Packaging

Samsung's package definitely looks high-end and elegant with its shiny silvery surface.


You will receive:

• The SSD
• Documentation
• Norton Ghost software
• 3.5" mounting kit
• SATA cable

The Drive

The drive conforms to the dimensions set forth by the 2.5" form factor. It is made from metal which improves its durability. Please note that its thickness is down to 7 mm from the regular 9 mm thickness of a drive. Thinner drives are a requirement by Intel's Ultrabook standard, so the 830 Series SSD is ready for these notebooks.


Like most recent SSDs, the 830 SSD uses the SATA 6 Gbps interface. It is compatible with any other SATA standard, but will, in such a case, work at reduced performance.


On the PCB you will find the SSD controller in the center surrounded by eight flash chips that are located on both sides on the PCB. The two smaller chips are the DRAM memory for the controller.
Please don't take your drive apart. There are no screws, just plastic clips that will break during disassembly and Samsung will reject your RMA if they spot such a thing.


Samsung is using their own flash controller design that is based on a triple core ARM processor with Samsung's own firmware.


The eight flash chips are produced by Samsung on a 20 nanometer process. It is quite surprising to see 512 Gbit flash chips. It's more common for companies to put 16 256 Gbit chips on a 512 GB SSD.