The Latest High-Capacity M.2: The Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SSD, Reviewed
by Billy Tallis on February 14, 2018 1:40 PM ESTPower Management
Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle.
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
The idle power measurements for the 860 EVO are just a few milliwatts higher than for the 860 PRO, which can be attributed entirely to the M.2 to SATA converter board (it has a status LED). The 860 EVO benefits from all the same controller and DRAM power savings the 860 PRO brought. While there are some smaller SATA SSDs that have lower idle power numbers (eg. some DRAMless SSDs), among multi-TB drives Samsung has the lead.
While Samsung's idle power usage has improved significantly with the 860 generation, the wake-up latency is unchanged. There's room for improvement here as many drives are able to wake up much faster from sleep states that are almost as deep as the Samsung 860 EVO's idle.
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DanNeely - Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - link
Did you do the performance tests via the sata-m2 adapter too? If so will you be re-running them in PCIe mode next?JanW1 - Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - link
This is a M.2 SATA drive, no point in trying to run tests in PCIe mode.Flunk - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
I can already tell you the results, they're all 0.Drazick - Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - link
M.2 is perfect for Laptop's.Why don't we see U.2 for Desktop's?
It will mitigate most throttling issues.
Not to say simplify the Mother Boards.
CheapSushi - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
There are U.2 for desktops....But U.2 is NVMe/PCIe based. This is SATA/AHCI. You can turn a mini-SAS port and I think U.2 (correct me if wrong) into a quad SATA port with appropriate cable. Nothing wrong with SATA/AHCI for a bulk storage drive. Unless you'e assuming everyone just wants ONE drive for the entire system.BurntMyBacon - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
In a system you would want to use the U.2 port in, there is a decent probability that a second drive will be desired if not already present. Like you said, "Nothing wrong with SATA/AHCI for a bulk storage drive". For systems that you can rule out a bulk storage drive, there is a high probability that nVME needs will be served by M.2 rather than U.2.Though some can tell a difference, it is not even certain that most perceive the performance benefit moving from a fast SATA SSD to an nVME SSD for a primary disk due to how current operating systems handle the storage subsystem.
Bulat Ziganshin - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
3dnews.ru testing shown that 512 GB model sometimes is slower than 850EVO, due to lower parallelism. It's why Samsung sent you 2TB model for tests insteadyankeeDDL - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
Why was the 960 EVO/PRO not included?SpaceRanger - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
Because this is a SATA drive, not an NVME drive.Flunk - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link
As such they utterly destroy this.