# Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB



## W1zzard (Jul 22, 2020)

The Samsung 870 QVO is the company's new QLC-based SSD that reaches capacities of up to 8 TB. In our Samsung 870 QVO review we're taking a close look not only at synthetics, but also real-life performance, which is surprisingly weak, especially considering they want $115 for the reviewed 1 TB variant.

*Show full review*


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## X71200 (Jul 22, 2020)

Lol, this has to be a first time I'm seeing "terrible, do not buy" right on the review itself on TPU. Don't recall seeing it even on things like bad, old day PSUs. Exactly true though, you can get one of those Silicon Motion NVMe 1TB drives for a bit less if you're budget limited I think...


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 22, 2020)

guess I'll be sticking with TLC drives... =/


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

Tsukiyomi91 said:


> guess I'll be sticking with TLC drives... =/


I've been saying that as well. If you want any kind of decent performance from your SSD, QLC is to be avoided at all costs. TLC is the limit.


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## lemonadesoda (Jul 22, 2020)

Catchy headline! Got my click.


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## Object55 (Jul 22, 2020)

Thanks for keeping it real !


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## GeorgeMan (Jul 22, 2020)

Didn't expect to see such horrible performance! And price per GB isn't significantly lower than TLC SSDs. Nice one, Samsung...


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## X71200 (Jul 22, 2020)

GeorgeMan said:


> Didn't expect to see such horrible performance! And price per GB isn't significantly lower than TLC SSDs. Nice one, Samsung...



I'm waiting for the 980 Pro to go with a Zen 4000 for my PC. There seems to be more cookie cutter drives filling the daily market (has been a review like this again about a week ago), as a lot of people still choose inferior drives based on old controllers because of brand name / whatnot.


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## Jawz (Jul 22, 2020)

Having the honesty and the balls to put out a headline like that is awesome. Keep up the good work.


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

Jawz said:


> Having the honesty and the balls to put out a headline like that is awesome.


I have a feeling that TechPowerUp is soon going to end up Samsung's naughty list. I don't expect TechPowerUp to be receiving a Christmas card from Samsung this year. 

I read the conclusion part of the review and damn, it was scathing.


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## bug (Jul 22, 2020)

Now does everyone see why sequential means squat and it's all about the random QD1 performance (TPU refuses to give us)?
This drive looks decent throughout the synthetics, yet still manages to finish at the bottom in _all_ real-life tests.

It would still be decent for storage if you could get an 8TB drive for the price of 1TB.
Unfortunately, I think QLC is where  SSD hits a wall, we won;t be getting nice things past TLC


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## Frick (Jul 22, 2020)

It's not even the cheapest ~1TB SSD, and yet it's this bad.


X71200 said:


> I'm waiting for the 980 Pro to go with a Zen 4000 for my PC. There seems to be more cookie cutter drives filling the daily market (has been a review like this again about a week ago), as a lot of people still choose inferior drives based on old controllers because of brand name / whatnot.



And they do so because for the vast majority the important thing is having a lower latency than a HDD, which they all have. I mean this isn't good, but there are plenty of faster drives within the same price range (at least where I live). My go to drive has been the subpar Kingston A400, but realistically for me and many others it doesn't quite matter. Had this drive been been a NoName Bargain disk for less money it'd be alright.

Cookie cutter drives can be just fine, but sadly this isn't it.


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## Valent117 (Jul 22, 2020)

It would be interesting to compare to a 7200rpm, for example Seagate Barracuda 1TB. Just to compare to a normal HDD.


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## X71200 (Jul 22, 2020)

Frick said:


> It's not even the cheapest ~1TB SSD, and yet it's this bad.
> 
> 
> And they do so because for the vast majority the important thing is having a lower latency than a HDD, which they all have. I mean this isn't good, but there are plenty of faster drives within the same price range (at least where I live). My go to drive has been the subpar Kingston A400, but realistically for me and many others it doesn't quite matter. Had this drive been been a NoName Bargain disk for less money it'd be alright.
> ...



I mean if I can get a TLC drive of decent performance over some unknown brand for the same price or almost same price, I'm getting that. I'm not going to cheap out on some $5-10 to get a much lower grade drive. This seems to be the case on PcPartPicker with decent NVMe vs off-brand SATA.


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## bug (Jul 22, 2020)

@W1zzard Hey, I found you a recommendation: if you have an annoying friend/colleague, get them one of this for their birthday


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## X71200 (Jul 22, 2020)

Valent117 said:


> It would be interesting to compare to a 7200rpm, for example Seagate Barracuda 1TB. Just to compare to a normal HDD.



Sequential can be somewhat decent on off the shelf modern HDD, but sadly 4k is all over the ground at Internet network speeds.


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## Ed_1 (Jul 22, 2020)

$5 dollars more you can get the 1TB 860Evo with TLC Dram on Amazon.


			https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E1T0B-AM/dp/B078DPCY3T/ref=pd_lpo_147_t_1/134-9540866-8607114?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B078DPCY3T&pd_rd_r=87d5aec5-9e23-4baf-90dc-3a93284278e9&pd_rd_w=oqpFi&pd_rd_wg=7eRbK&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=9HQFYBAA8EKH2M8WTHCH&psc=1&refRID=9HQFYBAA8EKH2M8WTHCH


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

bug said:


> Now does everyone see why sequential means squat and it's all about the random QD1 performance (TPU refuses to give us)?


I've known that for a while now, I thought everyone knew that. CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 number is the number you want to pay attention to since that number is what most closely mirrors that of real world performance.

If you really want to see some pathetic numbers, take a look at what most spinning rust drives give you with CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 number. Most drives are less than 1 MB/s whereas a good SSD will be somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 40 MB/s.


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## bug (Jul 22, 2020)

trparky said:


> I've known that for a while now, I thought everyone knew that. CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 number is the number you want to pay attention to since that number is what most closely mirrors that of real world performance.


And yet, look at the number of posts looking for or recommending NVMe drives because of the high sequential numbers. Look at TPU's stubornness in keeping QD1 numbers under wraps (much like other reviewers, this must be a manufacturer guideline or smth).


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

Don't get me wrong, sequential numbers are nice if you're reading/writing big files in batches but a majority of users are going to be reading a whole lot of small files that are placed all over the place in terms of the NAND flash memory. My Samsung 970 EVO has a RND4K Q1T1 of somewhere around 57 MB/s. That right there folks is why SSDs result a system feeling like you just strapped a JATO rocket to the back of it and let it rip.


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## bug (Jul 22, 2020)

trparky said:


> Don't get me wrong, sequential numbers are nice if you're reading/writing big files in batches but a majority of users are going to be reading a whole lot of small files that are placed all over the place in terms of the NAND flash memory. My Samsung 970 EVO has a RND4K Q1T1 of somewhere around 57 MB/s. That right there folks is why SSDs result a system feeling like you just strapped a JATO rocket to the back of it and let it rip.


That and the vastly improved seek times over a traditional HDD. Actually, I think the low seek times are exactly why random performance can get so high (and get even higher for servers, where you hit higher QDs).


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

bug said:


> That and the vastly improved seek times over a traditional HDD.


That too. Having to wait the time to align not only the surface of the platter but also the read/write head with the data that you want while also competing with whatever else you have running on the system wants is why HDDs have no business being the primary drive for a modern system. Your processor is going to be waiting around stalled for data more often than not. Remember, your processor can't do any work if it's got no data to work with; it's just sitting there tapping its foot telling you that it's bored out of its silicon mind.


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## bug (Jul 22, 2020)

trparky said:


> That too. Having to wait the time to align not only the surface of the platter but also the read/write head with the data that you want while also competing with whatever else you have running on the system wants is why HDDs have no business being the primary drive for a modern system. Your processor is going to be waiting around stalled for data more often than not. Remember, your processor can't do any work if it's got no data to work with; it's just sitting there tapping its foot telling you that it's bored out of its silicon mind.


Well, it could shuffle around and consolidate caches while waiting for something to do 
Joking aside, computations don't usually need to read/write continuously to storage. But when they do, the faster the CPU, the more processing power you lose waiting for the next read/write.


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## Searing (Jul 22, 2020)

Shocking for how long the SX8200 has been on top as the best drive. I really thought after it released the market would respond with other products but it is still here years later number one.


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## trparky (Jul 22, 2020)

bug said:


> But when they do, the faster the CPU, the more processing power you lose waiting for the next read/write.


Exactly. It doesn't matter how fast your processor is if it's got nothing to do. It could be 3 GHz, 4 GHz, or 5 GHz... it doesn't matter. If it's got nothing to do then it's wasted clock cycles and most importantly, wasted electricity. But we're going off on a tangent here.

Basically, if you're working with huge media files like large images in Photoshop or huge video files in Adobe Premier, then yes... sequential reads and writes are going to be something you're going to want to worry about especially if you're having to scrub the timeline a lot. However, for the average user, CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 is the number you're going to want to pay close attention to since that will give you a much better idea of how much faster (compared to the traditional HDD) your system will be.

In essence it's why I have no want to replace my current Samsung 970 EVO. It gives me the performance I want. What more could I want? Replacing it would be fixing something that isn't broken.


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## Searing (Jul 23, 2020)

trparky said:


> Exactly. It doesn't matter how fast your processor is if it's got nothing to do. It could be 3 GHz, 4 GHz, or 5 GHz... it doesn't matter. If it's got nothing to do then it's wasted clock cycles and most importantly, wasted electricity. But we're going off on a tangent here.
> 
> Basically, if you're working with huge media files like large images in Photoshop or huge video files in Adobe Premier, then yes... sequential reads and writes are going to be something you're going to want to worry about especially if you're having to scrub the timeline a lot. However, for the average user, CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 is the number you're going to want to pay close attention to since that will give you a much better idea of how much faster (compared to the traditional HDD) your system will be.
> 
> In essence it's why I have no want to replace my current Samsung 970 EVO. It gives me the performance I want. What more could I want? Replacing it would be fixing something that isn't broken.



Except I replaced my 1TB 970 EVO (that I paid a whopping $700 CAD for on launch and felt regret over ever since) with 2 x 1TB ADATA SX8200 Pro for less. I do enjoy the extra storage space. I have a 2TB Intel 660p I picked up for cheap ($190 USD) also. It's fine but slows down in a way the Adata and Samsung don't.


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## Gmr_Chick (Jul 23, 2020)

X71200 said:


> Lol, this has to be a first time I'm seeing "terrible, do not buy" right on the review itself on TPU. Don't recall seeing it even on things like bad, old day PSUs. Exactly true though, you can get one of those Silicon Motion NVMe 1TB drives for a bit less if you're budget limited I think...



Took the words right out of my mouth, my dude. Holy hell. Like, I consider TPU to be very neutral when it comes to product/hardware reviews, so when I read "Terrible, do not buy" right in the HEADLINE, I knew something was up! 

Good work TPU!


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## Caring1 (Jul 23, 2020)

So it's not something a Firmware update can fix, it's just a shitty product?
Thanks for the warning.


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## ironwolf (Jul 23, 2020)

Hope this doesn't break the spirit of all the hardcore Samsung SSD fans out there.


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## X71200 (Jul 23, 2020)

trparky said:


> I've known that for a while now, I thought everyone knew that. CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 number is the number you want to pay attention to since that number is what most closely mirrors that of real world performance.
> 
> If you really want to see some pathetic numbers, take a look at what most spinning rust drives give you with CrystalDiskMark's RND4K Q1T1 number. Most drives are less than 1 MB/s whereas a good SSD will be somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 40 MB/s.



HDDs are for the colder data for the most part, their method of R / W is no good towards 4k. As for SSDs, a good, modern SSD doesn't really have 20 MB/s 4k, that's more like an SSD from 2010.




With firmware and scheduling from 2017, too.



bug said:


> And yet, look at the number of posts looking for or recommending NVMe drives because of the high sequential numbers.



High sequential of NVMe doesn't necessarily mean low 4k. In fact, those drives do the 4k better than a lot of SATA stuff as well, because of the age and NAND used in the SATA drives. I don't have doubts that the 980 Pro will have solid 4k, probably equal to that of a decent PCI-E stick / U.2. Even the Phison PCI-E 4.0 drives don't really have "bad" 4k.


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## Totally (Jul 23, 2020)

> Pro
> 
> Low cost per GB  (this translates to being inexpensive)
> Con
> ...




Can someone enlighten me, I'm not following here


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## semantics (Jul 23, 2020)

Totally said:


> Can someone enlighten me, I'm not following here


Relative to even their own offerings the low price isn't low enough
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB can be had $279.99
Samsung 870 QVO 2TB can be had $249.99
That isn't cheap enough, there is a little to be said about the 8TB version have capacity that isn't offered else where but the price isn't low enough to justify the performance, the price is low though.


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## Palladium (Jul 23, 2020)

ironwolf said:


> Hope this doesn't break the spirit of all the hardcore Samsung SSD fans out there.



Well, they only have themselves to blame for their lack of critical thought, especially those who bought the previous garbo 860 QVO.


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## Th3pwn3r (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> And yet, look at the number of posts looking for or recommending NVMe drives because of the high sequential numbers. Look at TPU's stubornness in keeping QD1 numbers under wraps (much like other reviewers, this must be a manufacturer guideline or smth).



I want NVME ssd for the cleanliness of it. 2 less cables I have to route or try to hide.


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## watzupken (Jul 23, 2020)

Generally when I see QVO or anything QLC, I skip. But I can't help but click on this because this is probably the harshest header I have ever seen. No beating around the bush and in your face message. I feel it is good for reviewers to be up front about a certain product to give the manufacturer the message. I've seen quite a few review sites that don't drive the message across by choosing to use more "friendly" conclusions or try to give inflated scores than what is worth.



Searing said:


> Shocking for how long the SX8200 has been on top as the best drive. I really thought after it released the market would respond with other products but it is still here years later number one.


Its one of the better drives mainly because of its price to performance. It doesn't ask you for an arm and a leg, but yet provide good performance.


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## okbuddy (Jul 23, 2020)

how come could say do not buy, they provided a sample for ya, for free bud

128 layer coming later this year


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## Hotobu (Jul 23, 2020)

Soooo, you're saying it's good?


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## trparky (Jul 23, 2020)

Hotobu said:


> Soooo, you're saying it's good?


I read that and then I looked at your avatar. I laughed. Yep, sarcasm.


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## puma99dk| (Jul 23, 2020)

I guess I have to bite the apple and just buy for an EVO SSD to make sure I get a great drive 

I have tried Crucial, Intel, Gigabyte and Kingston drives but I keep going back to Samsung when talking about SATA based SSD's.


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## Berfs1 (Jul 23, 2020)

Would you actually recommend the 860 QVO over the 870 QVO (for the same capacities)? I know y'all didn't test it but considering 860 QVO should be cheaper, would that just be the better option?



watzupken said:


> Generally when I see QVO or anything QLC, I skip. But I can't help but click on this because this is probably the harshest header I have ever seen. No beating around the bush and in your face message. I feel it is good for reviewers to be up front about a certain product to give the manufacturer the message. I've seen quite a few review sites that don't drive the message across by choosing to use more "friendly" conclusions or try to give inflated scores than what is worth.


I agree, this is a really good and honest review.


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> random QD1 performance (TPU refuses to give us)?





bug said:


> TPU's stubornness in keeping QD1 numbers under wraps (much like other reviewers, this must be a manufacturer guideline or smth).


Are we looking at the same review? QD1 has always been there? Left-most point on the charts.



Totally said:


> > Pro
> >
> > Low cost per GB  (this translates to being inexpensive)
> > Con
> ...


The drive comes in at 13 cents per GB, which is a low price price per GB if you consider nothing but "price per GB". But if you take into account performance offered etc, the whole package, then it's a terrible deal and virtually every SSD on the market is either much faster, or substantially cheaper per GB



Berfs1 said:


> Would you actually recommend the 860 QVO over the 870 QVO (for the same capacities)? I know y'all didn't test it but considering 860 QVO should be cheaper, would that just be the better option?


No idea, don't have any data for 860 QVO. Just buy the MX500 or Seagate 120 for the same price, you even get +2 years warranty


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## puma99dk| (Jul 23, 2020)

Berfs1 said:


> I agree, this is a really good and honest review.



@W1zzard always makes reviews that are worth the time reading and understand it's just a shame the products ain't always great but that's not the reviewers fault.

I am always excited for a review here on TechPowerUp when it's a product I am really interested in but in general I check a lot of the reviewers here because they are always good in-depth and the quality is always top notch. This is also why I keep being on this forum it's one of the best and people always know something.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> Are we looking at the same review? QD1 has always been there? Left-most point on the charts.Yeah, like anyone can


Yeah, like anyone can put a number on a point in a chart... When it comes to numbers, you're conveniently hiding it in "mixed usage", "average of".


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> Yeah, like anyone can put a number on a point in a chart... When it comes to numbers, you're conveniently hiding it in "mixed usage", "average of".


The world is not just QD1, or QD2, or QD4, or QD128 ... different people have different requirements, that's why I have the line chart, so everybody can pick the scenario he wants to look at.

For the bar charts my 80% QD1, 20% QD2, 5% QD4 mix is a good approximation of reality.

What mix do you propose? 85/15/5 ? 90/10/5? It's not gonna make a substantial difference


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

X71200 said:


> High sequential of NVMe doesn't necessarily mean low 4k. In fact, those drives do the 4k better than a lot of SATA stuff as well, because of the age and NAND used in the SATA drives. I don't have doubts that the 980 Pro will have solid 4k, probably equal to that of a decent PCI-E stick / U.2. Even the Phison PCI-E 4.0 drives don't really have "bad" 4k.


Absolutely, but there's a far cry between the 20% better 4k performance NVMe offers, vs the 500-600% higher sequential numbers.



W1zzard said:


> The world is not just QD1, or QD2, or QD4, or QD128 ... different people have different requirements, that's why I have the line chart, so everybody can pick the scenario he wants to look at.
> 
> For the bar charts my 80% QD1, 20% QD2, 5% QD4 mix is a good approximation of reality.
> 
> What mix do you propose? 85/15/5 ? 90/10/5? It's not gonna make a substantial difference


I propose a *table*: QD1 r/w, QD4 r/w, etc.

Edit: Also, highlight properly which are the numbers that are the most important. (Or not, if that puts you at odds with manufacturers )


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> the most important


my conclusion text, then the three charts on page 13, then write intensive, then thermals, then (for me, in that order) Steam Preload, WinRAR, ISO Copy, Photoshop, 50% mixed, and that's it, maybe local supply situation, which isn't part of my review



bug said:


> Or not, if that puts you at odds with manufacturers


Why do you keep suggesting that I'm trying to deceive my readers?


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> my conclusion text, then the three charts on page 13, then write intensive, then thermals, then (for me, in that order) Steam Preload, WinRAR, ISO Copy, Photoshop, 50% mixed, and that's it, maybe local supply situation, which isn't part of my review
> 
> 
> Why do you keep suggesting that I'm trying to deceive my readers?


*I'm not suggesting you're deceiving anyone*, I've been around for too long to think that. I actually appreciate that you actually take suggestions from readers when possible.
I was just saying most reviewers don't make it obvious enough which numbers will give you the real expectations. And I know there's a possibility the numbers are already obvious enough, it may only be about how I read these reviews. I was hoping others would chime in.


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> that you actually take suggestions from readers when possible.


Thanks 



bug said:


> it may only be about how I read these reviews


I think it might be that, and that's fine. Everybody has different requirements and expectations, that's why I'm trying to include as much data as possible (without overloading the review). I'm not a fan of synthetic testing, years ago I used to have no synthetics at all, but I can see how they serve a purpose and should be included for completeness. 

Working on new SSD testing rig right now (Ryzen, PCIe 4.0), biggest change will be that for real-life testing all drives are filled to 80% of their capacity, to simulate a "mostly full" environment.



bug said:


> I was hoping others would chime in


Yes please


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## puma99dk| (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> Working on new SSD testing rig right now (Ryzen, PCIe 4.0), biggest change will be that for real-life testing all drives are filled to 80% of their capacity, to simulate a "mostly full" environment.



Nice I cannot wait for this, I was thinking you have tested a lot of SSD's is it true that most users in general use of Windows 10 won't feel the difference between SATA vs NVME based SSD's?

I read some users experience that a SATA based SSD feels more snap and all-around more smooth when tested in a line up.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 23, 2020)

seems that the 860 EVO would be the better option for most of us after this review.


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

I saw the review as great as always, the problem is with the setup of the SSD 'guts' itself.  Basically whilst looking I figured, don't buy it.  Buy anything else but...

I was wondering @W1zzard have Samsung sent any of the bigger models?  I'd be curious to see if the same bad performance hindered those or if they had slightly changed the internals a little and the 1TB was just pants....


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

puma99dk| said:


> that most users in general use of Windows 10 won't feel the difference between SATA vs NVME based SSD's?


For light desktop use? Will be hard to notice a difference



puma99dk| said:


> I read some users experience that a SATA based SSD feels more snap and all-around more smooth when tested in a line up.


No idea how that could happen. Maybe if you pit the worst QLC NVMe against the best TLC SATA. Or it's just placebo/confirmation bias



phill said:


> or if they had slightly changed the internals a little and the 1TB was just pants....


Not sure, but it's likely they are using more than just one flash chip, which could change the performance. By how much? Don't know. But given the pricing alone I doubt it'll be worth it. Maybe if you absolutely need a 8 TB drive


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

puma99dk| said:


> Nice I cannot wait for this, I was thinking you have tested a lot of SSD's is it true that most users in general use of Windows 10 won't feel the difference between SATA vs NVME based SSD's?
> 
> I read some users experience that a SATA based SSD feels more snap and all-around more smooth when tested in a line up.


I own both SATA and NVMe and I can't tell the difference. I'm sure there is one and I could see if if I timed compilation times or something. But just firing up the OS and surfing the web is just as smooth on either drive.



phill said:


> I saw the review as great as always, the problem is with the setup of the SSD 'guts' itself.  Basically whilst looking I figured, don't buy it.  Buy anything else but...
> 
> I was wondering @W1zzard have Samsung sent any of the bigger models?  I'd be curious to see if the same bad performance hindered those or if they had slightly changed the internals a little and the 1TB was just pants....


Performance tanks because QLC is slow to write onto. Higher capacities won't help, it's not a matter of using the right number of chips.


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## ebivan (Jul 23, 2020)

The 1tb should be selling for 45 Bucks. So that the 8tb variant could sell for about 400 Bucks which would be an ok price considering thats about 2x the price of a magnetic 8tb drive.
Actually that is exactly the price point at which I would consider buying ssds instead of hdds for simple storage reasons.


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> Not sure, but it's likely they are using more than just one flash chip, which could change the performance. By how much? Don't know. But given the pricing alone I doubt it'll be worth it. Maybe if you absolutely need a 8 TB drive





bug said:


> Performance tanks because QLC is slow to write onto. Higher capacities won't help, it's not a matter of using the right number of chips.


It was just a thought if I'm honest, sometimes the higher capcitys tend to have better performance so I just wondered if that might be the case here.  If I need 8TB of SSD storage, I think I'm doing something wrong!


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 23, 2020)

Meanwhile, Seagate's Barracuda 120 1TB SSD is $15 cheaper than this model while having 2 extra years on warranty. Sure it's not an apples-apples comparison, but at this point it's pretty clear that TLCs are still the better pick over QLC.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

phill said:


> It was just a thought if I'm honest, sometimes the higher capcitys tend to have better performance so I just wondered if that might be the case here.


Fair enough, that was the case with several models before. But QLC's problem is different. And we haven't touched on endurance yet 



phill said:


> If I need 8TB of SSD storage, I think I'm doing something wrong!


Tbh, I wouldn't mind getting rid of the last HDD in my case. I figure I might need a NAS though. But that's still very expensive.


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## BSim500 (Jul 23, 2020)

puma99dk| said:


> I was thinking you have tested a lot of SSD's is it true that most users in general use of Windows 10 won't feel the difference between SATA vs NVME based SSD's?


Relative to the big HDD to SSD jump, NVMe vs SATA is barely perceptible for simple everyday OS stuff and even most game-load times (example 1, example 2). NVMe does have a big advantage outside of benchmarks in sequential read based stuff like 4K video editing. Being not interested in that, personally I have zero regrets getting a 2TB MX500 over a 1TB 970 EVO PLUS for the same money. I don't notice SATA's typical 3-5% slower vs NVMe on boot or typical game level load times. I 100% notice when I run out of space though. 

Edit: The problem with benchmarks is in the real world disk accesses are never continuous. Eg, the OS or game requests a chunk of data from a disk, then unpacks it into memory, then initializes a lot of stuff, then requests the next chunk. The end "time taken to complete task" result ends up looking nothing remotely like CrystalDiskMark sequential speed tests. These days I just completely skip all synthetics and jump straight to real world OS Boot / game load time tests.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 23, 2020)

For real world use, they're pretty much perform the same unless you are doing specific work like rendering or editing. That's where NVMe PCIe SSD comes in.


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> Fair enough, that was the case with several models before. But QLC's problem is different. And we haven't touched on endurance yet
> 
> Tbh, I wouldn't mind getting rid of the last HDD in my case. I figure I might need a NAS though. But that's still very expensive.


I have one, best thing ever   I would just like to add more storage to it and whilst I could put in 8TB SSDs, they'd be wasted considering the network speeds will hold it back.  However that said, the current WD Red 4TB's I have in there are held back with the network performance, so....  I personally am not sure the stability for the SSDs long term compared to hard drives, which is a little worry (I think it's about time disconnected rather than them being online....) but still.

I'll hand on till the EVOs or Pro drives release with that size and then see what the costs are.  I guess it's kinda like the 100TB SSD that's out currently but I think they are actually built for it, well, apparently.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

phill said:


> I have one, best thing ever   I would just like to add more storage to it and whilst I could put in 8TB SSDs, they'd be wasted considering the network speeds will hold it back.  However that said, the current WD Red 4TB's I have in there are held back with the network performance, so....  I personally am not sure the stability for the SSDs long term compared to hard drives, which is a little worry (I think it's about time disconnected rather than them being online....) but still.
> 
> I'll hand on till the EVOs or Pro drives release with that size and then see what the costs are.  I guess it's kinda like the 100TB SSD that's out currently but I think they are actually built for it, well, apparently.


Even without SSD, it would be nice if we could get some proper 2.5" HDDs for NAS so that we can build smaller boxes. Building a NAS around NVMe drives would yield a really tiny solution. Only good luck finding a board that can mount 4+ NVMe drives.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 23, 2020)

@bug you can get ASUS boards that comes with the M.2 DIMM kit to expand the number of M.2 slots but not a cheap solution too. Most high end boards I see has 3 M.2 slots of varying sizes.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

Tsukiyomi91 said:


> @bug you can get ASUS boards that comes with the M.2 DIMM kit to expand the number of M.2 slots but not a cheap solution too. Most high end boards I see has 3 M.2 slots of varying sizes.


I know, but if you add extension cards, the resulting solution is not that small anymore, is it?


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## W1zzard (Jul 23, 2020)

Tsukiyomi91 said:


> that TLCs are still the better pick over QLC.


If Samsung would stop wanting to make 100% profit on this, then things would be different.

870 QVO is only in-house components, so if others can sell a 1 TB TLC for $80, using 3rd party components, then Samsung could definitely price theirs at $60 ($80 * 3 [TLC] / 4 [QLC]) or below


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> If Samsung would stop wanting to make 100% profit on this, then things would be different.
> 
> 870 QVO is only in-house components, so if others can sell a 1 TB TLC for $80, using 3rd party components, then Samsung could definitely price theirs at $60 ($80 * 3 [TLC] / 4 [QLC]) or below


Maybe they will, given enough market pressure? Or maybe they'll just get OEMs to buy these and not worry about pricing at all.


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## puma99dk| (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> For light desktop use? Will be hard to notice a difference
> 
> 
> No idea how that could happen. Maybe if you pit the worst QLC NVMe against the best TLC SATA. Or it's just placebo/confirmation bias



For desktop work, games because in general the jump from HDD to SSD is a massive improvement, but and I know doing file transfers and more the higher speed as shown in your review takes less time.

But I was thinking as a general and gaming perspective.

Personally I use a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB for my games library and it's during great fast load, installation times. I don't complain I am happy but for a cost perspective going SATA SSD for 1TB storage instead of NVME for less storage because you might want the speed.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

puma99dk| said:


> For desktop work, games because in general the jump from HDD to SSD is a massive improvement, but and I know doing file transfers and more the higher speed as shown in your review takes less time.
> 
> But I was thinking as a general and gaming perspective.
> 
> Personally I use a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB for my games library and it's during great fast load, installation times. I don't complain I am happy but for a cost perspective going SATA SSD for 1TB storage instead of NVME for less storage because you might want the speed.


The original advice for buying a SSD still holds true: get the biggest drive that fits in your budget.
Unless your usage pattern really benefits from NVMe's higher sequential speeds, do not sacrifice capacity to go NVMe. I only got my NVMe drive because it was ~$10 more than the SATA equivalent at the time (sale or whatnot, I don't remember exactly). Still, I went 970 EVO, a 970 EVO Plus was much more expensive.


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## Berfs1 (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> The drive comes in at 13 cents per GB, which is a low price price per GB if you consider nothing but "price per GB". But if you take into account performance offered etc, the whole package, then it's a terrible deal and virtually every SSD on the market is either much faster, or substantially cheaper per GB
> 
> 
> No idea, don't have any data for 860 QVO. Just buy the MX500 or Seagate 120 for the same price, you even get +2 years warranty


Yeah, I would if i hadn't already bought mine haha (I bought it about a year ago), I got it for about 94$, a few bucks off.


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## Th3pwn3r (Jul 23, 2020)

In my opinion the only reason to get an NVME ssd is the size , less cables and slightly improved air flow in some cases. The price difference makes them not worth it for any other reason.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

Th3pwn3r said:


> In my opinion the only reason to get an NVME ssd is the size , less cables and slightly improved air flow in some cases. The price difference makes them not worth it for any other reason.


If you compile large projects NVMe's faster random access is nice. There are reasons to go NVMe, but SATA remains the jack of all trades.


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> Even without SSD, it would be nice if we could get some proper 2.5" HDDs for NAS so that we can build smaller boxes. Building a NAS around NVMe drives would yield a really tiny solution. Only good luck finding a board that can mount 4+ NVMe drives.


Mines stuck in a Fractal 810 case I believe it's called.  Fits 10 drives and uses MATX board   It's not massive by any means but it works really well 

I'm not sure NVMe drives would give me the space I'd like at a price I could afford....


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

phill said:


> Mines stuck in a Fractal 810 case I believe it's called.  Fits 10 drives and uses MATX board   It's not massive by any means but it works really well
> 
> *I'm not sure NVMe drives would give me the space I'd like at a price I could afford....*


Absolutely. I was just talking about an alternate universe where 4TB+ NVMe drives were affordable. You could have a NAS box that's only 20x10x5 cm in size (that's ~8x4x2 in). And that's only because you'd need to cool those drives.


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## Caring1 (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> Even without SSD, it would be nice if we could get some proper 2.5" HDDs for NAS so that we can build smaller boxes. Building a NAS around NVMe drives would yield a really tiny solution. Only good luck finding a board that can mount 4+ NVMe drives.


This type of thing?








						Netstor NA622TB3 4x NVMe Thunderbolt 3 SSD Enclosure
					

New 4-Bay NVMe SSD Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure from Netstor Netstor NA622TB3 storage is created to support up to four M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs. With the present-day largest single M.2 NVMe SSD of 2TB in the market, the maximum storage reaches up to 8TB capacity totally by way of four M.2 NVMe SSDs installed




					nascompares.com
				



Seagate announced their Ironwolf NVMe range which would be suitable, although not cheap.


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

Caring1 said:


> This type of thing?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, something like that. But with NAS capabilities.


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> Absolutely. I was just talking about an alternate universe where 4TB+ NVMe drives were affordable. You could have a NAS box that's only 20x10x5 cm in size (that's ~8x4x2 in). And that's only because you'd need to cool those drives.


Well we could all dream, but then we'd need a 1Tb network to cope with the speed of the drives   I'm not sure we are quite there yet....

I'll stick with HD's for the moment, they seem a little more down to earth and possible!


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

phill said:


> Well we could all dream, but then we'd need a 1Tb network to cope with the speed of the drives   I'm not sure we are quite there yet....
> 
> I'll stick with HD's for the moment, they seem a little more down to earth and possible!


I can live without the NVMe sequential speeds, I was only after the small box


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## phill (Jul 23, 2020)

I'd try one of these HP mini units, they are pretty decent and fit in 4 drives I think, should be enough for 10 minutes??


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## milewski1015 (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> The original advice for buying a SSD still holds true: get the biggest drive that fits in your budget.
> Unless your usage pattern really benefits from NVMe's higher sequential speeds, do not sacrifice capacity to go NVMe. I only got my NVMe drive because it was ~$10 more than the SATA equivalent at the time (sale or whatnot, I don't remember exactly). Still, I went 970 EVO, a 970 EVO Plus was much more expensive.


Exactly this. Everybody's hopping on the NVMe train when I'd guess 95% of people don't make use of those high sequential speeds. Pair those unused NVMe speeds with low-endurance QLC NAND (Intel 660p, Crucial P1, etc.) and everybody goes crazy for them! I don't get it tbh. The 1TB P1 is currently selling for 105 USD. Personally I'd much rather have a 1 TB M.2 MX500 for 10 USD more. Yeah I don't get the higher sequential speeds NVMe offers, but the endurance on TLC is better and if I ever do anything requiring high sequential speeds, I'd rather it last instead of tanking to lower than spinning rust speeds.


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## Th3pwn3r (Jul 23, 2020)

I just ordered an ADATA XPG SX8200 1tb nvme drive. It's for my HTPC where it's cramped already and I have my Sata SSD crammed in there but I'm going from mitx to an Atx board so won't have as much space to work with. I do also game with the machine so I want decently fast load times, I don't store movies anymore either so I don't need lots of space.


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## danbert2000 (Jul 23, 2020)

If I had to take a guess as to why Samsung is so clueless about the QVO and SSD pricing in general, I would say that it is due to their previous lead in SATA SSDs that allowed them to take a premium from gamers and enthusiasts for years. Their 850 Evo was all around the best choice at the time, especially with other drives being not much cheaper but definitely slower. Since then, every other SSD maker has caught up on how to make a decent SATA SSD, so Samsung is stuck fighting for the NVMe performance crown in order to get people to buy SSDs with way too much profit margin.

But they still need to sell SATA SSDs, as there is a market and they don't want to be missing from it. So instead of doing the sensible thing and selling their EVO SATA drives for a competitive price (which they would still profit from greatly due to using all of their own components), they keep that former cash cow at a 20% premium to the market, and come out with this QVO turd. Now the executives can say they're competing at all levels! They have two "premium" options with their 860 Pro and Evo, and then they have this new albatross to shore up the price comparisons.

I think they want people to run out of space on their 840 and 850s, look at Samsung for 1TB+ because "they're the best," see that the QVO is priced in line with all the other drives, and then buy that without even looking at reviews, or say "hey it's only $30" and buy the EVO for more than it's worth. Of course, they are losing good will from people that actually care about performance, and also probably the people who buy this QLC piece of crap and then run into slow performance and associate that with their Samsung purchase.

Two years ago, five years ago, I would have said stick to Samsung, or maybe Crucial. You don't want your drive to fail and these are the fastest. That's the world Samsung is pretending we're still in. They likely won't stop because as long as people still buy these drives, they'd probably rather do more profit margin than volume in an attempt to preserve their premium status.


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## Makaveli (Jul 23, 2020)

trparky said:


> Don't get me wrong, sequential numbers are nice if you're reading/writing big files in batches but a majority of users are going to be reading a whole lot of small files that are placed all over the place in terms of the NAND flash memory. My Samsung 970 EVO has a RND4K Q1T1 of somewhere around 57 MB/s. That right there folks is why SSDs result a system feeling like you just strapped a JATO rocket to the back of it and let it rip.



That is a great point.

Here is the numbers from my PCIe 4.0 drive





vs my Samsung 860Evo's in Raid 0





Huge difference in RND4K  Q1T1 between them.



Th3pwn3r said:


> In my opinion the only reason to get an NVME ssd is the size , less cables and slightly improved air flow in some cases. The price difference makes them not worth it for any other reason.



In alot of newer cases SSD aren't really in the way compared to older cases. In my build both my SSD's are mounted behind the motherboard tray and not even visible.


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## trparky (Jul 23, 2020)

Makaveli said:


> In alot of newer cases SSD aren't really in the way compared to older cases.


Yeah. My one SATA SSD is mounted flat against the side of the case. The power cable comes from behind the metal that’s covered by the side panel meanwhile I have a very short SATA data cable that’s just long enough to go from the motherboard to the SSD (it does have some slack).


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## Totally (Jul 23, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> Are we looking at the same review? QD1 has always been there? Left-most point on the charts.
> 
> 
> The drive comes in at 13 cents per GB, which is a low price price per GB if you consider nothing but "price per GB". But if you take into account performance offered etc, the whole package, then it's a terrible deal and virtually every SSD on the market is either much faster, or substantially cheaper per GB
> ...



ok gotcha, the more accurate phrasing is would be 'poor value.'


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## bug (Jul 23, 2020)

Makaveli said:


> That is a great point.
> 
> Here is the numbers from my PCIe 4.0 drive
> 
> ...


This brings up another issue users seem to be oblivious about: RAID0 does squat for random access. It only improves sequential speeds which we already agreed aren't that important. It still doubles the chance of failure (not a biggie, if you keep an eye out for SMART reports).


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## Makaveli (Jul 23, 2020)

bug said:


> This brings up another issue users seem to be oblivious about: RAID0 does squat for random access. It only improves sequential speeds which we already agreed aren't that important. It still doubles the chance of failure (not a biggie, if you keep an eye out for SMART reports).



I still have a Raid 0 array of two Intel 160GB G2 drives that is running 10 years later. So for me I'm not to concerned about the failure rate of SSD and even more so with those older drives since they have MLC memory. My Primary purpose for my current array is just game storage and I wanted to do that to a single drive not across multiple drives. My OS and everything else stays on the M2 drive. Those sequential speeds are nice when I'm transferring to the Array but that wasn't the primary purpose for me.


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## ExplodingCaps (Jul 24, 2020)

I knew it, I knew QLC is a bad idea in the first place. But this, this takes disappointment to another new level.


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## CheapMeat (Jul 24, 2020)

Nothing wrong with QLC except price. People here are just focused on having 1 or 2 drives in their system. I'm looking for entire HDD replacements on all my PCs for bulk data. I'm talking 20+ HDDs. QLC is totally fine for that tier. And I want SATA for the replacement, as all the cabling is there, my motherboard and cards are SATA focused. For OS and main programs I use NVMe OPTANE; yes people commented about random read & write QD1...well that's Optane; you get the lower latency from the NVMe protocol AND the inherent lower latency of Optane AND the fact it doesn't slow down the fuller it gets AND it has higher endurance than SLC. But barely anyone mentioned it.  For my "hot" tier, I'll be uosing NVMe TLC SSDs with SLC cache. I'm 100% for QLC/PLC (5 states) for bulk data. The QLC SSDs over long sequestial operations as shown here slow down insanely, even below some more contemporary HDDs. But I feel like I can trust it more when doing something for hours at a time. This is why there's always been worry about reslivering (rebuilding) mirrors and paritiy and all that jazz because of the high chance of mechanical failure and then boom, it's gone. The QLC SSD will slow down like crazy but I think it would work even at 10 MB/s (insanely slow) for 24hrs straight, 3 days straight, whatever, without issue. And longevity, yeah it's QLC but as some tests have shown, most drives because of really good error correction and over provisioning can last way beyond their usual rated MTF; it'll likely out last any HDD at initial 1TB+ capacity.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 24, 2020)

Said before, getting it confirmed...QLC - not in my rig.

Happily paying a small premium for TLC and consistency. Even on a data drive, I'm not putting up with this shit.


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## W1zzard (Jul 24, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> Said before, getting it confirmed...QLC - not in my rig.


What if 1 TB QLC was $60 or $70 ? So basically 2 TB QLC SATA for the price of 1 TB TLC NVMe


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## bug (Jul 24, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> What if 1 TB QLC was $60 or $70 ? So basically 2 TB QLC SATA for the price of 1 TB TLC NVMe


Tempting, but leaves the question of durability. TLC is down to ~1,000 p/e cycles, QLC must be well below that. It's probably only suited for cold(ish) storage.

But it will never sell for so cheap. SLC->MLC was a doubling of capacity. MLC->TLC was another 50% increase. MLC->QLC is only a 33% increase. You just can't sell twice the capacity of TLC for the same price.

Edit: It seems my numbers were a bit off (manufacturing improved since I read about them last): https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-is-QLC-flash-and-what-workloads-it-is-good-for
But the idea is the same: QLC does not improve on TLC enough to warrant the downsides.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 24, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> What if 1 TB QLC was $60 or $70 ? So basically 2 TB QLC SATA for the price of 1 TB TLC NVMe



Then we're talking because then we have a silent alternative for mechanical storage. That's a win. This right here, for sure is not.

So yes, 'if the price is right', certainly. But I have yet to spot a single QLC drive that does that. But regardless, if the drive is spotty in performance - inconsistent - and if filling it up makes things even worse... is this really something to pursue in the first place? I'm still on the fence. Its the same way I view high boost - low base clock Intel CPUs. Its opening the way for commercial trickery and I'm not a fan. Lots of new, supposed high performance parts are moving towards that way of working. I'm boycotting every single last one of them, because its not what I want to see in products and every time it hurts longevity, too.

It has yet to be decided whether a QLC drive is really a cheaper drive or whether the lower endurance will eliminate that advantage too. In a similar way, we have yet to see how these super bursty CPUs are holding up - and that isn't even Intel exclusive either, AMD is similarly pushing the envelope, albeit in a different way, but the vcore stories are known...


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## Megatron (Jul 25, 2020)

I don't think this is a replacement for a hard drive, but I didn't see a test focussed on read performance.  I see this as an SMR like SSD for archival purposes clearly has nothing to offer as an OS drive.


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## bug (Jul 25, 2020)

Megatron said:


> I don't think this is a replacement for a hard drive, but I didn't see a test focussed on read performance.  I see this as an SMR like SSD for archival purposes clearly has nothing to offer as an OS drive.


SSD is not a good choice for archival, it loses state when unpowered for long periods of time.


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## trparky (Jul 27, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> What if 1 TB QLC was $60 or $70 ? So basically 2 TB QLC SATA for the price of 1 TB TLC NVMe


I'd have to really see some numbers before I make that decision.


bug said:


> Tempting, but leaves the question of durability.


I'm with bug here. I lived through the days of the Samsung 840 and 840 EVO. Performance was shit when reading back data that was older than 90 to 120 days old. If that's going to be the case with QLC, the manufacturers can take QLC and shove it up their backsides. TLC would be the limit for me.


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## Assimilator (Jul 27, 2020)

Sigh, once again people are getting on the "QLC is TEH EVIL!!!!!oneone" bandwagon again. OK geniuses, if QLC is so bad, how come Intel and Crucial can make QLC drives that perform decently?

The answer is simply NAND parallelism: Samsung only uses a single 1TB NAND die on this model. AnandTech did a review on the 1TB and 4TB models a while back https://www.anandtech.com/show/15887/the-samsung-870-qvo-1tb-4tb-ssd-review-qlc-refreshed and it quite clearly shows that the 4TB model of this drive is, while not exactly great, far better than this 1TB model.

The Samsung 870 QVO 1TB is a bad product, but bad products do not necessarily imply flawed technology. QLC is here to stay and will continue to improve regardless of how much Samsung f**ks up - don't be a luddite and don't spread FUD about the technology just because of them.



danbert2000 said:


> If I had to take a guess as to why Samsung is so clueless about the QVO and SSD pricing in general, I would say that it is due to their previous lead in SATA SSDs that allowed them to take a premium from gamers and enthusiasts for years. Their 850 Evo was all around the best choice at the time, especially with other drives being not much cheaper but definitely slower. Since then, every other SSD maker has caught up on how to make a decent SATA SSD, so Samsung is stuck fighting for the NVMe performance crown in order to get people to buy SSDs with way too much profit margin.
> 
> But they still need to sell SATA SSDs, as there is a market and they don't want to be missing from it. So instead of doing the sensible thing and selling their EVO SATA drives for a competitive price (which they would still profit from greatly due to using all of their own components), they keep that former cash cow at a 20% premium to the market, and come out with this QVO turd. Now the executives can say they're competing at all levels! They have two "premium" options with their 860 Pro and Evo, and then they have this new albatross to shore up the price comparisons.
> 
> ...



Samsung has become the Apple of the SSD world. Their products aren't actually better than their competitors' (in fact they're often worse, as this review demonstrates) but they have a bunch of brand-loyal sheep who will buy their products regardless of how bad they are.

I hate people who are loyal to faceless corporates who only care about their money. How much effort is it to read a couple of review before buying, FFS?


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## bug (Jul 27, 2020)

Assimilator said:


> Sigh, once again people are getting on the "QLC is TEH EVIL!!!!!oneone" bandwagon again. OK geniuses, if QLC is so bad, how come Intel and Crucial can make QLC drives that perform decently?


A lot of things perform decently in the lab. And will never reach mainstream.

Adding another bit to the storage tech comes with these by default:
+ increased capacity
- lowered voltage difference between various levels; this translates into more difficult reads and less charge that can leak before reads can't discern levels properly
- more problematic writes (because of how SSDs write)

As more levels are added, the amount of capacity gained decreases and the negatives get harder to control. So without whining or anything, adding one more level automatically means you're getting a worse drive than before. In the absence of proof that the downsides have been mitigated somehow (like TLC did when it went vertical), we have every reason to at least not cut the new "hotness" any slack.

Case in point (yours): for $500, that 4TB 870QVO is still at 50-75% of its 860EVO predecessor's performance.


----------



## Vayra86 (Jul 28, 2020)

Assimilator said:


> Sigh, once again people are getting on the "QLC is TEH EVIL!!!!!oneone" bandwagon again. OK geniuses, if QLC is so bad, how come Intel and Crucial can make QLC drives that perform decently?
> 
> The answer is simply NAND parallelism: Samsung only uses a single 1TB NAND die on this model. AnandTech did a review on the 1TB and 4TB models a while back https://www.anandtech.com/show/15887/the-samsung-870-qvo-1tb-4tb-ssd-review-qlc-refreshed and it quite clearly shows that the 4TB model of this drive is, while not exactly great, far better than this 1TB model.
> 
> ...



QLC is not 'teh evil' but the way it is being marketed certainly is. Companies hide in the spec sheet and technical minutia to serve you notably worse drives at nearly the same price.

So yes, in that case, QLC is 'teh evil'. It truly is inferior and priced too high. I don't know what else to make of it. The performance inconsistency speaks volumes that this tech is a bridge too far - and if its not, how about actually making it work properly to begin with? Even on drives that do not lose lots of performance along the way you do suffer major degradation and endurance loss. The lifetime is quite simply a lot shorter on a QLC drive. Why would we cheer for that? To save a few bucks? NOTY.

And its not a first for SSD technology and especially controllers either. Whole companies have sunk for releasing bad stuff on storage. Specifically for SSD there are numerous examples of sub par controllers. You'd think by the time we reach QLC they'd know better.

IMO, QLC belongs in ultra cheap drives you buy in broken plastic packaging at the dollar store. Its good for casual use if you don't have anything important but still lots of data, let's say, some 128kbps MP3 collection or some dank porn collection. Anything half serious doesn't belong on these drives, if you ask me. This is like what TN is for monitors, and yes they will put infinite amounts of lipstick on that pig too - its 2020 and they're still making TN more fantasticer, go figure.

Storage also has a major trust issue going on. Reliability but also endurance are massively more important than anything else. Speed is just a bonus really, and wasn't that initially the argument to move to SSD? So why switch to one that loses that speed all the time or in specific situations? Consistency matters, its something we rely on and that inspires faith = trust.

And then there is one final argument: the use case. QLC drives with their higher capacities kind of invite 'semi' cold storage. You know, that drive you got with all the family pics on it, bulk storage, stuff you want to keep on backup. But nooooo, gotta keep drive powered. Its not like that mechanical HDD you can drop off in a drawer and it'll (likely) work in five years time. So I seriously question the actual advantages of QLC above even mechanical drives.


----------



## Assimilator (Jul 28, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> QLC is not 'teh evil' but the way it is being marketed certainly is. Companies hide in the spec sheet and technical minutia to serve you notably worse drives at nearly the same price.



Companies have done that since the dawn of time and will do so until the end of time. Did you have a point?



Vayra86 said:


> So yes, in that case, QLC is 'teh evil'. It truly is inferior and priced too high. I don't know what else to make of it. The performance inconsistency speaks volumes that this tech is a bridge too far - and if its not, how about actually making it work properly to begin with? Even on drives that do not lose lots of performance along the way you do suffer major degradation and endurance loss. The lifetime is quite simply a lot shorter on a QLC drive. Why would we cheer for that? To save a few bucks? NOTY.



That performance inconsistency is inherent to all NAND flash, it is merely amplified the higher the layer count gets. The mitigation is NAND parallelism and having a large enough portion of your xLC NAND running in pseudo-SLC mode, neither of which this drive has.

NAND endurance remains a non-issue for anyone in a non-commercial scenario, regardless of the NAND type.



Vayra86 said:


> And its not a first for SSD technology and especially controllers either. Whole companies have sunk for releasing bad stuff on storage. Specifically for SSD there are numerous examples of sub par controllers. You'd think by the time we reach QLC they'd know better.



This has nothing to do with the controller.



Vayra86 said:


> Storage also has a major trust issue going on. Reliability but also endurance are massively more important than anything else. Speed is just a bonus really, and wasn't that initially the argument to move to SSD? So why switch to one that loses that speed all the time or in specific situations? Consistency matters, its something we rely on and that inspires faith = trust.



Any drive based on non-SLC NAND loses speed when its pseudo-SLC cache is exhausted. Drives that lack DRAM for the mapping tables are consistently slower than drives that do include DRAM. Different controllers and different firmware has different performance characteristics. None of these concerns are specific to QLC.



Vayra86 said:


> And then there is one final argument: the use case. QLC drives with their higher capacities kind of invite 'semi' cold storage. You know, that drive you got with all the family pics on it, bulk storage, stuff you want to keep on backup. But nooooo, gotta keep drive powered. Its not like that mechanical HDD you can drop off in a drawer and it'll (likely) work in five years time. So I seriously question the actual advantages of QLC above even mechanical drives.



There is only one reliable solution for cold storage, and that is the cloud. Physical devices, whether they are SSDs or HDDs or optical, are all susceptible to degradation.

As for SSD lifetime data retention, I suggest you read https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention - it was published half a decade ago, and even then the estimated retention was 10 years without power.


----------



## bug (Jul 28, 2020)

Assimilator said:


> As for SSD lifetime data retention, I suggest you read https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention - it was published half a decade ago, and even then the estimated retention was 10 years without power.


For a MLC drive discussed in that article, yes. TLC was worse. V-NAND TLC brought endurance back up to MLC levels (which is why nobody is complaining about current TLC drives). But QLC's endurance can't be as good as TLC's, physically.


----------



## Vayra86 (Jul 28, 2020)

Assimilator said:


> Companies have done that since the dawn of time and will do so until the end of time. Did you have a point?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I don't care about theoreticals, I care about the practical reality in the market right now. That is what I'm buying into, not the promise of tomorrow. So far, QLC did not deliver and there were numerous other SSD related developments that similarly did not deliver. In all new things storage the wise approach is to wait and see how reliable it _truly _turns out to be. You're right that in theory you could make great QLC drives... but then the next question is, how expensive are those? If you have to put expensive memory and other hardware next to ultra cheap NAND, the net gain might be zero, and judging by the pricing, it apparently is.

But hey, to each his own, if you have faith in QLC, by all means, worship it.

The retention figure is interesting, I knew the article, but yes, all things considered 10 years is still pretty long in the consumer situation I suggested. Its not very likely a mechanical HDD will do that much better as far as recovering your data goes; it just runs a different sort of risk. So fair enough, maybe QLC is half decent for longer term mass storage (not necessarily cold storage ).


----------



## Assimilator (Jul 28, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> I don't care about theoreticals, I care about the practical reality in the market right now. That is what I'm buying into, not the promise of tomorrow. So far, QLC did not deliver and there were numerous other SSD related developments that similarly did not deliver. In all new things storage the wise approach is to wait and see how reliable it _truly _turns out to be. You're right that in theory you could make great QLC drives... but then the next question is, how expensive are those? If you have to put expensive memory and other hardware next to ultra cheap NAND, the net gain might be zero, and judging by the pricing, it apparently is.
> 
> But hey, to each his own, if you have faith in QLC, by all means, worship it.
> 
> The retention figure is interesting, I knew the article, but yes, all things considered 10 years is still pretty long in the consumer situation I suggested. Its not very likely a mechanical HDD will do that much better as far as recovering your data goes; it just runs a different sort of risk. So fair enough, maybe QLC is half decent for longer term mass storage (not necessarily cold storage ).



Do you really think that Intel and Samsung, two of the biggest NAND manufacturers in the world, would put money into R&D and production of QLC if they didn't have faith in it? I don't. As such, I have faith in QLC inasmuch as I have faith in those companies' abilities to make prudent decisions around the future of NAND.

My personal take on QLC is that it hasn't been prioritised as highly as it could have been, mostly due to the advent of 3D NAND which extended the market lifetime of TLC NAND. But all good things come to an end and TLC's is coming, which means QLC is now getting the focus it needs to become a viable product. Unfortunately, "viable" means "not cut to the bone because Samsung are greedy fucks" like this model of drive.


----------



## bug (Jul 28, 2020)

Assimilator said:


> Do you really think that Intel and Samsung, two of the biggest NAND manufacturers in the world, would put money into R&D and production of QLC if they didn't have faith in it? I don't. As such, I have faith in QLC inasmuch as I have faith in those companies' abilities to make prudent decisions around the future of NAND.


Faith in QLC is not a requirement. They have marketing departments to make sure it all comes down to faith in finding enough suckers to buy the finished product.

I'm sure they considered carefully where QLC will end up before committing, but at the same time I'm also pretty sure neither could predict exactly where QLC will end up. 
Maybe there's untapped potential, but these initial batches are definitely not worth it. And since these initial batches are all we have so far, that's what QLC is judged by.


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## EsaT (Jul 31, 2020)

bug said:


> Faith in QLC is not a requirement. They have marketing departments to make sure it all comes down to faith in finding enough suckers to buy the finished product.


That's why everyone wants to sell brand nowadays for Joe Average Consumer.
I mean just look at Samsung's SSD prices.
Half TB NVMe costs usually quite near to 1TB NVMes of others.
TLC SATA drive costs same/little as same size NVMes from others.
And QLC SATA drive costs same/more than TLC SATA drives of others.

Can't wait to see their PCIe v4 drive prices.
Probably 200+ % more per GB/TB than perfectly good PCIe v3 drive...
We should just call PC Master Race plain Cash Cow Race for buying so much brand and marketing hype overpriced stuff.



Assimilator said:


> Do you really think that Intel and Samsung, two of the biggest NAND manufacturers in the world, would put money into R&D and production of QLC if they didn't have faith in it? I don't. As such, I have faith in QLC inasmuch as I have faith in those companies' abilities to make prudent decisions around the future of NAND.


Those companies are managed by bean counters and marketing clowns, not by actual engineers.

QLC's only promise is consuming less of that expensive silicon area per bit.
Outside that it's technically polishing turd and brand sticker, or 4bit "MLC" marketing scammery won't change that.
And I doubt that will ever change:
In planar NAND with its mandated tiny transistors TLC was similar mess and needed regular data refresh to have better data retention than garbage quality CD/DVD blanks.
Only 3D NAND's big transistors made TLC well working.
But now there's no "4D" NAND or any such trick remaining to fix QLC.


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## Chrispy_ (Jul 31, 2020)

"buy the cheapest SSD you can find, you'll save $30 and it will still perform better than the Samsung 870 QVO"

Ouch. What a turd!

Samsung really have dropped the ball on NAND products recently. They're not in the headlines as performance leaders any more, they're just overpriced also-rans in a very crowded field of decent NVMe drives.

As for their QLC products, they've consistently been terrible. I mean, the ancient P1 and 660p are not 'good' SSDs but at least they're _adequate_.


----------



## trparky (Aug 1, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> They're not in the headlines as performance leaders any more, they're just overpriced also-rans in a very crowded field of decent NVMe drives.


Other than for those of us who trust the Samsung name. I'm one of them. I have two Samsung SSDs in my desktop and they've never let me down, they provide fantastic performance.


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## Chrispy_ (Aug 1, 2020)

trparky said:


> Other than for those of us who trust the Samsung name. I'm one of them. I have two Samsung SSDs in my desktop and they've never let me down, they provide fantastic performance.


Yeah, I don't trust Samsung. I had to manually install scheduled workarounds for 50+ defective Samsung 840 and 840EVO drives. Samsung should have recalled those drives, and the firmware shouldn't have taken 18 months to arrive, and it only addressed ONE of the three affected products with 1st-gen TLC.

I don't suspect anyone with a self-detonating Samsung Note or an exploding Samsung washing machine, or failed 13-month old LED TV will fully trust them either. They're a bad company that, despite being popular, have cut corners plenty of times leaving the consumer either out of pocket, or at risk from unsafe product design. Given their size, Samsung as a company have lost more class action lawsuits than seems reasonable. 

They take risks, use consumers as paying guinea-pigs and deal with the acceptable (to them) fallout because multi-billion dollar marketing budgets shout louder than some negative press. Let's face it, on average, consumers are fickle and stupid with short memories. They buy what's shiny and fashionable, not what's necessarily good value, safe, reliable, or environmentally-responsible...


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## Scour (Aug 10, 2020)

Overall QLC is awful for ppl who like a SSD-like performance

But the next thing is Samsung-prices. But the 4TB is the cheapest I get here, the next is QLC Adata SU630

But if you look for 4TB or more is hard to find something. Dunno why Crucial don´t have 4TB of MX500.


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## cat1092 (Aug 11, 2020)

This isn't the 1st time Samsung has produced a 'value' SSD & became a flop fast.

Believe it was called the 750 EVO, with a similar 3 year warranty, with watered down TLC components (maybe what QLC is today. After all, this is a corporation which still calls their 850 EVO & 970 EVO's '3-bit MLC' drives. There's no such thing (or no other has marketed it as such), these are TLC drives. 

That said, unlike Samsung's venture into the 750 EVO, Intel & other distributors has hopped onto the wagon (maybe Intel was first). Today, QLC stands in the same position as TLC in 2013/14, many of these drives had issues, such as the Samsung 840 EVO, to which they shipped out a 'fix' to help with read slowness. This utility was to be ran once monthly or as needed. However, I had two of these drives, the 120GB model runs perfect to this day (although due to size, capped at 450MB/sec read & write), the 250GB benches like a SATA-2 SSD at times. I've found running the Disk Fresh tool (free download), in read only mode, to be a better solution & takes about half as long to do the job (if the drive isn't too badly messed up). Sometimes, will need to be ran twice. Afterwards, benchmarks shows the drive to near specifications, at least for a week or two. 

That was the price of being an early TLC adopter & will be the same with QLC. I can't believe how some of the popular YouTube review sites recommends the Intel 660p (1TB QLC NVMe), which reads & writes at near PCIe 2.0 speeds. When one can for $20 more (or less on promo), get a TLC model of the same size which will read at up to 3,500 MB/sec & write up to 3,000 MB/sec, What type of idiots to these professional reviewers think we are? They must be paid good to make these bold claims. 

While they maintain one can't 'tell the difference', try transferring a newly released Windows 10 ISO onto this drive from another source, will begin to throttle after 100-150MB. These aren't designed to dump 3-4GB of data on at a rapid pace. Looks like they're using their 'premium' DRAM chips in GPU's & passing the watered down crap to the SSD line. Maybe this is also why the DRAM-less models. LIke QLC, these throttles fast. 

I only hope that the Samsung keeps their Pro line of SSD's (SATA-3 & NVMe) of MLC drives on the market, no need to water these down. No one will pay current Pro prices for TLC drives, like $159 (current price) for a 512GB 970 Pro. Not going to happen. Intel has already taken the dive, hopefully Samsung won't, not on their top line models. 

Cat


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## Chrispy_ (Aug 11, 2020)

cat1092 said:


> This isn't the 1st time Samsung has produced a 'value' SSD & became a flop fast.
> 
> Believe it was called the 750 EVO, with a similar 3 year warranty, with watered down TLC components (maybe what QLC is today. After all, this is a corporation which still calls their 850 EVO & 970 EVO's '3-bit MLC' drives. There's no such thing (or no other has marketed it as such), these are TLC drives.
> 
> ...


Diskfresh was my solution to the Samsung 840, 840Evo, and all the OEM PM881 drives that were utterly broken. Only the 840 EVO ever received a fix in firmware, so that was no use to the 100+ mixed models that I had to deal with and like you say, the Firmware fix was both months too late and not particularly good anyway.


----------



## Scour (Aug 14, 2020)

The 750 Evo was not that bad, the c´tmagazine made a reliability-test with it and the both 750 250GB write 1,2PB till failure. The other end was theBX200 with 187TB/283TB till failure

The problem with the 750 was more the price and the little capacities


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## AsRock (Aug 16, 2020)

trparky said:


> Other than for those of us who trust the Samsung name. I'm one of them. I have two Samsung SSDs in my desktop and they've never let me down, they provide fantastic performance.



Yeah picking up another tomorrow a 860 1TB, i nearly got the QVO as max performance is not needed with so many games but like 37$ gets you a better performing one so ended up getting the none QVO,  all so picked up a MX500 too.


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## aviasd (Aug 18, 2020)

I wish I would have found this article before I bought my 860 QVO.

I've spent 4 days investigating my SATA controllers , SATA cables, Mobo, drivers etc, failing to realize Samsung would put out such a horrible performance disk on the market.

After some research, I found out that indeed such a drive exists and called an SSD but in real life performs lower than a low end HDD!

Samsung looks shy about advertising this as can be seen on the product's page under the fine fine print ( I don't recall when I saw a disclaimer in such a small font), but on the Product's spec , it does specify that speeds go down after TurboWrite buffer is exhausted - again in small print (bullet no. 3).

There's a claim is that TurboWrite adjusts for up to 48Gb depending on available space but all my tests on an emptied disk shows that TW is always exhausted after 12-16GB of writes)

The drive is priced a bit more than other manufacturers on the low end (~5-10$ on the 1Tb model) , but even the lowest end SSDs don't exhibit this behavior. ( verified )

It's a problem there is no awareness by the standard consumer - or even resellers for that matter, that a drive can be branded as SSD and underperform in such a way, especially when bought from a giant like Samsung which most people consider as reliable.

As said on the article, a synthetic benchmark does show the expected speeds but in real life this disk is useless if writing extensively, IMO correctly pointing out that the drive was designed to perform well on these synthetic tests.

The degraded performance and exhausting of SLC can be seen in CrystalDiskMark by writing around 16Gb of data (8Gb file twice, or 16GB file once) - the speed should be around 80Mb/s. The sequential write test is enough to show this.
Anything sized below that, (providing that the SLC had enough idle time to evict data) should show write speeds of around 500Mb/s.

I used to buy Samsung's products and recommended them to family and friends as reliable, but after this stunt I'm going to avoid them as much as possible.


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## AsRock (Aug 18, 2020)

aviasd said:


> I wish I would have found this article before I bought my 860 QVO.
> 
> I've spent 4 days investigating my SATA controllers , SATA cables, Mobo, drivers etc, failing to realize Samsung would put out such a horrible performance disk on the market.
> 
> ...



So you could say good enough for most gaming needs ?, although i believe the Samsung 1TB at $100 is to much for it as you have the MX500 for the same price.  Not many people copy GB's of data in one run never mind 12+GB.

This is why you should check out a bunch of reviews before buying.


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## aviasd (Aug 18, 2020)

AsRock said:


> So you could say good enough for most gaming needs ?, although i believe the Samsung 1TB at $100 is to much for it as you have the MX500 for the same price.  Not many people copy GB's of data in one run never mind 12+GB.
> 
> This is why you should check out a bunch of reviews before buying.



For gaming needs yes, for developers no. 
I don't know what's the ratio between work related use of SSDs to gaming but in my soho  I stop/resume 8GB VMs as a standard use.
This document by Samsung states that evicting up the TW cache on 1TB model takes 55s on idle time, but it does not describe what is considered idle time. My setup for example writes at a constant rate of 4Mb/s to the disk various logs and files and i didn't observe complete eviction also after 3mins of "idle" time.

My purpose of buying the SSD was to get expected results from an SSD. I'm not an expert on these things and only after the fact found this QLC/SLC thing. It was not to get the best disk, but a reasonable SSD from a reputed company..

I really don't think consumer should spend a few hours before buying something like an SSD and this article is the only one I found which clearly states the awfulness of the disk, and it's after direct query ("samsung qlc technology is bad") - it doesn't show up in the first page result on a standard search.


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## AsRock (Aug 18, 2020)

Then i guess you should of done your research ?. If more people did spend time in what they are buying there be a lot less people complaining when stuff is not up to what they imagined.

Like shi anyways it don't take 2 hours more like 10-30 minutes for the most part.

EDIT:
Shame you did not do your research before hand then MAYBE you would of found TPU and found out what you needed to know.


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## W1zzard (Aug 18, 2020)

AsRock said:


> So you could say good enough for most gaming needs ?


If you are willing to wait extra long during game installs/decrypt/updates, maybe. Level loading will be barely affected. But why pay SO much more than any other drive for A LOT less performance? Unless you want to give money to the Samsung charity of course


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## aviasd (Aug 18, 2020)

Maybe I was misunderstood - Before buying I always do a certain research - usually on sites like UserBench and reading a couple of reviews, as was done for this SSD. This entails the 10-30 minutes research you're referring..

But in this particular case you wouldn't encounter this issue unless you knew you what you're looking for, since UserBench test is also fooled by TW.
Only after research and exact search querying I found TPU's review,  in fact, after believing my drive was actually faulty.

In retrospect I don't know if I could have done something different before actually getting hands on the drive because really it's very hard to find this issue searching the web..
You can check for yourself....

EDIT: Yes, from now on TPU is my new goto place for research


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## AsRock (Aug 18, 2020)

I didn't say it was worth it, in fact i said i think it's over priced due to one example  the MX500. You talking what i said out of context.

Right now for me the 860 1TB is $137 and the QVO is about 35$ less, but you have the Crucial MX500 at 103$ which is for sure the better option but in the line of work he's doing he would of been better of spending the little extra.

What games load 12+GB ?. again for the most part most would not even notice.



aviasd said:


> Maybe I was misunderstood - Before buying I always do a certain research - usually on sites like UserBench and reading a couple of reviews, as was done for this SSD. This entails the 10-30 minutes research you're referring..
> 
> But in this particular case you wouldn't encounter this issue unless you knew you what you're looking for, since UserBench test is also fooled by TW.
> Only after research and exact search querying I found TPU's review,  in fact, after believing my drive was actually faulty.
> ...



Yeah never go by just one place, who the hell is TW ?.

I guess lesson learned, shit happens,  although if you not had the drve to long maybe you can return it ?.


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## aviasd (Aug 18, 2020)

AsRock said:


> Yeah never go by just one place, who the hell is TW ?.



TW = Samsung's TurboWrite




AsRock said:


> I guess lesson learned, shit happens,  although if you not had the drve to long maybe you can return it ?.


lol, It on the resellers lab right now. 
My guess is that he didn't know about this thing because he said that this degraded performances after 12GB is bad and he's going to check the disk for a while... 
I've had the drive for bout a month and a half now - Best case he'll replace it , worst case I lost 130$... worse things can happen..


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## AsRock (Aug 18, 2020)

Good Luck

EDIT: Welcome to TPU.


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## W1zzard (Aug 18, 2020)

AsRock said:


> I didn't say it was worth it, in fact i said i think it's over priced due to one example the MX500. You talking what i said out of context.


I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I just saw several people in other social media defend the drive "it's good enough for gaming"


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## INSTG8R (Aug 18, 2020)

This has definitely made me question the quality of my 860 QVO...


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## Chrispy_ (Aug 18, 2020)

aviasd said:


> There's a claim is that TurboWrite adjusts for up to 48Gb depending on available space but all my tests on an emptied disk shows that TW is always exhausted after 12-16GB of writes)



TIL that the 1TB model is single-channel and only has a guaranteed SLC cache of 6GB.

That makes it no better than MicroSD/eMMC! 

I feel sorry for anyone who is trying to use an 860QVO as a consumer system drive. IMO its unfit for purpose and the only niche it's remotely suitable for would be as WORM media for a high-performance archive server. Except anyone building a high-performance archive server has far better QLC options from more reputable brands than Samsung, so the QVO is basically an un-polishable, un-flushable turd.

Good luck with the refund. MX500 is a fine drive, as are the latest WD Blue and Sandisk Ultra


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## Scour (Aug 20, 2020)

I´m not a fan of Samsungs overpriced SSDs, but I´m not sure whether any competitor write in the specs the write speed after the SLC-cache, but Samsung did it.

However, with SSDs up to 2TB I would stay with the MX500 or Samsung/WD 3D, makes much more sense to me than any SSD with QLC, whatever the name of the manufacturer is.

Hope Crucial will also bring larger capacites with a Crucial-like price. And hope the MX500 will stay a long time or replace it with a good one.


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## aviasd (Sep 8, 2020)

Update:
In the end, the reseller decided that the disk was defective and offered a new Samsung EVO.
He wasn't aware about the TurboWrite/Qlc issues even though I tried to explain him

I declined his offer and got a refund 

Hope more people were aware of this and decline to purchase.. Maybe it would have forced Samsung to stop using this tech or at least put in a warning. This disk is so popular in Israel...


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## AsRock (Sep 8, 2020)

He offered you a EVO in place of it and you turned it down ?, then again which EVO.


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## aviasd (Sep 8, 2020)

AsRock said:


> He offered you a EVO in place of it and you turned it down ?, then again which EVO.



Whoops , Sorry - He offered me a new *QVO, *same Model (860 1TB) . He reached somehow the conclusion that specific disk was defective...


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## BlackAle (Sep 9, 2020)

What a completely stupid review, you'd think those in the industry would understand the need the QLC drives.

Yes, initial QLC drives weren't greatly priced, but you can now get the Samsung 870 QVO 4TB for ~£300 and the prices will drop further is the coming months.


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## AsRock (Sep 9, 2020)

aviasd said:


> Whoops , Sorry - He offered me a new *QVO, *same Model (860 1TB) . He reached somehow the conclusion that specific disk was defective...



At least he offered a good drive this time hehe, 130$ is about the going price in the US,  don't know about were you are.


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## W1zzard (Sep 9, 2020)

BlackAle said:


> What a completely stupid review, you'd think those in the industry would understand the need the QLC drives.
> 
> Yes, initial QLC drives weren't greatly priced, but you can now get the Samsung 870 QVO 4TB for ~£300 and the prices will drop further is the coming months.


You mean GBP 400 ?

I never said you shouldn't buy QLC, it's fine for plenty of reasons. Just don't buy the Samsung 870 QVO. For example you can get the WD Blue (TLC) for the same price which is MUCH faster, also Sandisk and ADATA S40G are in a similar price range, much better perf, too


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 17, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> You mean GBP 400 ?
> 
> I never said you shouldn't buy QLC, it's fine for plenty of reasons. Just don't buy the Samsung 870 QVO. For example you can get the WD Blue (TLC) for the same price which is MUCH faster, also Sandisk and ADATA S40G are in a similar price range, much better perf, too



Necro Thread (yes i know)

What would you say if there was a 2TB version for $168? price per GB is absolutely insane


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## bug (Nov 17, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Necro Thread (yes i know)
> 
> What would you say if there was a 2TB version for $168? price per GB is absolutely insane


Not really. I just got a 2TB MX500 (TLC) for ~$180.


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 17, 2021)

bug said:


> Not really. I just got a 2TB MX500 (TLC) for ~$180.



Im just going to use it as basic storage though.

I can get a 2TB BX500 for $182. a 2TB MX500 costs $225 here so its not on discount yet


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## BlackAle (Nov 18, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> You mean GBP 400 ?



I meant the price I said £300, it's now £295 on Amazon UK.


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## W1zzard (Nov 18, 2021)

You can buy shit drives all day, but do yourself a favor and at least consider SanDisk Ultra 3D 4 TB and Crucial MX500 4 TB, not much price difference, but at least they offer somewhat decent write performance


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 18, 2021)

BlackAle said:


> I meant the price I said £300, it's now £295 on Amazon UK.


That's the SATA model. Why buy a shitty QVO when the excellent MX500 is the same price?
Stop paying for shit, it encourages them to manufacture more shit.


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## BlackAle (Nov 18, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> That's the SATA model. Why buy a shitty QVO when the excellent MX500 is the same price?
> Stop paying for shit, it encourages them to manufacture more shit.


Obviously it's the SATA model, hence why I said 870. The nvme models start with 9.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 18, 2021)

BlackAle said:


> Obviously it's the SATA model, hence why I said 870. The nvme models start with 9.


I just steer clear of QVO period, because it's objectively bad. Excuse me for not knowing the nuances of a shit product family.

Buy the crappy drive if you want, I'm not responsible for your decisions - but just know that you're not getting a good product and don't come back here crying that we didn't warn you.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 18, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> I just steer clear of QVO period, because it's objectively bad. Excuse me for not knowing the nuances of a shit product family.
> 
> Buy the crappy drive if you want, I'm not responsible for your decisions - but just know that you're not getting a good product and don't come back here crying that we didn't warn you.


The 860 QVO is a great budget SSD. I bought a 1TB one just for MS Games because if you format Windows won’t let you use the drive until it’s formatted again. I also put my CoDs there well because they’re HUGE and I’m not gonna waste my NVMEs space on them. 
How is it objectively bad? It performs the same as any other SSD.


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## BlackAle (Nov 18, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> I just steer clear of QVO period, because it's objectively bad. Excuse me for not knowing the nuances of a shit product family.
> 
> Buy the crappy drive if you want, I'm not responsible for your decisions - but just know that you're not getting a good product and don't come back here crying that we didn't warn you.


I'm not buying it. I just stated the price of a drive. This thread is about the 870 QVO.

I personally use a 970 Evo & 970 Evo plus.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 18, 2021)

INSTG8R said:


> The 860 QVO is a great budget SSD. I bought a 1TB one just for MS Games because if you format Windows won’t let you use the drive until it’s formatted again. I also put my CoDs there well because they’re HUGE and I’m not gonna waste my NVMEs space on them.
> How is it objectively bad? It performs the same as any other SSD.


I'm not going to do the job of countless independent reviews from multiple sources (including TPU) that paint the QVO series as bad. It's not up for debate, they are objectively bad and dozens of respected, independent reviewers have proved that with repeatable, documented, impartial tests up for public scrutiny.

If your requirements for an SSD are_ so low _that even a bad drive works, then sure - it's usable; I still don't understand why you'd buy a bad drive at the exact same cost/GB as a good drive though.
Bad QLC products like the QVO series need to be 25% cheaper than the cheapest TLC drives IMO. You're not getting the performance or the endurance to warrant spending TLC money on a QLC drive, and Samsung's QLC drives are measurably worse than other QLC drives from the competition.


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## bug (Nov 18, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> I'm not going to do the job of countless independent reviews from multiple sources (including TPU) that paint the QVO series as bad. It's not up for debate, they are objectively bad and dozens of respected, independent reviewers have proved that with repeatable, documented, impartial tests up for public scrutiny.
> 
> If your requirements for an SSD are_ so low _that even a bad drive works, then sure - it's usable; I still don't understand why you'd buy a bad drive at the exact same cost/GB as a good drive though.
> Bad QLC products like the QVO series need to be 25% cheaper than the cheapest TLC drives IMO. You're not getting the performance or the endurance to warrant spending TLC money on a QLC drive, and Samsung's QLC drives are measurably worse than other QLC drives from the competition.


Objectively speaking, QLC can work as a game drive: rarely written, lots of reads. QLC's weaknesses are low endurance, slow access and abysmal writes if you write a lot at one time. Games manage to eschew most of these.

But I still won't touch QLC while TLC can be had for ~$10 more. I could consider it if it could be had for half price or so.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 18, 2021)

bug said:


> Objectively speaking, QLC can work as a game drive: rarely written, lots of reads. QLC's weaknesses are low endurance, slow access and abysmal writes if you write a lot at one time. Games manage to eschew most of these.
> 
> But I still won't touch QLC while TLC can be had for ~$10 more. I could consider it if it could be had for half price or so.


And it does that well and I'm running large and new games like Vanguard and Forza 5 off it right now I would expect possibly Forza would show any kinda of weaknesses that would  probably show up as stuttering in game. I bought it as a budget drive it for extra game space it fits that purpose. I mean for the most part that looks like regular SSD performance to me?


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## newtekie1 (Nov 18, 2021)

INSTG8R said:


> How is it objectively bad? It performs the same as any other SSD.


People like Chrispy_ like to harp on the poor write performance of the 1TB version of the 870 QVO as proof that the drives are bad.  But the fact is the 1TB version of the 870 QVO has write performance that is less than half what the 2TB+ versions get. Not only is the SLC cache on the larger drives doubled, but so is the write speed when the cache is full.  The reality of it is that if you sat someone down in front of a computer with a 870 QVO vs a computer with another TLC SATA drive in it in a blind test, they wouldn't be able to recognize which was a QLC drive.

I'm not saying I'd buy one for the prices they are at when there aren't cheap enough compared to better drives. The 8TB version is really the only one I'd consider because its only $680. The closest TLC drive is $1,000. That kind of savings makes it worth it. But the reasons people harp on QLC are just no accurate.


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## bug (Nov 18, 2021)

INSTG8R said:


> And it does that well and I'm running large and new games like Vanguard and Forza 5 off it right now I would expect possibly Forza would show any kinda of weaknesses that would  probably show up as stuttering in game. I bought it as a budget drive it for extra game space it fits that purpose. I mean for the most part that looks like regular SSD performance to me?
> View attachment 225622


Performance is bad. 32MB/s random reads is as bad as it gets. But at least it won't die on you too soon (QLC is only good for few hundred p/e cycles).
Game installs will be slow *but you don't do them often) and luckily level loading is mostly a sequential affair.

Even those sequential speeds are not sustained for long. It can only sustain less then 200MB/s, which is HDD territory. Once again, luckily for you, games don't need to sustain reads for long. At 500MB/s, you've loaded 5GB in 10s.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 18, 2021)

bug said:


> Performance is bad. 32MB/s random reads is as bad as it gets. But at least it won't die on you too soon (QLC is only good for few hundred p/e cycles).
> Game installs will be slow *but you don't do them often) and luckily level loading is mostly a sequential affair.
> 
> Even those sequential speeds are not sustained for long. It can only sustain less then 200MB/s, which is HDD territory. Once again, luckily for you, games don't need to sustain reads for long. At 500MB/s, you've loaded 5GB in 10s.


Honestly it was an impulse buy I got tired of UWP games ruining an entire game drive. So it gets to be the "sacrificial drive" that I don't care about formatting. I Just needed "another drive" and my 2 850 EVOs in RAID0 have never let me down so I went Samsung. my OS is a 970 EVO Pro I did step out and grab a WD Black SN750 1TB as my "fast game drive"


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 18, 2021)

bug said:


> Even those sequential speeds are not sustained for long. It can only sustain less then 200MB/s, which is HDD territory. Once again, luckily for you, games don't need to sustain reads for long. At 500MB/s, you've loaded 5GB in 10s.


Actually, individual game installs will be fine because they'll be installed via the internet which is typically slower than the 870QVO's write speed and with 40GB of cache it'll operate in SLC mode for most of the typical game install anyway.

Where the QVO is a total disaster is if you're moving games from other drives using the Steam library functionality. I have NVMe/SATA/NAS and I move games between drives quite frequently based on what I'm playing a lot of at any one time. QVO would _absolutely choke_ on this operation and it's something I do regularly.

So, even with the low, low requirements of "only used for a games library" it's already objectively worse than pretty much any other SSD you can get your hands on, period.



newtekie1 said:


> People like Chrispy_ like to harp on the poor write performance of the 1TB version of the 870 QVO as proof that the drives are bad.  But the fact is the 1TB version of the 870 QVO has write performance that is less than half what the 2TB+ versions get.


You're_ literally _writing this in the comments section of a *1TB version* review. Yes, a larger cache will help mask the QVO's glaring deficiencies but once again, there's no reason to buy an inferior performance, inferior endurance product at the same price as an objectively superior TLC drive. **If** you get the QVO significantly cheaper than anything else on the market then that's a different issue but the arguments against the QVO are made at identical prices to objectively better drives.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 18, 2021)

bug said:


> Even those sequential speeds are not sustained for long.


80GB is almost always long enough. And the speeds only slow down for writes, not reads. It will read a full speed for as long as needed.


Chrispy_ said:


> Where the QVO is a total disaster is if you're moving games from other drives using the Steam library functionality. I have NVMe/SATA/NAS and I move games between drives quite frequently based on what I'm playing a lot of at any one time. QVO would _absolutely choke_ on this operation and it's something I do regularly.


Even if those games are huge, the larger QVO will be petty darn fast, faster than a hard drive. It won't absolutely choke, even on large games. It won't be insanely fast, but still faster than a 1Gbps network connection if you are moving data off your NAS, and while it might take a little longer moving a game from another local drive, most people aren't doing that often. Even if you do, it won't be unbearably slow, and still faster than a hard drive.



Chrispy_ said:


> You're_ literally _writing this in the comments section of a *1TB version* review.


Yes, and it is perfectly fair to point out the issues with the 1TB version are not issues with the larger versions, which is what I'm doing.


Chrispy_ said:


> Yes, a larger cache will help mask the QVO's glaring deficiencies but once again, there's no reason to buy an inferior performance, inferior endurance product at the same price as an objectively superior TLC drive.


Yeah, I believe I said that.


Chrispy_ said:


> **If** you get the QVO significantly cheaper than anything else on the market then that's a different issue but the arguments against the QVO are made at identical prices to objectively better drives.


The decision if the cost savings is worth the negatives is up to the person buying the drive. The issue is you overexaggerate the negatives of QVO drives. The fact is most people would never even notice the slower write speed, or even if they did it happens so infrequently that it wouldn't bother them.


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## bug (Nov 18, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> Actually, individual game installs will be fine because they'll be installed via the internet which is typically slower than the 870QVO's write speed and with 40GB of cache it'll operate in SLC mode for most of the typical game install anyway.


Actually, they're downloaded to some temp location and then moved/unpacked to the install folder. At least that was my experience.
But I'm splitting hairs.



INSTG8R said:


> Honestly it was an impulse buy I got tired of UWP games ruining an entire game drive. So it gets to be the "sacrificial drive" that I don't care about formatting. I Just needed "another drive" and my 2 850 EVOs in RAID0 have never let me down so I went Samsung. my OS is a 970 EVO Pro I did step out and grab a WD Black SN750 1TB as my "fast game drive"


I wasn't judging. I was just saying, for about the same price, you can usually get a TLC drive that's just plain better. If at the moment you bought, that was your best bet, that's fine by me.

Fwiw, I also hold Samsung in high regard when it comes to SSDs. When I got my first large drive though, I went MX300, because Samsung was just too expensive. Later, when I needed a second OS drive, I thought I'd look at other options again, but lo and behold, I got a 970 EVO at a good price (the Plus was again too expensive). So yeah, Samsung's good, but about 50% of the time, to expensive for what you get. And they're certainly not the only game in town. Crucial, Sandisk/WD are also consistently solid.


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## chrcoluk (Nov 19, 2021)

BlackAle said:


> What a completely stupid review, you'd think those in the industry would understand the need the QLC drives.
> 
> Yes, initial QLC drives weren't greatly priced, but you can now get the Samsung 870 QVO 4TB for ~£300 and the prices will drop further is the coming months.


That price isnt great, for all the deficiencies of QLC I wouldnt pay more then about 50% the price of a TLC drive, and that price isnt close, of course QLC doesnt actually save much manufacturing cost so they wont go that low.

At launch I was seeing QVO drives costing the same or more as EVO drives. 



W1zzard said:


> You can buy shit drives all day, but do yourself a favor and at least consider SanDisk Ultra 3D 4 TB and Crucial MX500 4 TB, not much price difference, but at least they offer somewhat decent write performance


Ordered samsung to replace my MX500 a few hours ago 

But still even with the firmware issues I would take a MX500 over a QVO.


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## Deleted member 215115 (Nov 19, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> The decision if the cost savings is worth the negatives is up to the person buying the drive. The issue is you overexaggerate the negatives of QVO drives. The fact is most people would never even notice the slower write speed, or even if they did it happens so infrequently that it wouldn't bother them.


There are no cost savings whatsoever and people who defend QVO have no idea what they're talking about, but will still defend their shitty purchases no matter what, as usual. The QVO drives are bad, it is 100% noticeable, they were always too expensive and there is no reason at all to buy one. Those are all facts. This argument is pointless.


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## R0H1T (Nov 19, 2021)

Thanks for bringing this to our notice, we'll forward your suggestions to the potential buyers who're looking to replace their sh!tty spinners (4/8 TB?) with something that doesn't force them to rob a bank 

QVO on sale is a good choice for anyone who wants semi decent SSD, with Samsung backed warranty & generally highly reliable components, from the house of Sammy.


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## bug (Nov 19, 2021)

R0H1T said:


> Thanks for bringing this to our notice, we'll forward your suggestions to the potential buyers who're looking to replace their sh!tty spinners (4/8 TB?) with something that doesn't force them to rob a bank
> 
> QVO on sale is a good choice for anyone who wants semi decent SSD, with Samsung backed warranty & generally highly reliable components, from the house of Sammy.


TPU: Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB Review - Terrible, Do Not Buy
Anandtech: At 1TB and 2TB, there's usually a mainstream TLC drive to be found for less than the 870 QVO or 860 QVO.

It's passable if you look at it at the right angle. But "good choice" it is not.


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## ViperXTR (Nov 19, 2021)

necro thread but something that aligned to might current dilemna of getting a QVO or another MX500 or BX500 to replace my ancient 1TB spinner


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## bug (Nov 19, 2021)

ViperXTR said:


> necro thread but something that aligned to might current dilemna of getting a QVO or another MX500 or BX500 to replace my ancient 1TB spinner


BX is still too bad and not significantly cheaper than MX. But there are other options, like the WD Blue or some Sandisk models. Possibly Adata, too, but I haven't been following them lately.
Imho, the MX500 is the obvious choice, but depending on discounts and availability, it's worth to keep an eye on the others.


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## ViperXTR (Nov 19, 2021)

bug said:


> BX is still too bad and not significantly cheaper than MX. But there are other options, like the WD Blue or some Sandisk models. Possibly Adata, too, but I haven't been following them lately.
> Imho, the MX500 is the obvious choice, but depending on discounts and availability, it's worth to keep an eye on the others.


Yeah, ive had good experience with crucial starting with the MX100 (which still works fine and dandy today on another pc) and an MX500 1TB, id look at WD as well, i guess its just a matter of warranty on my region


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## R0H1T (Nov 19, 2021)

bug said:


> TPU: Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB Review - Terrible, Do Not Buy
> Anandtech: At 1TB and 2TB, there's usually a mainstream TLC drive to be found for less than the 870 QVO or 860 QVO.
> 
> It's passable if you look at it at the right angle. But "good choice" it is not.


Depends a lot on where you are, on sale I haven't seen anything much cheaper than QVO maybe 5-10% lower at best. I'm willing to pay 10% more for Samsung backed support. This may differ perhaps in the EU but even then the QVO is priced competitively.


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## Deleted member 215115 (Nov 19, 2021)

R0H1T said:


> This may differ perhaps in the EU but even then the QVO is priced competitively.


Prices in the US at the top of the page. Prices in Germany down below. Use your eyes and stop posting nonsense.


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## bug (Nov 19, 2021)

R0H1T said:


> Depends a lot on where you are, on sale I haven't seen anything much cheaper than QVO maybe 5-10% lower at best. I'm willing to pay 10% more for Samsung backed support. This may differ perhaps in the EU but even then the QVO is priced competitively.


Fair enough. But my point wasn't that you could find something cheaper than QVO, it was that any TLC drive at the same price point is a better buy.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 19, 2021)

bug said:


> Actually, they're downloaded to some temp location and then moved/unpacked to the install folder. At least that was my experience.
> But I'm splitting hairs.


So something like COD Warzone would be copied from the OS temp folder, likely NVMe storage reading at 3000MB/s or more?

Ouch. Even the 2TB QVO doesn't have enough SLC cache to cover for that. 84GB and then you're at 120MB/s or some embarrassing nonsense that makes the last 16GB take twice as long to transfer as the first 84GB did.



R0H1T said:


> I'm willing to pay 10% more for Samsung backed support


Uh, Samsung support is absolutely abysmal.

Their defective 840-series was never recalled. After data loss for thousands of people they finally issued a firmware fix nine months late, but only for the EVO. The OEM drives and vanilla 840 owners were left to suffer (or use a third-party workaround like DiskFresh to offset the data-loss-causing voltage drift that occured if data wasn't continually re-written every couple of months).

Their track record with phones is equally bad, remember they only started recalling the defective Note 7 when threatened by the US government! Does anyone remember the fiasco over refusing to accept liability for their exploding washing machines that actually injured people and blew up entire floors of buildings.

If you buy Samsung, you ARE a paying beta tester and you will be left to fend for yourself because they're too big to care. There's a decade of proof that's unchangeably written into history at this point.


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## trparky (Nov 19, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> Their track record with phones is equally bad


Yeah, not to take this thread off topic but they're not too great in wanting to keep software up to date for more than a year on their phones.


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## seth1911 (Nov 19, 2021)

I had 3 weeks ago a QLC SSD here.

Its pure garbage if u transfer a high amount of datas a 4TB HDD cost less than 25% of a 4TB QLC but it isnt much slower.
I transfered about 2 TB  and the HDD took 2 min longer.


The QLC had a single cache buffer, but after that it was slower than a 7500rpm HDD, nearly on pair with a 5400rpm HDD:
7500rpm 120 MB/s
QLC without buffer 69 MB/s
5400rpm 68 MB/s


Eidt: Nah just for fun my BD Drive can write:  
72 MB/s on Singlelayer
63 MB/s on Duallayer


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 19, 2021)

trparky said:


> Yeah, not to take this thread off topic but they're not too great in wanting to keep software up to date for more than a year on their phones.


Oh yeah, I wasn't talking about the Samsung stuff that's annoying but legal, I was just listing things that warranted class-action lawsuits and government intervention.


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## trparky (Nov 19, 2021)

TLC NAND is the absolute limit that I can take when it comes to SSDs, any less than that and you're going to have a bad time.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 20, 2021)

rares495 said:


> There are no cost savings whatsoever


So you'll easily be able to show me a 8TB TLC based SSD for under $700 then, right?


rares495 said:


> people who defend QVO have no idea what they're talking about, but will still defend their shitty purchases no matter what, as usual.


I fell that people basing QVO have no idea what they're talking about.


rares495 said:


> The QVO drives are bad, it is 100% noticeable, they were always too expensive and there is no reason at all to buy one.


They aren't bad in sizes 2TB and above, it is 99% not noticeable, and they aren't always expensive. And significant cost savings is a reason to buy one. These are all facts.


seth1911 said:


> QLC without buffer 69 MB/s


I mean, you're posting in a professional review that directly proves you are wrong here. Why even post it? And not to mention there are plenty of other reviews that show the larger QVO drives are closer to 180MB/s.


Chrispy_ said:


> So something like COD Warzone would be copied from the OS temp folder, likely NVMe storage reading at 3000MB/s or more?
> 
> Ouch. Even the 2TB QVO doesn't have enough SLC cache to cover for that. 84GB and then you're at 120MB/s or some embarrassing nonsense that makes the last 16GB take twice as long to transfer as the first 84GB did.


That isn't how it work, at least not with Steam. With Steam it is downloaded to the same folder it is being installed to. So it would download to the QVO, but the download itself doesn't use SLC cache, because it isn't fast enough. The download is going slower than the actual write speed directly to QLC, so no cache space is used. Then the files are decompressed on the drive, that is when the SLC cache would be used, and as long as the game is under 80GB, it will never see the slower write speeds.


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## Selaya (Nov 20, 2021)

I mean, this is a classic case of _there's no such thing as a bad product, only bad pricing_ (it suffers from bad performance, sometimes rather critically so, as the 1TB model wrt post-SLC sequentials, but fundamentally is not a broken product unlike lets say, gigafail power supplies).

As long as the savings for a QVO is significant enough compared to the next-best TLC they're viable options for cheap(-ish) secondary storage. Heck, in a pinch they'll even do as system drives, but I can see a point in wanting something better there. Also, I would stay away from the 1TB version but that's not too much of a ask since this is a product you'd buy to have lots of cheap storage, and for that the 8TB version's great (or the 4/2 ones too ...), since the price for QVOs been ticking down slowly but steadily. Fight me.


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## seth1911 (Nov 20, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> I mean, you're posting in a professional review that directly proves you are wrong here. Why even post it? And not to mention there are plenty of other reviews that show the larger QVO drives are closer to 180MB/s.


Because 180 MB/s is totaly bullshit for QLC


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## Deleted member 215115 (Nov 20, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> So you'll easily be able to show me a 8TB TLC based SSD for under $700 then, right?


You can just get two 4 TB.





newtekie1 said:


> I fell that people basing QVO have no idea what they're talking about.


We do actually. I've used many many SSDs over the years. That's one benefit of working in IT. The QVO is terrible and nothing you post will change that. 


newtekie1 said:


> They aren't bad in sizes 2TB and above, it is 99% not noticeable, and they aren't always expensive. And significant cost savings is a reason to buy one. These are all facts.


I just showed that there are no cost savings. Just look at screenshots I posted above. This is my final post on this topic. Enjoy being wrong.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 21, 2021)

rares495 said:


> You can just get two 4 TB.


That's not what I asked. Can I fit 2 2.5" SSDs in my laptop? Nope.

Again, show me a 8TB TLC SSD for under $700 or admit you are wrong.


rares495 said:


> We do actually. I've used many many SSDs over the years. That's one benefit of working in IT. The QVO is terrible and nothing you post will change that.


No, you don't. Not only am I in IT and used thousands of SSD including the QVO. It behaved exactly like any other SSD in normal use. To the point that I bet people wouldn't be able to pick it out from a TLC SSD in a blind test using it as a system drive on their computer.  The 80GB of SLC cache is more than enough for even installing large Windows updates.


rares495 said:


> I just showed that there are no cost savings. Just look at screenshots I posted above. This is my final post on this topic. Enjoy being wrong.


No you didn't. If you can't post a 8TB TLC drive for under $700, you're wrong. There clearly is cost savings in some areas. Enjoy being wrong.


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## chrcoluk (Nov 21, 2021)

seth1911 said:


> I had 3 weeks ago a QLC SSD here.
> 
> Its pure garbage if u transfer a high amount of datas a 4TB HDD cost less than 25% of a 4TB QLC but it isnt much slower.
> I transfered about 2 TB  and the HDD took 2 min longer.
> ...



How are you managing to get a 4TB QLC so cheap?  The price difference is way bigger than 25%.

So its even worse than you said, the price difference is bigger, and 4TB hdd's typically run way faster than the speeds you quoted for sequential.

My 4TB 5400RPM's do over 120MB/sec.


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## bug (Nov 21, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> That's not what I asked. Can I fit 2 2.5" SSDs in my laptop? Nope.


Of course that's not what you asked, you're just making up impossible scenarios. Who the hell uses their laptop as their main storage device?


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## newtekie1 (Nov 22, 2021)

bug said:


> Of course that's not what you asked, you're just making up impossible scenarios. Who the hell uses their laptop as their main storage device?


1. People that only have a laptop use it as their only storage device.
2. I have an 8TB drive in my laptop because I travel and bring my media and Steam library with me. I do this so I can play games and watch movies even when I'm spending weeks in areas with no reliable internet connection.

Now, we can either find me an 8TB TLC drive for under $700, or admit that there are some good value QLC drives.


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## bug (Nov 22, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> 1. People that only have a laptop use it as their only storage device.
> 2. I have an 8TB drive in my laptop because I travel and bring my media and Steam library with me. I do this so I can play games and watch movies even when I'm spending weeks in areas with no reliable internet connection.
> 
> Now, we can either find me an 8TB TLC drive for under $700, or admit that there are some good value QLC drives.


There are no good value QLC drives. There are just some select scenarios you can work around their limitations (i.e. somehow whatever you do with your laptop does not need frequent writing).

I also doubt very much you actually need 8TB of games and videos on a single trip, but since SSDs don't like being anywhere near full, I'll give you that one.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 22, 2021)

The best QLC drives (Rocket Q, 660p) are debatably good value in specific circumstances. At the right price, and with buyers aware of the downsides they can make sense.
The QVO is just a bad product even when taking those caveats into consideration. If you're going to buy a QLC drive, buy one that doesn't suck from a company that doesn't suck.

When an 8TB Ironwolf drive can stream sequential data at 230MB/s for 1/3rd the price, you should *either buy a good SSD or just save your money.* Paying almost as much as a full-fat TLC SSD for a flawed QVO is just dumb.


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## Selaya (Nov 22, 2021)

but you're getting more than that, you're getting all the SSD randoms (well, _kinda_, they're all slightly worse); the only 'crippling' flaw of the QVO are the post-SLC sequential writes, something that comes up maybe once every other blue moon for the average joe, if at all.

You're really blowing this way out of proportions.
(Also, last time I checked the QVO is the only non-enterprise 8TB SATA offering, so.)


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## bug (Nov 22, 2021)

Selaya said:


> but you're getting more than that, you're getting all the SSD randoms (well, _kinda_, they're all slightly worse); the only 'crippling' flaw of the QVO are the post-SLC sequential writes, something that comes up maybe once every other blue moon for the average joe, if at all.
> 
> You're really blowing this way out of proportions.
> (Also, last time I checked the QVO is the only non-enterprise 8TB SATA offering, so.)


You're also getting about half the endurance. And with lower charge per cell, it's even more susceptible to data corruption if left unpowered.
I don\t know about you, but I would never buy that while I can get TLC at the same price.


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## Selaya (Nov 22, 2021)

Neither would I, or _anyone sane_ for that matter.
The argument is that QLC and in this specific case the (8TB) QVO are viable options because they're either significantly cheaper and/or the only option available for a specific use case.
And for that, despite its sometimes-awful characteristics is still a useful product and miles ahead of a HDD.


----------



## newtekie1 (Nov 22, 2021)

bug said:


> There are no good value QLC drives. There are just some select scenarios you can work around their limitations (i.e. somehow whatever you do with your laptop does not need frequent writing).
> 
> I also doubt very much you actually need 8TB of games and videos on a single trip, but since SSDs don't like being anywhere near full, I'll give you that one.


You can not claim there are no good value QLC drives unless you can show me a 8TB TLC drive for under $700. Period.

And you're right, I don't put my games and videos on the 8TB QVO, because they won't fit. I still have to put the media on an external. Not that that is a big issue, since I videos don't need an SSD.



Chrispy_ said:


> When an 8TB Ironwolf drive can stream sequential data at 230MB/s for 1/3rd the price, you should *either buy a good SSD or just save your money.* Paying almost as much as a full-fat TLC SSD for a flawed QVO is just dumb.


And an 8TB Ironwolf won't fill all the needs a 2.5" SSD does.

Sequential data rates aren't even really a true measure of a drives performance, we've all known this for years and it's why drive benchmarks have move away from it.  You keep harping on how the sequential write performance dropping to HDD speeds after the SLC cache is used up. But that argument is like measuring how good a car is by how fast it is in a drag race...in reverse. It's a metric that doesn't matter in the real world.

You want some real world results? Fire up CrystalDiskMark and set it to Real World + Mix. Cause you know what people do a lot of? Reading from their drive while background processes write to it. You know what makes a HDD absolutely fall flat on its face? Trying to have it do two things at once.

Obviously paying as much for a QVO as a TLC drive is dumb, but saying the QVO is just as bad as a HDD or even comparing it to a HDD is also just as dumb.



Selaya said:


> but you're getting more than that, you're getting all the SSD randoms (well, _kinda_, they're all slightly worse); the only 'crippling' flaw of the QVO are the post-SLC sequential writes, something that comes up maybe once every other blue moon for the average joe, if at all.


Exactly, the number of times someone writes more than 80GB at a time from a fast enough source to their SSD is insanely small.


bug said:


> I don\t know about you, but I would never buy that while I can get TLC at the same price.


You people keep saying this but can't back it up. So me an 8TB TLC drive for the same price. I'll wait.


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## bug (Nov 22, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> You can not claim there are no good value QLC drives unless you can show me a 8TB TLC drive for under $700. Period.


I understand that $700 SSDs is what it's all about, but try to understand that I'm in the improbable minority that doesn't give a rat's ass about that.


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## chrcoluk (Nov 22, 2021)

The problem is I try to think of a use case for a 8TB SSD that "also" requires fast random i/o, "and" also not heavy on writes due to endurance issues.  The closest i can think of would be VM hosting, but VM's have massive write amplification, especially on a decent file system like ZFS, which I wouldn't put QLC anywhere near unless I massively overprovisioned to compensate which then loses the capacity advantage.  Not to mention you could easily exceed SLC size on VM imports which would then hit the slow sequential problem.

Large files don't tend to need random i/o., archive of data, media etc, hdd is fast enough, gaming SSD I expect for vast majority of people 4tb is plenty, for most 2tb is enough.

QLC isn't something that's unlocked 8TB as a possibility, we have to bear in mind this is a deliberate restriction by SSD manufacturers to try and gain QLC sales, most SATA SSD's e.g. have a casing that's only 1/4 or so used up, there is plenty of room for extra chips, or of course 3d nand extra stacking to increase capacity on TLC, its just a choice made by manufacturers to try and push QLC, there "will" be 8TB TLC at some point..  At least HDD manufacturer's only started considering SMR when they hit physical spacing issues.

Finally I cannot shake off what happened with first gen TLC products, the 840 and 840 EVO drives (EVO was never patched), these QVO are first gen QLC and simply not enough time has passed to see the long term effects of the nand type.

Maybe in 5 years QLC will perform as TLC does today, they have managed to get TLC as fast (and endurant) as older MLC, but that will be then, not now.


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## bug (Nov 22, 2021)

Selaya said:


> Neither would I, or _anyone sane_ for that matter.
> The argument is that QLC and in this specific case the (8TB) QVO are viable options because they're either significantly cheaper and/or the only option available for a specific use case.
> And for that, despite its sometimes-awful characteristics is still a useful product and miles ahead of a HDD.


No argument there. But "viable option" or "useful product" is not the same as "good value". That's all I'm saying.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 22, 2021)

bug said:


> I understand that $700 SSDs is what it's all about, but try to understand that I'm in the improbable minority that doesn't give a rat's ass about that.


Then you shouldn't make statements that are wrong.



chrcoluk said:


> The problem is I try to think of a use case for a 8TB SSD that "also" requires fast random i/o, "and" also not heavy on writes due to endurance issues. The closest i can think of would be VM hosting, but VM's have massive write amplification, especially on a decent file system like ZFS, which I wouldn't put QLC anywhere near unless I massively overprovisioned to compensate which then loses the capacity advantage. Not to mention you could easily exceed SLC size on VM imports which would then hit the slow sequential problem.
> 
> Large files don't tend to need random i/o., archive of data, media etc, hdd is fast enough, gaming SSD I expect for vast majority of people 4tb is plenty, for most 2tb is enough.



My games library is over 4TB. An 8TB SSD is perfect for a games library and it definitely benefits from fast random I/O.  And the endurance issues are blown out of proportion. Even system drives don't write that much to the drive, people really overestimate how much data is actually written to their drives.  My main computer's system drive has a whole 11TB written to it and it's 2 years old now.


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## Selaya (Nov 22, 2021)

bug said:


> No argument there. But "viable option" or "useful product" is not the same as "good value". That's all I'm saying.


if you're in the market for a 8TB SATA (ex: laptop expansion drive as in newtekie's case) then yes, QVO's good value because your alternative's like, a D3-S4610.


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## bug (Nov 22, 2021)

Selaya said:


> if you're in the market for a 8TB SATA (ex: laptop expansion drive as in newtekie's case) then yes, QVO's good value because your alternative's like, a D3-S4610.


If you're fixated on a SSD, maybe. But at $700 you have more options. Like building a NAS that will actually keep your files safe, possibly with enough $$$ left to add a roomy HDD to your laptop (there are models that will fit both M2 and a regular SATA drive) for the data you need on the road. Or, I don't know, paying for cloud storage for 10 years and use the difference to put the data you need on the road on a 2TB external SSD.


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## Selaya (Nov 22, 2021)

The largest 2.5" HDD available is 2TB.
Good luck cramming a 3.5" into one. Your argument is invalid.


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## W1zzard (Nov 22, 2021)

Selaya said:


> The largest 2.5" HDD available is 2TB.
> Good luck cramming a 3.5" into one. Your argument is invalid.


5 TB, ST5000LM000, but still not 8 TB


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## newtekie1 (Nov 22, 2021)

bug said:


> If you're fixated on a SSD, maybe. But at $700 you have more options. Like building a NAS that will actually keep your files safe, possibly with enough $$$ left to add a roomy HDD to your laptop (there are models that will fit both M2 and a regular SATA drive) for the data you need on the road. Or, I don't know, paying for cloud storage for 10 years and use the difference to put the data you need on the road on a 2TB external SSD.


Cloud storage isn't a viable option for anyone that travels. The internet isn't reliable.

A NAS might work, but then again anything spinning in a vehicle that moves constantly is a really bad idea. Hard drives, it turns out, don't like vibration. I had 3 drives die in my camera system on the RV before finally just switching to an SSD.  Even with the system off while traveling, the vibrations killed the spinners.

Then on top of that, you're offering solutions that can't be used for the tasks an SSD would be used for. Like loading games. I'm not going to be loading games from a NAS or cloud storage.


W1zzard said:


> 5 TB, ST5000LM000, but still not 8 TB


I have a couple of those. The 15mm height really limited their compatibility. Some desktops with 2.5" drive bays can't even use them.


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## Selaya (Nov 22, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> 5 TB, ST5000LM000, but still not 8 TB


I was implying 7/9.5mm height (since the debate was about laptops; I am not aware of any laptops taking more than 9.5mm and even that is a stretch sometimes, there's a reason people make 7mms), but yeah xd


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## chrcoluk (Nov 23, 2021)

I will give you a thumbs up for identifying a potential use case.


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## BlackAle (Nov 23, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> I will give you a thumbs up for identifying a potential use case.



Silence, shock protection, size, access times.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 23, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> we have to bear in mind this is a deliberate restriction by SSD manufacturers to try and gain QLC sales, most SATA SSD's e.g. have a casing that's only 1/4 or so used up, there is plenty of room for extra chips, or of course 3d nand extra stacking to increase capacity on TLC, its just a choice made by manufacturers to try and push QLC, there "will" be 8TB TLC at some point.. At least HDD manufacturer's only started considering SMR when they hit physical spacing issues.


I just now caught this. You are incorrect. A 4TB SSD currently uses up all the space in a 2.5" case. You can see a modern one taken apart here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sandisk-ultra-3d-4-tb-ssd/2.html

The PCB is not using only 1/4 of the case. A TLC 4TB drive requires 8 flash chips, that takes up the whole 2.5" casing.


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## Selaya (Nov 23, 2021)

Actually there's some truth to that since 8GB TLCs _do_ exist, but they're all enterprise models and priced accordingly. (The 4TB SanDisk's single-sided too, so you _could_ add another 8 chips on the reverse to make it double-sided.)

In any case its as I've said the QVO's _literally the only_ consumer-grade 8TB SATA model that exists.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 23, 2021)

Selaya said:


> Actually there's some truth to that since 8GB TLCs _do_ exist, but they're all enterprise models and priced accordingly. (The 4TB SanDisk's single-sided too, so you _could_ add another 8 chips on the reverse to make it double-sided.)
> 
> In any case its as I've said the QVO's _literally the only_ consumer-grade 8TB SATA model that exists.


They could make it a two sided PCB, but that just adds cost and complexity. Meaning it isn't just a artificial reason behind limiting TLC drive sizes. My point was that the 4TB SSDs do take up all the space in the 2.5" casing.

And there is a 8TB SATA from Team Group, but it also uses QLC. And there is a 8TB from PNY, but I can't find any info on what type of flash it uses. Knowing PNY, it's whatever they want since they are known for changing around flash to whatever is cheapest on the drives.


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## Selaya (Nov 23, 2021)

Interesting. I guess these are both so bad/unpopular geizhals wasn't even listing them. All I got was QVO and a buncha enterprise ones.


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## bug (Nov 23, 2021)

Selaya said:


> Interesting. I guess these are both so bad/unpopular geizhals wasn't even listing them. All I got was QVO and a buncha enterprise ones.


I have a terrible feeling that between QLC and 1x production nodes, SSD have hit a capacity wall that won't be easy to overcome. Both methods of increasing capacity mean smaller charge per cell and I think we went as low as it gets. Manufacturers sidestepped this one when they went from planar to 3D cells, but I have heard of n such "savior" again.


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## chrcoluk (Nov 23, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> I just now caught this. You are incorrect. A 4TB SSD currently uses up all the space in a 2.5" case. You can see a modern one taken apart here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sandisk-ultra-3d-4-tb-ssd/2.html
> 
> The PCB is not using only 1/4 of the case. A TLC 4TB drive requires 8 flash chips, that takes up the whole 2.5" casing.


Fair point its not a 1/4 but there is enough room for the extra chips.

Bear in mind QLC does not double capacity over TLC (which would be needed if they did indeed max it out), so if QLC fits, TLC can as well, its only a 25% increase in capacity (the new capacity).

So I still maintain its artificial and we will some day see 8TB TLC SSD's.



newtekie1 said:


> They could make it a two sided PCB, but that just adds cost and complexity. Meaning it isn't just a artificial reason behind limiting TLC drive sizes. My point was that the 4TB SSDs do take up all the space in the 2.5" casing.
> 
> And there is a 8TB SATA from Team Group, but it also uses QLC. And there is a 8TB from PNY, but I can't find any info on what type of flash it uses. Knowing PNY, it's whatever they want since they are known for changing around flash to whatever is cheapest on the drives.



Well yes of course, the reason is profits, I dont think anyone has denied that.  There is a difference between not doing something because it costs more and not doing it because its not technically possible.

Also the fact there is 8TB enterprise TLC SSD's makes it even more doable, as enterprise SSD's have huge factory overprovisioning so there is going to be much more than 8TB nand on those drives.

You only have to look how much nand fits on a m.2 stick to realise its possible on SATA SSD's.


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## trparky (Nov 24, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> You only have to look how much nand fits on a m.2 stick to realise its possible on SATA SSD's.


OK, so I guess the answer is... leave SATA drives (which have more space for circuity and NAND chips) to high-capacity SSDs while leaving NVMe SSDs to being smaller boot drives.


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