SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

Thank you for all the replies and special thanks to tilleroftheearth .

 

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-3d-xpoint-kaby-lake,31966.html


Intel teases us with more 3D XPoint 'demos'. (An indicated 4x faster responding storage subsystem than their own 'best PCIe SSD' available in the world).

Kaby Lake cannot come soon enough!

 

theres a lot of talk of SSD failure but everything I read about the the 2014 and newer drives is that they last as long as 5 years or more for the standard user like me. I have never kept a laptop longer than 3, so if this is true the SSD will last the lifetime of my laptop.

 

What talk of SSD failures? Hasn't been an issue for half a decade, afaik, besides the normal DOA and other 'expected' initial failures/incompatibilities in the first few weeks or so.

 

Its brought up a lot on the "Advice sites" I read before getting an SSD for my laptop. If its been that long then its a brought up too much.

 

@tilleroftheearth I read a lot about recent OCZ Trion 100 & 150, Silicon Power, Mushkin Reactor failures.

 

I guess those are not even on my (personal) radar. OCZ is a given in this category, but in other threads I did suggest Samsung EVO over Mushkin drives...

 

So this thread really got me thinking....

Bought a Dell Precision 5510 with everything I could pack it with - except a 1TB SSD. I wasn't available at the time. I then told myself I would buy the 1TB Samsung 950 Pro, when it was released. This was going to be my all-in laptop – so the budget was and is high (Xeon, 4K, M.2, 32GB, Quadro M1000M). Don’t get me wrong, money matters, but I really want to push the limits with this laptop.

I'm mainly doing work in InDesign, Photoshop and Premiere PRO. I’m connected to AC 90% of the time.

The Precision currently have a PM951 512GB, and I’ve been looking into different 1TB M.2 options; PM951, SM951, Pro 950, OCZ RD400 and lately Intel 540s.


- Has anyone gone the other way, to obtain better battery life and a less overheated system?

- I’m curious if anyone has bought better thermal pads for the Pro 950 http://www.appstate.edu/~taylorsa1/5510/IMG_9981.jpg
-- I see some 1, 1.5 or 2.0 mm from Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8

- Really, would I ever notice the difference between a 950 Pro or the 1/3 priced Intel 540s?



PM951 512GB (current installed)
Speed: 1050 / 560 MB/s
IOPS: 250K / 144K
Power consumption idle: 1.7W (can’t be true)
Power consumption active: 4.5W
Temperature idle: ??
Temperature: Up to 70C

Intel 540s 1TB
Speed: 560 / 480 MB/s
IOPS: 78K / 85K
Power consumption idle: 40mW
Power consumption active: 80mW
Temperature idle: ??
Temperature: Up to 70C

Samsung Pro 512 (waiting for 1TB)
Speed: 2500 / 1500 MB/s
IOPS: 300K / 110K
Power consumption Idle: 70mW
Power consumption active: 5.7W (Max 7.0W)
Temperature idle: about 63C
Temperature: Throttle at 98C

Been playing with the though of cloning our Virtual servers running SQL and AX 2012, to see how a "small laptop" can handle the stress with a Pro 950. Maybe it's just me trying to convince my self to keep going all in with my investment

 

I bought a SanDisk z400s 256gb SSD, I read the reviews, while its reliable and and gets some of the best battery life and faster than any HD, its the SLOWEST ssd made it seems, oh well $63 USD is not much.

 

I bought a SanDisk z400s 256gb SSD, I read the reviews, while its reliable and and gets some of the best battery life and faster than any HD, its the SLOWEST ssd made it seems, oh well $63 USD is not much.

 

@Gudi I'd go with Intel without doubt. What's the point of 512GB SSD running so hot when you can afford 1TB, really?

 

More 1TB M.2 are now available:
Does anyone know what brand the Dell 1TB SSD 400-AJHM is?

SanDisk X400 M.2 2280 SSD - 1TB - 279€
Intel 540s M.2 2280 SSD - 1TB - 304€
Samsung 850 EVO M.2 2280 SSD - 1TB - 410€
Transcend MTS800 M.2 22880 SSD - 1TB - 466€
OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD - 1TB - 840€

Not sure why the Samsung 850 EVO is that expensive compared to SanDisk and Intel.

 

Samsung is being Samsung and overpricing their SSDs...

 

Just had a chat with Dell, they gave me the following specs 1TB 400-AJHM:
Read: (Up to 870mb/s) and Write: (Up to 780mb/s) for Dell m.2 SSDs.

I kinda don't like the way he ended the sentence "for Dell m.2 SSDs". As I asked specific about the 400-AJHM. I also asked about IOPS and power consumption, but didn't get those details. But the read/write numbers did surprise me, as I was expecting a PM951. Maybe we're about to see a disk in between, with hopefully low power consumption and decent performance. But what M.2 brand is it, any guess? Is it a SM951 - with no promises? But then it sounds cheap... 508€

Hmmm what puzzles me though, is Dell writes M.2 in headline but 2.5" in specs ...

 

I thought there were m.2 in 2.5 cases?
Also there was some chatter about dell buying Z400s Sandisk for their laptops so they can sell laptops with SSD with higher margins ( as I posted they are the slowest ssd on market) mind you z400s only come in smaller 256gb size as the largest though

 

One of my Dell sources tells me, that it's in fact the PM951 rebranded.

 

Corsair XTi with Phison 3110 & 15nm Toshiba MLC, any thoughts ?

 

@Ashtrix unless retail prices differ greatly, it's utterly expensive, even for an MLC drive. Chinese drives with Toshiba MLC go ~ for $200 and slightly above, with worldwide shipping; Sandisk enterprise MLC SSD can be sourced for $200-$250, depending on your location.

 

it is faster

 

Well, it's not a clear winner - maybe in real life but not on paper. The SanDisk are 2/3 of the price and have pretty much the same specs.

SanDisk X400 1TB
Read 545 / Write 520 MBps
read 93500 / write 93500 IOPS

Intel 540s 1TB
Read 560 / Write 480 MBps
read 78000 / write 85000 IOPS

Samsung 850 1TB
Read 540 / Write 520 MBps
read 97000 / write 90000 IOPS

 

I'll be clean installing Windows 10 on two SSDs which were previously used with Bitlocker encryption. If I just delete their current partitions during the install, and create new ones and install OS right away, will they be properly TRIM'ed? Or do I need to put each of them as secondary drives in some machine, delete the partitions and leave them alone for some hours?

 

Looks to have the same specs as the PNY CS2211, which is going for about $160 for the 480 GB version and $290 for the 960 GB.

 

Comments at anandtech suggest that some people are not into the Phison controller, is it bad ?

 

Somebody, please? I'm kinda running out of time. )'=

 

Clean install format during install , and windows should do the rest for you. That how I do it all the time.
Can the experts chime in please.

 

Starlight5, sorry... do as ron6400 suggests.

I wouldn't do it any other way.

 

I actually cleaned and decrypted the drives, and left them running for some hours, to ensure they are TRIM'ed before the installations. Will install OS right away next time, thank you both @ron6400 @tilleroftheearth .

 

Intel's new lineup 540s , an abomination

 

Nah, Intel isn't pretending to deliver a product it knows it can't. When the prices shake out (as they will), it will prove to be a good buy as an entry level product (because it's from Intel... read below).

That word though, should be applied to Samsung, instead.

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd,4608.html

Here is a drive that throttles at 50C has great (synthetic) sequential reads and writes and for almost anything in between, offers very little to most notebook users.

How could Samsung bring this great high 'scoring' example to market? Easy, they just don't value actual user performance. Only synthetic 'scores' which makes everyone shout 'the winner!'.

At least Intel does care about the actual end user experience. And using their drives shows it. No, not the fastest in synthetic and even in more 'real world tests'. But what Intel delivers is a more consistent experience. At least far more consistent than Samsung has ever managed on any of my systems.

Am I just being super critical of Samsung (again)? If I am, I'm not the only one.

From the Tom's link above:

I haven't given up hope yet that Samsung will deliver a product that is worth buying for more than bragging rights on a couple of synthetic tests...

If they can give us a 4TB example of this SSD with at least 8 packages (for parallelism) and their new Polaris controller can actually handle that more appropriate design of a 'high performance' SSD... we just may see something worth buying.

Now, what are they going to do about the throttling issue that is even worse today than in past generations?

(Temps don't increase past 50C which is great. Performance though plummets even at those low temps).


See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd,4608-2.html

Note that the performance, even degraded, is still very, very high (without the heatsink), even if they drop within ~3 minutes of starting the synthetic workload. So why am I so worried about this throttling?

Because this isn't a notebook platform it is being tested on. I expect sustained performance to plummet like a rock on the main platform M.2 PCIe x4 SSD's are aimed at; small, thin and light 'ultrabooks'.

Will be glad to be proved wrong. But the facts above don't foresee that outcome becoming reality.


Below is a good read for anyone that wants to understand the 'scores' a little better and how meaningless (most) of them are when quoted by the manufacturer who's selling them... yeah, except for Intel.

See:
http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2013/20130813_C12_Grimsrud.pdf

 

You meant 4TB not GB, right Tiller?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, thanks.

I edited my post but it could also have been a Freudian slip thinking about the 'pseudo SLC' Samsung always tries to highlight all the time (performance-wise).

I should also point out that after re-reading my post above, of course I mean that a 4TB SSD would be 'worth buying' if the performance (real world) matched what the spec's and 'scores' Samsung would have us concentrate on would indicate.

4TB capacity in SSD format is already a 'win' and worth buying just for that reason alone (if performance was at some minimum level). Just hope we have more than Samsung to choose from at capacities greater than 1TB soon.

 

I wanted to make sure you weren't talking about the slc cache or something


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

answer no longer required.

 

Stunned about SM961 1TB pricing... It's the same as the PM951 €402 ex. taxes. The OCZ and 950 Pro (when it arrives) will properly be around €700.

 

How is lite on ssd it's part of Plextor. I only need for os booting purpose and playing few games that it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

My Alienware 18 came with 4 Lite On 250GB in Raid 0; I replaced them since then with 4 Evo 1TB but they were doing just fine, on par with any other brand—Intel–Samsung—so it should be alright for you!

 

Thanks Man.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Anyone here using the Intel 600p series M.2 SSD? My desktop came with the 512GB free. It's obviously using TLC NAND and is not as fast nor reliable as the 950 Pro, but free is free. Let me know how it is, if so. I'd like to hear what you think of it.

 

hey guys got a question. I have a samsung ssd 250gb and a samsung ssd 840 evo that is 250gb.


I took a look at amazon for 500gb ssd. I know samsung evo and pro are expensive ones. The lower quality is sandisk. However, can someone explain why the Crucial Brand SSD cost similar to sandisk? The removes for the Crucial 525gb ssd is very good so curious on this.

 

I thought people should know that the lid has been lifted for Samsung 960 Pro reviews. Here are a few, 4-5 hours after they have been released (probably embargoed). Expect more in the next day/week. I'm going to read them over dinner, and maybe that will convince me to buy the 1 TB drive (actually I don't need more convincing. I AM going to buy one. )

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/20...-review-the-fastest-consumer-ssd-you-can-buy/
http://www.techspot.com/review/1266-samsung-ssd-960-pro/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review,4774.html



https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Samsung-960-PRO-2TB-M2-NVMe-SSD-Full-Review-Even-Faster
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...sung-ssd960-pro-2tb-m-2-pcie-nvme-ssd-review/

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/samsung-960-pro-m-2-nvme-ssd-review-2tb/

Hadriel

 

What about SATA Express? Will we see it in laptops, or is it a stillborn standard?

 

Does Intel still make msata ssd`s or was the 240gb 525 the last one they made.

John.

 

@Tinderbox (UK) they gave up on mSATA eons ago - as most other did. Samsung were the only ones to release 1TB mSATA drives; other brands top out at 480/512GB, or even 240/256GB.

 

mSATA is a cool concept that surves no purpose anymore.

still valid: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/msata-faq-a-basic-primer.574993/

 

Samsung is even selling 2 TB mSATA drives, you just can't buy them directly. It's in the portable SSD T3.

 

Nice but mSATA just never really took off.. M2 literally killed it due to the smaller size and ability to have a direct PCIE connection..

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That's right, and i don't shed a single tear about mSATA. I just want to have that thing in m.2.
In my opinion the only reason for not releasing a 2 TB m.2 850 Evo is: You can sell the same silicon for more $$$ if labeled as 960 pro... Sad...

 

The Evo is TLC memory whereas the 960 Pro is MLC.. So totally different.. Also the 8 series is EOL.. The 960 Evo is what you are going to get in the 2TB capacity whenever its out..

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That's right. I better correct my statement:
In my opinion the only reason for not releasing a 2 TB m.2 850 Evo is: You can sell the same silicon for more $$$ if labeled as 960 Evo... Sad...


I'd even prefer a 960 Evo AHCI over NVME for compatibility and faster boot times.

In the end I guess I'll go with the 2,5" 850 Evo. I wanted to have it as m.2, to have the option to use it as very small external drive later, when I replace it in the laptop. I'll have a second look after that when my tax refund arrived.

 

2x Samsung 960 PRO in Super RAID 4 on my MSI Titan Pro 7RF laptop