Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB

[W1zzard]

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.

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[X71200]

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...

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

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

 

[trparky]

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.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Catchy headline! Got my click.

 

[Object55]

Thanks for keeping it real !

 

[GeorgeMan]

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

 

[X71200]

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.

 

[Jawz]

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

 

[trparky]

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.

 

[bug]

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

 

[Frick]

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

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.

 

[Valent117]

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

 

[X71200]

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.

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

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.

 

[bug]

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

 

[X71200]

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.

 

[Ed_1]

$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

 

[trparky]

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.

 

[bug]

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).

 

[trparky]

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.

 

[bug]

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).

 

[trparky]

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.

 

[bug]

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.

 

[Searing]

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.

 

[trparky]

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.