Samsung 840 EVO mSATA vs. SATA

I've been prowling through the SSD forum but there doesn't seem to be a solid answer for this.

I intend to pick a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD as the sole storage for a notebook that I'll be getting in the future from a custom PC website. I want nothing less than 1TB of SSD storage, so the 840 EVO seems to be my best option considering the price and positive feedback about its battery saving capabilities (due to low power consumption on idle).

However, I'm unsure about whether to get the 1TB mSATA or SATA (2.5).

The mSATA is slightly more expensive, but price difference is essentially negligible for me. However, if all things are equal, I prefer to get the mSATA to cut down on weight.

I've read that the 840 EVO mSATA is slightly lesser in performance but helps more with battery life. I've also read that the mSATA has possible temperature issues, which is not good considering it throttles beyond a certain temperature.

Can anyone confirm these differences between the two variants or provide other insight?


Thanks a bunch.

 

Will you really notice a few grams' difference? I would get the 2.5" drive as they are more sturdy/rugged in my eyes (due to having an enclosure around the board).

 

Ha...I was gonna say, will you really notice a few seconds difference? Ferris what are you doing with your drives that you need such intense performance? The evo is wicked fast compared to the hdd that I'm coming from, and I don't mind waiting an extra 12 seconds for a game to install if it means saving 80 bucks.

I'm having the same debate as the OP between 840 evo msata vs 2.5. Supposedly the performance is roughly the same, while the msata draws noticeably less power. From Ferris's benchmarks it looks like the msata doesn't go over 42 deg celsius, so the only question is if it will continue to perform consistently over time. As for weight, it's not just a few grams. The 2.5 is over 100 grams and the msata is under 9.

 

Is that the full or empty weight with no files on the drive? (Kidding)

I didn't realize the weight difference was that much - I'm guessing it's mostly the metal enclosure.

A quote from the movie snatch comes to mind: "heavy is good; heavy is reliable." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX0MB7pJtKs

 

Yeah I've only recently switch from dual-7200 HDDs to an mSATA + HDD combo, so a jump to a sole SDD is already a big improvement for me.
So to be honest, I'll be going with the cheapest 1TB+ option I can find, and that looks to be the 840 EVO mSATA or 2.5. Although I'll probably wait until summer 2015 to purchase a new laptop, so the 850 Pro might take over as the widely available Samsung option by then.

According to the weights found on their Amazon pages, the EVO 2.5 is about 1.4 ounces, or 40 grams, heavier than the mSATA, which is minor but still significant. Alexhawker makes a good point about durability, but it's not a huge concern for me because I tend to be very careful with my hardware, I'm currently already risking my data with the mSATA that I have, and I always backup my stuff with an external HDD.

Feel I should share this epic 3D V-NAND commerical for the 850 Pro that I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNlATALQwuM

It's cumbersome to think that these SSDs that we're shelling out hundreds for will all be ancient in a few years time.

 

If a "real world" test isn't done in steady state it's not true "real world" performance. Every SSD will get to this used or steady state. The empty drive benchmarks are meaningless. 256GB size class for 840 Pro and EVO results. Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series 240GB Encrypted SSD Review - PCMark 8 Consistency Test

4K testing at a Queue Depth of 32 (QD32) is useless for consumers. SSDs are too fast to let the QD get that high in a consumer workload.

OP, Crucial didn't release a 1TB size class MX100 in the 2.5". So, they aren't likely to have it in mSATA. They only list M550 and M500 mSATA at 512GB and 480GB respectively. Both are available in the 2.5"1TB class though.

As cheapest price is the most important to you, there's no need in talking high performance or consistency, which is SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung 850 Pro in the 1tb class.

Price wise, the cheapest 1TB Class is the M550 2.5". It can be had for $400 at Newegg with a promo code through 7/30

No competition in mSATA 1TB, EVO at Superbiiz $470

While EVO has low idle power consumption that doesn't make it the most frugal in this test. Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD Review - The New Performance King - Benchmarks - Notebook Battery Life It has to return to idle from doing work and it uses battery power doing the work. The M500 wins here. Note: this was the 750GB EVO

 

Excuse me while I go after seeing that commercial.

 

why do you people all use the 512GB Samsung 840 Pro?

-if you want more storage you could get a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO that is 0,1% slower in some uses

-if you want the latest and greatest you could get a 512GB Samsung 850, not a 840.

And considering that:
1 TB 840 EVO;
512 GB 840 pro;
512GB 850,

all have the same prices.

here's a logical comparison of the 840pro vs 840evo

http://ssdboss.com/ssds/Samsung-840-Pro-vs-Samsung-840-EVO


Why do people use the 840 pro? am i not reading something correctly?

 

The 850s are being sold already. newegg had a coupon today.

Edit. Oops, didn't see you were talking about the 1 TB until after I posted.

 

For AnandTech, if you want to see a heavy workload you need to look at the Destroyer from 2013. AnandTech | Bench - SSD But you don't want to see that if you are an 840 Pro fan.

For price and high performance in the the 512GB size class, at the moment, the bang for buck choice is clear, SanDisk Extreme II 480GB. It's less expensive than 840 pro ($250 vs $337) and dominates it in heavy workloads and consistency.

For light workloads, price should carry more weight in the decision to buy. Given time to recover(light workloads), 840 EVO and Crucial M550 are fine choices in the 1TB size class.

Other than local availability, understandable, or blind, brand loyalty to Samsung, not understandable when there are other equally reliable brands, there is no reason to overpay for the 840 Pro when there are better performing and less expensive models available.

 

It depends what you can get it for. You are in the EU? And your workload is light? In the US I would lean to the M550 for the price, at the moment -$50USD.

In this link ADATA Premier Pro SP920 1TB SSD Review - Benchmarks - PCMark 8 Advanced Tests if the drive has lots of recovery time, think laptop always on, the M550 is blistering fast, when recovery is not long, EVO has a definite edge. Note this is the 500GB EVO in the link. The 1TB should be better. So, you should decide based on your workload and the price you can get it for.

If your workload is medium to heavy there are two choices in the 1TB size class and the 850 Pro I see is out of the question. How much is the Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB there? In heavy usage it's the best, "Steady 5" in the link. Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD Review - The New Performance King - PCMark 8 Consistency Test

Another option to consider for heavy workloads is to go 512GB class because of the SEII 480GB price/performance and the prices of the two faster drives, the 850 Pro and SE Pro aren't as high.

At the time of it's release the 256GB size class was the performance size to get. Samsung was definitely not alone. Intel's 520 240GB was better than the 480GB. Even now, on paper, SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB has the highest Sequential Write speeds in that model line. With the NAND shrink of the last generation in general, the performance is found in higher capacities.

The vast majority of review sites only did empty drive benchmarks. SSD manufacturers knew this and could tailor drives for benchmarks. The 840 Pro was the king of those benchmarks. But some sites dug deeper. [H]ardOCP did "steady state" testing with SNIA guidelines and drives at 75% capacity. I didn't provide a link for you to click on this time! LOL AnandTech came out with the Destroyer. When Samsung released EVO their thinking had changed. They talked about low queue depth performance. They knew it was important for consumer workloads and the better reviewers were emphasizing it. QD1 performance is now advertised on the 850 Pro. TweakTown recommended the 840 Pro or OCZ Vector but that all changed when they started testing with PCMark 8 Consistency Test. They dubbed drives that only performed well in synthetic benchmarks and not traced based testing in steady state, "benchmark babes."

The 840 Pro is not a high performance SSD. It has a high burst speed, good for very light workloads, but poor consistency, bad for sustained performance. It's consistency will definitely benefit from high OPing as shown by AnandTech.

 

Yes I am in the EU and I live in Italy . My workload is heavy because I usually play very demanding games on the laptop. I need the 1TB because I like my games to be already installed, and not to have to pick and choose and download from stream.

What do you mean by recovery time?
What would you say are the main selling points of the M550 and of the Sandisk?

 

Playing games does not equate to heavy workload for an SSD. Heavy workload is a lot and freuqent writing to the SSD, like 20GB a day or more. Recovery time is for the SSD "garbage collection" to kick in and clear the pages that have been deleted.

 

I did not know that, thank you for the explanation. And no, I don't copy 20GB a day.
I don't seem to get the meaning of "clear the page deleted", could you explain further?

 

You could also think of "recovery time" as the time your laptop is sitting idle. It gives the SSD controller time to clean itself with TRIM and "garbage collection." Scroll down to Basic SSD operation in this link. SSDs can't overwrite info like an HDD. They need to "clear the page" to write to it again.
Write amplification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In a lighter workload the SSD will have plenty of idle time to work behind the scenes. In a heavier workload it will need to perform work and clean itself. In this link Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD Review - The New Performance King - PCMark 8 Consistency Test, you can see two levels of recovery time "Recovery 5" and "Recovery 1", Usually, the longest bar is with the most recovery time "Recovery 5". The third bar is "worst case", no recovery time, work and clean, designated as "Steady 5".

You will experience a heavy workload only downloading/transferring your games to your SSD, big writes. Game after game will get you to the"worst case" performance. But that will, more than likely, be a one time thing.

The main selling points of the M550 are Crucial reliability, the 1TB size, price when on sale and it's performance in a lighter workload. Given more recovery time it's fast.

The main selling points of SanDisk are reliability, the Pro is available in 960GB, the Extreme II 480GB price at the moment. It's performance consistency, light or heavy workload doesn't matter. Looking at the link you can see it's fast in worst case too. It will keep speeding along without recovery time.

If Adata SP920 1TB is available in Italy and less expensive than the M550, you might want to look at that too. It has all the same parts as the M550, controller, NAND. ADATA Premier Pro SP920 1TB SSD Review

 

Thank you very much for this clear and detailed explanation! I do agree with you, the heaviest workload I might have is when moving games.

And thanks for the suggestions, you seem to be very keen on the 1TB M550,and i dont like the reduced size on the Sandisk.

If I am reading this correctly, the M550 would be my best choice, unless if I want to pay less, in which case i should buy an ADATA.
Question is, how does the 1TB 840 EVO fair, against the M550?

Because reading this comparison, the EVO still seems a better choice, especially considering the read results on the M550.

http://ssdboss.com/ssds/Samsung-840-EVO-vs-Crucial-M550

 

Should i get the crucial mx100 512gb or samsung 840 evo 500gb if both are similarily priced?

 

depends on what you want. The 840 EVO is a better performer, if you want a cheap decent 512GB then the Crucial MX100

With that said, I don't think a typical user will notice the difference in normal usage between any SSD. they are all blazing fast

 

Physically, the M550 has superior NAND MLC vs EVO's TLC In your, workload that should not ever matter. The M550 has power loss protection. Generally, that won't matter on a laptop with a battery unless there is an immediate shutdown of some sort. In your workload my choice would largely be about price between M550 and EVO. The M550 is a little faster given lots of recovery time. EVO is a little faster with less recovery time. As an example, If you were moving your games with 5 minute breaks in between, EVO should handle that a little better. Overall, in a light workload, EVO is a little ahead combining both. It's close and again price would largely determine my choice.

In the link you provided, I hope there were just some typing errors and they didn't compare a 1TB EVO against a 64GB M550! I don't think an M550 64GB exists. I see results there but not testing methods. For their real world tests were the drives empty or in steady state? Every SSD will get to this used or steady state and the real performance will be different. Empty drive benchmarks are meaningless, especially if the drive will be used as an OS drive. Even as a storage drive, without data on the drive, they are nearly useless. The better review sites are testing drives in steady state.

It looks like the SSDBoss just uses other review site's numbers and combines them. The SSDreview no less. And they don't do any real useful testing. All empty drive stuff the last I checked. Good for news though. I'll stick with TweakTown and AnandTech for reviews. If I learn about others testing in steady state, I'll give a look.

 

In other words there's little difference between the two, excluding the power loss protection.

And i should consider the EVO only if it's price is less than the M550?

about the site: yes, I consider it as a "review aggregator" and you've got a point, benchmarking anything in its mint, just opened state is meaningless.

 

Yes, I would buy the cheaper of the two for your workload.

 

well, in italy the price of the 840 EVO 1TB is actually lower than the M550!

 

Yep go with samsung then. In my case 2 months ago crucial m500 240 was around 110e and 240 evo was around 170e so i went with cheaper.

In the meantime they were sold out and our local suplier got a new batch now crucial is around 160e for 240gb and evo is priced the same... Guess they just want to make extra cash...

Reality is that you wont feel the difference, but your wallet will.

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

What are your opinions on the recent 840 EVO perfomance degradation?

http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/samsung-840-evo-read-speed-drops-on-old-written-data-in-the-drive

 

I've not had this slowdown issue on my mSATA 840 EVO but I did have it on my 840 EVO 1TB which is now for sale. I put my trusty 840 PRO 512GB back in my alienware as my secondary drive and the super snappy 850 PRO as the main OS drive

 

How long have you left the 840 in continuous service for at a time? The overclock.net forums indicate that it may be 10 months or longer before the 840 TLC drive shows symptoms, but when it does, it is just as bad as the EVO's with regards to slow reads on old files.

 

oh not more than 2 months. Maybe that's why I didn't experience the slow down.

But what's strange, is I noticed when I had my software setup files on my 840 EVO 1TB, when I accessed that folder, the icons would load in slow motion as if it was loading from a slow CD or so you know what I mean, Additionally, installing large things like Nero 2015 Platinum or Adobe Photoshop CS6 took a longer time than when I had the 840 PRO 512GB as the secondary drive and mind you, the data which is in that software folder is like 4 months old only.

 

Doesn't matter the absolute age of the data/files. What matters/affects us is how long/old they are sitting on the broken TLC Samsung drives.

If Samsung doesn't also issue a fix for their original 840 TLC drive, I see you replacing it with a Pro very soon.

 

Sorry I don't own an 840, I have the 840 PRO 512GB but I forgot to mention the PRO in the post above (check my sig )

 

To be honest I am steering clear of Samsung from now on.

first the altered smartphone benchmarks,
Then the corruption of officials,
now this performance degradation..

The worst thing of it all its that in the benchmarks this problem doesn't show. How convenient!

 

I've noticed this too on my 500GB 840 Evo drive used purely for storage (and thus, files tend to idle there for long periods of time without seeing activity). But usually it's only noticeable with huge files like HD movies and large (>10MB) photos. I simply chalked it down to some weird glitch but now it seems I may have found the root cause.

Well no more TLC drives for me.

 

Benchmarks only show problems if the people running the benchmarks are actually benchmarking the right thing. And given the huge number of things that professional SSD reviewers have either missed or ignored over the years (Sandforce BSOD issues, performance consistency, and now this, just to give a few examples), 99% of the time they aren't looking at the right thing until long after the drive is released and widespread problems pop up in real world usage.

 

And when people were talking tha evos are not so great for long term performance we were shut down...

 

any fix for the 840? is it still as bad as it was?

 

The fix just temporarily fixes the performance, then it deteriorates again in a few days. I would not put any TLC SSDs in my system anymore. the only reason I have this mSATA 1TB 840 EVO is because a) it hadn't shown any signs of slow performance, only the 2.5" standard 840 EVO 1TB suffers from this and b) because it is the biggest mSATA SSD out there for the moment

 

Hey

I was thinking of getting mSata Samsung 840 1TB for my next AW, and then an 840 SATA SSD as well, but now that I hear of degrading qualities, what are the alternatives for 1TB SSDs?

 

Samsung 850 pro is one.. Could also look at 960GB Sandisk Extreme Pro..

 

Thanks Tom. I was reading the thread the discovered the slow down, apparently they are releasing a firmware update for the 840 EVO to fix the slow down problem, or is this old news?

 

Old news, they released this a few weeks ago for the EVO line.

See:
Samsung SSD Downloads | Samsung SSD US


They have just recently admitted to a fix for the similarly affected original 840 (also a TLC drive).

See:
Samsung acknowledges 840 read speed bug, plans fix | Hardware-360


Also, more TLC issues... this time from apple:

See:
DailyTech - Report: 128GB iPhone 6 Boot Loop Issues Prompt Apple to Abandon TLC NAND

 

Supposedly, the fix isn't of much help according to Ferris who's used the 840/850 quite a bit.. I'd personally just get the Sandisk Extreme Pro.. Its extremely reliable and has very consistent performance for very heavy reads and writes...

 

I would note that my 1TB EVO mSATA hadn't noticeably slowed down in over 6 months of use but CrystalDiskMark showed a slight improvement when I applied the fix about a month ago and CDM doesn't reveal any further slowdown. However, I would also note that my EVO has had a relatively easy life since I bought it early this year with the Total Bytes Written just past 6TB.

John

 

John, using any of the canned benchmark tools won't show the problem. The problem is that files written to the drive for a month or longer read at up to 1/10th of the speed of a file that has recently been written to the drive.

That is why the CDM results you see don't mean anything. They are writing new data and then reading it back right away.


To see if your drive is affected, you would need to run the tools I've mentioned already.

FileBench v06 by BrainSplatter and SSDReadSpeedTester by Techie007.

See:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/...es-benchmarks-needed-to-confirm-affected-ssds

 

Thanks.

I've now run SSDReadSpeedTester and it shows everything looks good. However, it is only 28 days since I installed and ran the Samsung performance restoration utility.

John

 

Black Friday sales: would you buy a 480GB SanDisk for 196€ over a MX100? why?

 

unfortunately, the fix is just temporary, give it some time and the performance drops again. I sold my two 1TB 840 EVOs and will never buy a TLC drive ever again.

 

If Sandisk Extreme II/Pro yes... Go ahead and get it...

 

why? what does it offer more than the MX100

 

Higher peak and sustained (over time) performance.

 

Greater reliability and the main thing for me is better performance period..