Samsung SSD 840 EVO Review: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB & 1TB Models Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 25, 2013 1:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Samsung
- TLC
- Samsung SSD 840
Inside the Drives & Spare Area
The EVO is offered in a single form factor - 2.5" at a 7mm thickness. There are three torx (T5) screws that hold the chassis together, removing them gets you a look at the EVO's very simple internals. Surprisingly enough there's no thermal pad between Samsung's MEX controller and the chassis.
Samsung, like Intel, does a great job of reducing the number of screws and simplifying the assembly of its drives. I would prefer if Samsung didn't insist on using torx screws to hold the chassis together but I'm sure it does have some impact on reducing returns. There's also growing concern of counterfit SSDs which I guess screw choice could somewhat address.
There are two PCB sizes used in the EVO lineup, neither of which occupies the full volume of the 2.5"/7mm chassis. The 120 and 250GB drives use the smallest PCB, while the other drives use the larger layout. The larger PCB has room for 8 NAND packages, while the half length PCB can accommodate two. Each of the NAND packages can hold up to 8 x 128Gbit 19nm TLC die.
To deal with the realities of TLC, Samsung sets aside more of the drive for use as spare area on the EVO than it does on its MLC Pro line. Due to TurboWrite however, the percentage is actually a bit less than it was on last year's 840.
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO Memory | |||||||
| Advertised Capacity | 120GB | 250GB | 500GB | 750GB | 1TB | ||
| DRAM Size | 256MB LPDDR2-1066 | 512MB LPDDR2-1066 | 512MB LPDDR2-1066 | 1GB LPDDR2-1066 | 1GB LPDDR2-1066 | ||
| # of NAND Packages | 2 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 8 | ||
| # of NAND die per Package | 4 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 8 | ||
| NAND Capacity per Package | 64 GiB | 128 GiB | 128 GiB | 96 GiB | 128 GiB | ||
| Total NAND | 128 GiB | 256 GiB | 512 GiB | 768 GiB | 1024 GiB | ||
| Spare Area | 12.7% | 9.05% | 9.05% | 9.05% | 9.05% | ||
I've tossed internal shots of all of the EVO lineup into the gallery below:
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Timur Born - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
Just did a quick test: On my 8 gb RAM system Windows 8 uses quite exactly 1 gb for write caching and all available RAM for read caching. It doesn't matter whether the 1 gb consist of one or several files and whether they fit into the cache as a whole or not (first 1 gb is cached if not).1Angelreloaded - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
Hold on a second correct me if I'm wrong on this paradox. Did Samsung not scale back on NAND production in order to drive the price up for greater bloated profits, now as stated in Korea press conference they want "SSDs for everyone". WTF is going on here, and why are SSDs not at more reasonable pricing by now about .33cents per gig.?They had a complete shot at burying HDDs after the flood and the price hike.FunBunny2 - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
Don't confuse capitalists with intelligence. They look at unit margin and ignore gross profit. IOW, they'd rather sell 100 at $2 margin than 1,000 at $1 margin. They're stupid.MrSpadge - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
There's also the factor of marget saturation to take into account. You can't sell an infinite number of drives.Notmyusualid - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
Exciting technology indeed! Impressive numbers, nice identification of spare computer resources, and put to good use too. I'd imagine this would be the go-to drive for most users...But I'd like my clocks available for my applications thanks.
In addition, I'm not willing to put my data on any non-enterprise disk now, cost be damned. Burned too many times now.
Interesting product though....
z28dreams - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
I recently saw the Plextor M5P (pro) for $190 on sale.If the 840 evo comes out in the same price range, which would be a better buy?
It looks like the write seems of the M5P are better, but I'm not about overall performance.
K_Space - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
Help a noob here: How is Rapid any different to a custom nonvolatile RAM disk with your selected cached files stored on it & these being written to the SSD at an interval? Is it mainly because Rapid can writes in blocks and it's more intelligent in its choice of cached files?wpapolis - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Hey there all,I have a MacBook 13" from late 2008, the first gen of the unibody construction (Model MB467*/A).
My bus speed is SATA 3Gbit/s.
What's the best SSD for me?
Trim doesn't work automatically for me, though I have found the commands to use in terminal to enable it.
This Samsung drives looks really good, but it seems like I won't be able to use RAPID, or perhaps even TRIM. Plus I am limited by my bus speed. Should I still go for this Samsung just because the price might be the same as lower featured alternatives?
What do you guys suggest? I want one in the 250GB range.
Thanks,
Bill
TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
if you have a mac, the samsung is your best bet. TRIM can be enabled quite easily on a mac if it is not done automatically, so you can use trim. as for RAPID, it replaces window's terrible i/o caching process. osx does not have this problem, so you dont have to worry about that. now, the sata2 interface will be a bottleneck, but it will still be much faster than a hard drive. id go for either this evo drive or the 840 250gbwpapolis - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Yes, you reaffirmed what I was already thinking.Plus, when I upgrade this MacBook, I have the option to move the drive. Though, I have to say, performance is still pretty good, but each OS upgrade seems to make things a bit more sluggish.
With 8GB RAM, and a current SSD, things should be good for a bit longer.
Thanks for the feedback,
Bill