat more in the way of visible activity, because the longer product lifetimes in that market and the higher profit margins give SATA SSDs more of a long tail of commercial relevance.) When it comes to benchmarking storage devices, application testing is best, and synthetic testing comes in second place. While not a perfect representation of actual workloads, synthetic tests do help to baseline storage devices with a repeatability factor that makes it easy to do apples-to-apples comparison between competing solutions. These workloads offer a range of different testing profiles ranging from “four corners” tests, common database transfer size tests, to trace captures from different VDI environments. There are no serious differences between these SSDs if we look at their benchmark scores. However, the Samsung 870 EVO is winning over the MX500 in terms of random read and write speeds. 3. Endurace While there aren't a ton of innovations on offer with Samsung's SSD 870 EVO, the incremental improvements that Samsung has made both to its flash technology and its controllers looks to have translated into some decent gains for the drive's 4K random read and write performance. Samsung is one of the few companies still putting significant effort into SATA SSDs and releasing new consumer SATA models. As PC OEMs have overwhelmingly switched to using NVMe SSDs in new systems, even on the smaller capacities, the client/consumer SATA SSD market now exists almost entirely for the sake of DIY system builders and aftermarket upgrades on older systems. Most major consumer SSD brands have either stopped updating their SATA models, or decided to quietly update components without the fanfare of a new model release. Then there are companies creating odd-ball models, such as a 15.36 TB design. Either way, we don't get many new consumer SATA SSDs in for review these days.

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We test all of our SATA and PCI Express 3.0 SSDs on PC Labs' main storage testbed, which is built on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition CPU. In sequential Crystal DiskMark speeds, the SSD 870 EVO hits Samsung's own rated spec without a sweat, while 4K results were just a bit stronger, but still a bit slower than expected when comparing the 4TB and 1TB variants of the same drive.