The Samsung 860 QVO (1TB, 4TB) SSD Review: First Consumer SATA QLC
by Billy Tallis on November 27, 2018 11:20 AM ESTMixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
The Samsung 860 QVO's performance on the mixed random I/O test is substantially slower than the 860 EVO, but it is not far behind some of the other mainstream TLC drives. Running the test on a full drive does slow the 1TB 860 QVO down significantly, but it remains faster than the DRAMless TLC drive.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency rankings for the 860 QVO aren't much better than the raw performance rankings. Power consumption is generally a bit higher than the 860 EVO but doesn't vary much with capacity or state of fill, so the efficiency scores are largely reflective of the performance variations.
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The 860 QVO starts out with a fairly slow random read speed but steadily speeds up as the workload shifts toward writes, eventually catching up to the 860 EVO. When the test is run on a full drive, the 1TB 860 QVO runs out of SLC cache in the final few phases of the test and slows down instead of continuing to speed up.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
The 4TB 860 QVO handles the mixed sequential I/O test well, but the 1TB model ends up slightly slower than the DRAMless TLC drive and well behind the mainstream TLC drives.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency scores vary more among the SATA drives than the raw performance scores, so the 860 EVO and Toshiba TR200 stand out as particularly efficient while the 860 QVO 4TB is merely average and the 1TB model is struggling a bit.
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Both capacities of the 860 QVO offer decent performance at either end of the test with pure reads or pure writes, and they are unsurprisingly at their worst with the more write-heavy mixes. The 1TB 860 QVO loses far more performance across the first two thirds of the test, but catches back up with the 4TB model at the end.
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boozed - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
RecoupedFunBunny2 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
"moving off of spinning rust and onto SSDs with my bulk storage. "well... cold storage of NAND ain't all that hot even at SLC. at QLC? not up to bulk storage, if you ask me. and, no, you didn't.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Bulk storage on the PC, not offline storage.I could use a big SSD myself, but at this price I'm better off picking up an EVO or WD 3D NAND instead.
I'm sure it will drop in a couple of months and we may even see the 1TB hit the $99 mark. Samsung QLC is looking pretty decent, overall endurance isn't much worse than my WD Blue 1TB 3D NAND, though smaller capacities drop off horribly.
azazel1024 - Friday, November 30, 2018 - link
What conditions? SLC lasts a LONGGGgggggg time powered off. Decades.MLC on a lightly used drive is also years and years. TLC is also measured in years on a lightly used drive under the right conditions.
Yes, an abused TLC drive today, left in a hot car in the summer time is going to start getting corrupt bits in a matter of a few weeks. That isn't most people's use case and for bulk storage, TLC at least kept vaguely room temperature has a storage life of something >1yr even when pushing up near the P/E endurance of the drive. I forget what JEDEC calls for (or whoever the standards body is), but the P/E endurance on TLC IIRC is 9 months at room temperature. IE your drive should typically not lose any stored bits when at room temperature and powered off for 9 months once you have exhausted your P/E endurance (obviously going past it reduces the powered off endurance as well as the potential for other things, like blocks not being able to be written to due to high power requirements or not being able to differentiate voltages, etc.)
I don't know what the endurance on QLC is supposed to be, but IIRC it is still measured in multiple months at the limit of P/E endurance (and typically when new the cold/off endurance of a drive is several times longer than when it is at the end of its life). I wouldn't want to use QLC, TLC or even MLC or SLC as archival storage that is supposed to last decades, but HDDs could be problematic for decadal storage also.
Araemo - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Honestly? Give me a 4TB for $300 and I start getting tempted. I have an array of 4 3TB spinning rust (5900 RPM even) disks I would love to upgrade to SSDs and at least a moderate size increase. I'd prefer 6TB or 8TB disks, so I can double the array size, but 4TB at a reasonable price gets tempting.Spunjji - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Wait. Just wait. Every time the capacity goes up and the price goes down, another poster comes along with a new higher capacity they want at a new lower price. You'll get it one day but right now it's physically impossible.rpg1966 - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Ha, I came here to say this. These guys would (supposedly) have jumped at these capacity/price/speed/endurance combinations a year ago, but now, oh no, they're way too expensive. It's a wonder they ever buy anything at all...azazel1024 - Friday, November 30, 2018 - link
My limit has always been spending $600-800 to replace the storage in my desktop and server. Right now I am utilizing 3.5TiB of the 5.4TiB capacity of my 2x3TB RAID0 arrays. Now that has been creeping up. 12 months ago it was probably 2.8-2.9TiB utilized. At any rate, I need enough performance (minimum 250MB/sec sustained large transfers once SLC cache is exhausted, or if below, it better be very close to that figure) to not need feel the need to make a RAID array so I can run JBOD and add disks as my storage pool gets utilized so they don't need to all be matching drives.4TB would maybe just barely cut it, but it also likely wouldn't leave me enough growth room as I'd be running out to add probably 2TB disks in a few months. 5-6TB would probably be enough to last me 18-24 months before I'd need to add any disks.
Anyway, so you are talking 10TB of total storage (minimum) for no more than about $800. My song hasn't changed on that in the last couple of years. We still aren't there. Though getting close. 8 cents a GB isn't THAT far away. And by the time we get there, my needs might have only creeped up to 12TB for the same no more than $800 (and who knows, maybe in a couple more years I could gin up another $100 or $200 to get it, even if prices haven't gotten down to 6-7 cents a GB).
So if I was looking at 3x2TB drives in JBOD and could just add another 2TB disk to it as my storage got filled up for a measly ~$350 between both machines every couple of years (and hopefully getting cheaper each time I did it, or it is cheaper enough when I need more capacity a couple years after building the SSD storage pools to get a new 4TB disk for each machine or something).
One of the things I don't like have HDDs and RAID (well it would be the same with SSDs and RAID) is really needing matching drives. So if my storage runs low, it means replacing entire arrays instead of just adding a new disk to provide the extra capacity, but being able to keep both higher performance and keeping a unified volume.
Right now my minimum HDD standard once I start hitting capacity/performance limits is probably going to be getting a set of Seagate Barracuda Pro drives for the performance of 7200rpm spindle speeds. That means 2x2x4TB drives (so 4 drives total) which is around $600 right now, and only gets me 1/3rd more capacity...
In other words I'd likely need to replace both arrays again maybe 3 years later (at most). Going to 2x2x6TB drives might make longer term financial sense, but it also has a startup cost of around $1000.
Impulses - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
It'll probably take several years for prices to get to that point... Optimistically.Spunjji - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
"They are trying to milk saps"There's no evidence whatsoever for that claim. TLC drives weren't cheaper than MLC when they started out, now they (mostly) are - it's how product introductions work. The same will happen here. Enough of the bleating and moving of goalposts to ridiculous locations already.