Samsung SSD 850 EVO (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 8, 2014 10:00 AM ESTPower Consumption
Samsung has always done a great job at power efficiency and the 850 EVO is no exception. In slumber mode the 850 EVO is one of the most efficient drives we have seen and it also explains why Samsung went with the new MGX controller as the 500GB and smaller capacities consume about 30% less power than the 1TB model.
Load power consumption is also exceptional, although once again I should note that the writes are hitting the SLC buffer, which is more power efficient than writing to the TLC array. Right after I stopped writing to the drive I saw the power consumption increase to ~3W while the drive was reading data from SLC and writing it to TLC, but that didn't take longer than 10-20 seconds or so (though it depends on how much you write to the drive). I have some tests prepared for our 2015 SSD suite that will look at power over time more closely, so it will also better account for SLC to MLC/TLC writes.
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Kevin G - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
They do seem a little low but we just got out of a major sale spree. During the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping fest the 480 GB Intel 730 was going for $200. I would have picked up one up myself at that price but they ran out of stock.HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
You'd have been better served with the Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB for $185.davolfman - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
OCZ's firmware for the Barefoot3 series of chips the ARC100 uses has a less then stellar reputation. Things like unexpected power loss have been known to put it into a state of progressive corruption only recoverable by secure erase. There have been patches that claim to fix this on my Vector (that probably got applied to the ARC out the door), but I haven't seen anyone test if they're working.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
Up to its old tricks, then.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link
As listed on the table, the prices were taken on December 7 and were accurate at the time.sheh - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Can anyone explain the large discrepancy (not only in this case) in sequential speed between Iometer and AS-SSD?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link
It's because of TurboWrite. Iometer is a time based tool and the sequential tests are run for one minute, which means that the TurboWrite buffer will be filled and thus the performance goes down as data is written to the TLC array. AS-SSD, on the other hand, only writes a gigabyte of data so it all gets written to the fast SLC cache.sheh - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Thanks. I'll have to reread older reviews, but I think there's a similar behavior also on other drives that do not have a fast temporary buffer?maecenas - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
I saw the 840 EVO 500gb going for $180 over the black Friday - cyber Monday period. It'll interesting to see if Samsung keep the 840 EVO on the market as a the low end, so the 850 EVO can fill the mid-range portion of the market while the 850 Pro serves the high end.Laststop311 - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Prices are kinda crappy. Why go with an 850 evo when u can spend 20-30 dollars more and get an 850 pro?