Wednesday, November 21st 2018
The New Samsung 860 QVO SSD With QLC NAND Gets Listed Online, Will Be Cheaper Than the Evo family
In October Samsung took the stage on its Tech Day event and announced its SSD roadmap. One of the key elements of that roadmap was the project to launch QLC (quad-level cell) SSDs, and now we've got more information on these products. Several European online retailers -French and Italian- have already listed the new Samsung 860 QVO units, which means their official availability is near us.
The new SSD drives will feature the conventional 2.5-inch format with SATA interface, but the naming scheme changes from EVO or Pro to the new QVO, which stands for "Quality and Value Optimized SSD". Performance goes up to 550/520 MB per second for sequential read/write, and apparently these SSDs will feature 96,000 IOPS read and 89,000 IOPS write. There will be at least three variants: 1 TB (MZ-76Q1T0BW), 2 TB (MZ-76Q2T0BW) and 4 TB (MZ-76Q4T0BW), with prices of 117.50 euros, 225,96 euros and 451,93 euros (VAT excluded) according to those online retailers. Even with taxes included 19% would make 140, 270 and 540 euros), these are cheaper priced than the ones we can find on the Evo family (160, 380 and 850 euros at those storage capacities), for example. Some of these online shops mention December 2018 as the ETA.
The QLC technology (four-bit) allows to increase the storage density of current 3D NAND chips based on TLC (3-bit), but although cost can be lower on these chips, the complexity of the new technology could face disadvantages in performance and durability. Other QLC units like Intel's 660p or Crucial P1 don't perform that well in write tests if they run out of SLC cache. Real world use and benchmarks will for sure give more information on this potential issues.
The new SSD drives will feature the conventional 2.5-inch format with SATA interface, but the naming scheme changes from EVO or Pro to the new QVO, which stands for "Quality and Value Optimized SSD". Performance goes up to 550/520 MB per second for sequential read/write, and apparently these SSDs will feature 96,000 IOPS read and 89,000 IOPS write. There will be at least three variants: 1 TB (MZ-76Q1T0BW), 2 TB (MZ-76Q2T0BW) and 4 TB (MZ-76Q4T0BW), with prices of 117.50 euros, 225,96 euros and 451,93 euros (VAT excluded) according to those online retailers. Even with taxes included 19% would make 140, 270 and 540 euros), these are cheaper priced than the ones we can find on the Evo family (160, 380 and 850 euros at those storage capacities), for example. Some of these online shops mention December 2018 as the ETA.
22 Comments on The New Samsung 860 QVO SSD With QLC NAND Gets Listed Online, Will Be Cheaper Than the Evo family
IMO so far the price advantage doesn't make it worth the risk.
SKU#700930
860 EVO 1TB MLC V-NAND SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive
$129.99
www.microcenter.com/product/502942/860-evo-1tb-mlc-v-nand-sata-iii-6gb-s-25-internal-solid-state-drive
www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B078DPCY3T/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Your fancy drive could be replace with an 860 EVO one and you'll never know.
Sorry,but nvme is not delivering anywhere close to its rated sequential speed advantage over sata ssds in random small file transfers. you're beter off buying a bigger sata ssd than a smaller nvme one.I'd only buy nvme if it cost +20% premium over sata ssd, not friggin +50% or more and needs a heatsink to deliver that mere +14% consistently.
Take mx500 1TB and a 500GB nvme like sandisk 3d/new wd black 3d or plextor m9. You'll basically pay the same amounbt of money for each.500GB drive will get completely filled pretty quickly with files and games, you'll lose another few percent or even more from an advantage that's already pretty underwhelming when comparing real world usage. On 1TB mx500 you'll be able to store +700GB of data easily before you start losing any performance.
For me only nvme option I'd consider is no smaller than a 2TB nvme drive and that's when you're taking the price out of consideration completely,in other words when you have money to burn. I'd take a 2TB sata SSD over 1TB nvme any day.
Also keep in mind m.2 is just a form factor. It can still be SATA. It doesn't automatically mean NVMe.
It gets pretty odd when regular gaming and casual usage is being used to explain NVME advantages. Get the memo: these ain't for you that is why the $/GB is twice as high as it is on SATA.
I may not be the typical user but I have over 800 Steam games and 7 pages of Humble Monthly games to redeem not to mention GOG, UPlay, Battlenet and Origin no Windows store though (hehe). Besides one game can now be as high as 100TB of data. I prioritize my games based on what I am playing and move my most played games to the fastest drive(s).
As much as you may think that NVME drives are twice the price of SSDS I will give you an example. There was a HP NVME 1TB on sale for $219 Canadian the cheapest 1 TB SSD was on sale for $199.99 so $20 more for 4x the read speed? I do not make statements based on my thoughts or opinions but what I have actually seen with my own eyes.
A paging file is what a game(application) uses especially at 4K if your RAM goes above it's allotment. So if a Page file is strictly reading information (I know I am simplifying it) would it not make sense even from a theoretical standpoint that a HDD will give you 200 MB/s an SSD will give you 550 MB/s and a NVME drive will give you 2500Mb/s. I know some people disable the paging file in Windows but I have no games installed on my C drive. In RAID 0 it gets better because that throughput goes up to 8000 MB/s depending on your equipment.
BTW I have every form of storage in my system including HDDs, SSHDs, SSDs and NVME drives. I only use the task manager and have the performance tab highlighted with the drive I am interested in displayed and that is the crevasse I am talking about.
Nowhere have you managed to provide any kind of difference in how the data is used. The games perform the exact same. All you've won is theoretical speed increases that do not materialize as a practical advantage. So you move games to the fastest drive, I say you're just wasting your drives that way, as in, creating unnecessary wear on your rather expensive storage setup for no benefit whatsoever except your idea of more speed. It almost sounds like you want to transfer data across your drives because they can do it faster.
To each his own, but what you're doing is completely pointless, and costs you money. I also have a massive games library which requires downloads all the time. Still, you only play one game at a time, and once you moved to SSD, there really isn't much of a storage bottleneck anymore where HDD had one. Thát is the point of getting them. Everything beyond that is just nonsense for a regular consumer or (hardcore) gamer.