For £0-10 saving I can get this QLC drive (£90 new), just not worth it for the possible slow down compared to a Samsung evo or Crucial mx500 (£90 to £100 new, or less used)
I think Samsung is just cashing in a bit on their name and reputation they built up over the years when even the a lot of the bigger names in memory and storage had drives with questionable reliability and performance.
Having said that the 4TB and 8TB drives are fine since nobody else can really play in that space. Maybe Samsung shoudn't even bother with sub 4TB for the QVO series. It would certainly look better from a market perspective.
Samsung's reliability hasn't been so legendary. There was the regular 840 drive that was so bad in the 128 GB capacity that even without steady state it was like laptop hard drive slow. Then there was the 840 EVO that needed a kludge work-around to "solve" the problem of random data loss.
It's really random luck on failure of an SSD (only had 1 samsung evo witch I might of destroyed system was ignored for over 30 days powered up, when I got to it the system was up at desktop,but nothing would open so hard to force power cycle it had smart fail no boot, I think something was writing constantly to the ssd or power issue,, other 3 ssds was cheap SanDisk plus (I think) after 6-12 months they started missing data on reads
I've never personally lost data on a Samsung SSD, which can't be said for others. 840 EVOs were a stretch, pushing TLC planar NAND to its limits, but 850 EVOs cleared that up with V-NAND. Now we're back to QLC pushing the limits again.
Reason I stopped buying Samsung. Everything I've bought from them has broken in some way. Not broken enough that they don't work, but broken enough that they were annoying. Monitors, the power button would semi-function. I'd be slapping the button with my finger to get it to turn on/off. Be doing that like 10 times until it'd eventually go.
Only had one SSD from Samsung. Got it for free with my monitor. Some Newegg deal. It started getting bad sectors in a year. Samsung TV, the remote stopped working. Samsung bluray player, simply broke. I just avoid them now.
The prices are...underwhelming to say the least. While this may be cheaper than other Samsung drives, Samsung does not exist in a void. There are other TLC and even MLC drives that can be had cheaper. Anything above $100/tb is too much IMO, unless there is a compelling reason (such as performance) to justify the premium.
I have two of the 2TB MX500 SSDs. They're fantastic drives, and I paid ~$220 each for them... eighteen months ago. The market hasn't stagnated, it's ceased movement entirely. :(
I see this "SATA is dead!?!?!12" on a lot of sites, and it makes no sense at all.
Most motherboards, even full size ones, as of 2020, have an average of 2 M.2 slots. And on a lot of boards the second slot isn't PCIe(!)
The plain fact of life is that if you intend to have multiple game drives (and a lot of people do) or a smaller SSD for storage, you're going to HAVE TO use SATA. No other choice.
I'm sorry, but in this particular case, Anandtech Editors, SATA is not and can not "go away". Not for at least another 2 PC replacement cycles at that.
Fact is theres almost zero difference between sata and the fastest nvme ssds. Even on the most open world/huge map load the diffetence is between zero or 1sec on a 10-15sec loading screen.
If you don't mind eating up a PCIe slot, you can get PCIe M.2 adapter cards for fairly cheap from Chinese resellers. Single slot cards are around $10 while dual slot cards are around $13. I picked one up because the M.2 slot on my H97 board was restricted to X2 and my 970 EVO was saturating the link.
"The 1TB QVOs (both old and new) are prone to write latencies that are worse than the 5400RPM hard drive."
... This means the following sentence is a valid argument, in reality, in 2020: "I replaced my 1TB SSD with a 7200RPM hard drive to reduce write latencies, improve durability, and save more than 50% in costs."
Just make sure to keep in mind that write latency matters a lot less than read latency for general consumer usage, because your OS is happy to do a lot of write buffering in RAM if the software isn't specifically requesting otherwise (eg. databases).
"All of the QLC drives require substantially more energy to complete The Destroyer than mainstream TLC drives, and one of the DRAMless TLC drives comes out wa" You were saying?
"Some of the big differences in write speed shown for the 1TB QVOs here may be an artifact of this test's size and duration, but even so it is clear that the smallest QV" You were saying?
The WD Red SSD is basically the WD Blue SSD with SLC caching turned off, which makes it a less relevant point of comparison. And I don't have a 4TB sample of either of those products.
The WD Red ssd has an endurance rating (terabytes written) literally 4x higher--2500 versus 600--than the WD Blue drive. I don't have any data on which to disagree with your assertion that red and blue drives are mechanically identical but I think the difference in endurance is highly relevant given that one of two major pitfalls of QLC drives is endurance...
As tests have shown the endurance rating is for the most part hot air -- SSDs can easily exceed that threshold many times over. Sure you can pay more in a drive to get a warranty, but you can also just buy the same drive w/ cache for less....... Warranties after all are BIG business with profits in the 80+ percentile range.
QLC is the kind of product that companies like and consumers shouldn't.
It's one of the instances where the product serves the seller more than the buyer.
Another example is the fiction known as the contemporary console (really a PC with a rubbish walled garden so everyone has to pay extra for extra drawbacks).
It’s mostly due to the Samsung tax. I expect that, with some effort, it is possible to put out a decent performing 4TB QLC drive for $200. However, that means broad adoption of QLC. Thus far it seems TLC is the favorite.
Looks like these are good for use as game installation drives where capacity is good and random performance still better than hard drives. But price needs to be cheaper
WD black 1tb was recently available for 130$, Intel's 660p nvme ssd is faster and cheaper than those Samsung drives. Who would buy those ssds? If qlc drives get substantially cheaper they might become viable for game storage needs.
alas, which manufacturers are going to ignore QLC? unless we, the consumers, stop buying QLC SSDs, vendors will continue to spit them out. and, yes, in due time, the SSD will perform much like HDD. progress and capitalism seldom coincide.
QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive.
8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!
The real problem here is that all SSDs cost roughly the same amount per GB, so there's no reason not to buy a better drive.
Maybe someday when there's a bigger pricing delta between "DRAM-less SATA" and "midrange PCIe" the numerous speed categories will make more (any) sense...
The problem with QLC is that there aren't really substantial price savings from that of TLC or MLC that are passed onto the consumer. In the US (at least), the QVO drives are more expensive than some respectable TLC drives of the same capacity but without the performance limitations of QLC.
I'm not going to call it garbage, but I would say these drives (the 8TB) models make more sense at ~650-750 USD given the compromises over EVO drives and other TLC drives. It's basically insane to see the 4TB QVO at $500 when some TLC drives are $480 (like Sandisk).
"8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!" You can do that now with an HDD. At a much cheaper price, and with somewhat equivalent performance.
Wow, I’m disappointed at my ignorance as to how slow these QVO drives get once you exhaust the SLC cache, I had no idea they crashed to 2.5 inch HDD speeds.
Sure, the “limited time only!!!!” speed of the SLC cache will be enough for many, but those speeds are still incredibly disappointing.
I am sure Sammy can do much better pricing then this on QLC tech (just cause they fancy it up by calling QVO) does not mean an automatic $50+ price is in order.
Worse overall flash memory style, therefore better pricing should be very much part of the thought process, but I suppose they must have thought, 80mb/s is plenty fast, so therefore, $400+ for 4tb is more then acceptable.
IMO make 4tb $325 max (consider horrendous perf. specs) the 1tb 120 flat, 2tb $215
does not matter what others are doing, or if their perf. power use etc is better or worse is how you price your product, @#$ on that logic lol
"QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive."
That's true.
It can be used as a Christmas tree ornament, if dissected. The case can be used to provide a protective cover for a number of earwigs. The innards can be strapped to a vinyl suit for a retro sci-fi show.
Micron was making enterprise TLC drives that could do 75k steady state random write IOPS years ago too.
I'm not much of a Samsung fan due to their sloppy firmware support. The 840 series issues and their inconsistent releases of proper fixes industry wide was the nail in their coffin for me.
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akramargmail - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
So this is better for Samsung, but not for me. Never wanted the 860 QVO and see no reason to change my mind.yeeeeman - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
I agree. Samsung is losing a big chance with this line of SSDs by pricing them very high for what they can do and what competition they have.Urwni - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Yeah, 860 EVO is still competitive, considering its price, performance and reliability.Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
Ahhh. The late great 870 QVO. Perfect match in price and (mostly) performance with major mfr TLC drives.It has no reason to exist at the price point it's sold at. A shame.
B Huggy - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
"So this is better for Samsung, but not for me. Never wanted the 860 QVO and see no reason to change my mind."Love it - you don't even own it, but somehow it's bad for you. :D
shabby - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Approaching hdd speeds... congrats samsung 👏👏👏leexgx - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
For £0-10 saving I can get this QLC drive (£90 new), just not worth it for the possible slow down compared to a Samsung evo or Crucial mx500 (£90 to £100 new, or less used)Needs to be significantly cheaper
Jorgp2 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Those prices are terribleSomeguyperson - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
As Anand said, "There are no bad products, only bad prices".Jorgp2 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Whereas Linus says, "It's a bad product if it will get me clicks".Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
QLC is a bad product at a bad price.scineram - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
Narrator: "There are bad products"Operandi - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
I think Samsung is just cashing in a bit on their name and reputation they built up over the years when even the a lot of the bigger names in memory and storage had drives with questionable reliability and performance.Having said that the 4TB and 8TB drives are fine since nobody else can really play in that space. Maybe Samsung shoudn't even bother with sub 4TB for the QVO series. It would certainly look better from a market perspective.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Samsung's reliability hasn't been so legendary. There was the regular 840 drive that was so bad in the 128 GB capacity that even without steady state it was like laptop hard drive slow. Then there was the 840 EVO that needed a kludge work-around to "solve" the problem of random data loss.Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
All my SSDs that died were Samsung: 3 840 evos, and 2 850 evos. I ll ve never buy another samsung SSD in my life.leexgx - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
It's really random luck on failure of an SSD (only had 1 samsung evo witch I might of destroyedsystem was ignored for over 30 days powered up, when I got to it the system was up at desktop,but nothing would open so hard to force power cycle it had smart fail no boot, I think something was writing constantly to the ssd or power issue,, other 3 ssds was cheap SanDisk plus (I think) after 6-12 months they started missing data on reads
voicequal - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
I've never personally lost data on a Samsung SSD, which can't be said for others. 840 EVOs were a stretch, pushing TLC planar NAND to its limits, but 850 EVOs cleared that up with V-NAND. Now we're back to QLC pushing the limits again.khanikun - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Reason I stopped buying Samsung. Everything I've bought from them has broken in some way. Not broken enough that they don't work, but broken enough that they were annoying. Monitors, the power button would semi-function. I'd be slapping the button with my finger to get it to turn on/off. Be doing that like 10 times until it'd eventually go.Only had one SSD from Samsung. Got it for free with my monitor. Some Newegg deal. It started getting bad sectors in a year. Samsung TV, the remote stopped working. Samsung bluray player, simply broke. I just avoid them now.
eek2121 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
The prices are...underwhelming to say the least. While this may be cheaper than other Samsung drives, Samsung does not exist in a void. There are other TLC and even MLC drives that can be had cheaper. Anything above $100/tb is too much IMO, unless there is a compelling reason (such as performance) to justify the premium.eek2121 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
The Crucial MX500, BX500, Sandisk SSD Plus, and many other SSDs are available on Amazon right now for $199.99 for a 2TB offering.ksec - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
You get additional 5% off on Newegg as well. Soon I will have this in my NAS.Slash3 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
I have two of the 2TB MX500 SSDs. They're fantastic drives, and I paid ~$220 each for them... eighteen months ago. The market hasn't stagnated, it's ceased movement entirely. :(eek2121 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
This was due to a conscious movement of NAND manufacturers to “preserve profitability”. We need some fresh blood in the industry.scineram - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
That makes sense. We wouldn't want any of them to go bankrupt.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
"That's a shrinking market segment, but high-capacity drives are probably going to be one of the last areas where SATA still makes sense"I put together an mAtx system today and it only had 1x m.2 slot. Sata SSD for storage (games) it is then.
Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
I see this "SATA is dead!?!?!12" on a lot of sites, and it makes no sense at all.Most motherboards, even full size ones, as of 2020, have an average of 2 M.2 slots. And on a lot of boards the second slot isn't PCIe(!)
The plain fact of life is that if you intend to have multiple game drives (and a lot of people do) or a smaller SSD for storage, you're going to HAVE TO use SATA. No other choice.
I'm sorry, but in this particular case, Anandtech Editors, SATA is not and can not "go away". Not for at least another 2 PC replacement cycles at that.
Lolimaster - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Fact is theres almost zero difference between sata and the fastest nvme ssds. Even on the most open world/huge map load the diffetence is between zero or 1sec on a 10-15sec loading screen.Lucky Stripes 99 - Saturday, July 4, 2020 - link
If you don't mind eating up a PCIe slot, you can get PCIe M.2 adapter cards for fairly cheap from Chinese resellers. Single slot cards are around $10 while dual slot cards are around $13. I picked one up because the M.2 slot on my H97 board was restricted to X2 and my 970 EVO was saturating the link.Sivar - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
"The 1TB QVOs (both old and new) are prone to write latencies that are worse than the 5400RPM hard drive."... This means the following sentence is a valid argument, in reality, in 2020: "I replaced my 1TB SSD with a 7200RPM hard drive to reduce write latencies, improve durability, and save more than 50% in costs."
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Just make sure to keep in mind that write latency matters a lot less than read latency for general consumer usage, because your OS is happy to do a lot of write buffering in RAM if the software isn't specifically requesting otherwise (eg. databases).Jorgp2 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
That HDD is also CMR.A normal HDD would perform much better.
Daeros - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
CMR is Conventional Magnetic Recording - you're thinking of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), which this drive does not use.Sivar - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Valid argument in 2020: "I replaced my 1TB SSD with a 7200RPM hard drive to reduce write latency, improve durability, and reduce costs by half."ballsystemlord - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Spelling and grammar errors:"All of the QLC drives require substantially more energy to complete The Destroyer than mainstream TLC drives, and one of the DRAMless TLC drives comes out wa"
You were saying?
"Some of the big differences in write speed shown for the 1TB QVOs here may be an artifact of this test's size and duration, but even so it is clear that the smallest QV"
You were saying?
zachj - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Why not compare to the 4TB Western Digital Red WDS400T1R0A SATA SSD? That would seem to be a somewhat reasonable comparison...Billy Tallis - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
The WD Red SSD is basically the WD Blue SSD with SLC caching turned off, which makes it a less relevant point of comparison. And I don't have a 4TB sample of either of those products.zachj - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
The WD Red ssd has an endurance rating (terabytes written) literally 4x higher--2500 versus 600--than the WD Blue drive. I don't have any data on which to disagree with your assertion that red and blue drives are mechanically identical but I think the difference in endurance is highly relevant given that one of two major pitfalls of QLC drives is endurance...NoSoMo - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
As tests have shown the endurance rating is for the most part hot air -- SSDs can easily exceed that threshold many times over. Sure you can pay more in a drive to get a warranty, but you can also just buy the same drive w/ cache for less....... Warranties after all are BIG business with profits in the 80+ percentile range.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
QLC is the kind of product that companies like and consumers shouldn't.It's one of the instances where the product serves the seller more than the buyer.
Another example is the fiction known as the contemporary console (really a PC with a rubbish walled garden so everyone has to pay extra for extra drawbacks).
eek2121 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
It’s mostly due to the Samsung tax. I expect that, with some effort, it is possible to put out a decent performing 4TB QLC drive for $200. However, that means broad adoption of QLC. Thus far it seems TLC is the favorite.Guspaz - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
I bought a 2TB TLC Phison drive for a lower price than Samsung wants for their 2TB QLC drive. They're a ripoff.Guspaz - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Clarification: my 2TB TLC NVMe drive costs less than Samsung's 2TB QLC SATA drive.ddhelmet - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
If you wanted an SSD just to put games, isn't 870 QVO identical in perfomance (loading speed) to 860 EVO?flowingbass - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
Looks like these are good for use as game installation drives where capacity is good and random performance still better than hard drives. But price needs to be cheaperisthisavailable - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
I disagree. What about when you decide to move games for example 90 GB GTA 5 folder and your write speeds drop to 80 MB/s?NoSoMo - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
You're just better off buying a non-QLC SSD period --- These drive make no sense for anyone that knows better.StrangerGuy - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
Yeah, I mean just how much brain damaged one can be to think buying any Samsung QVO over cheaper and faster TLC drives would be a good idea?chrysrobyn - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
It's great to see a spinning hard drive in the benchmark comparisons. Puts a lot of them into perspective.Alim345 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
WD black 1tb was recently available for 130$, Intel's 660p nvme ssd is faster and cheaper than those Samsung drives. Who would buy those ssds? If qlc drives get substantially cheaper they might become viable for game storage needs.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
QLC is garbage.Lipstick on a pig won't make me kiss one.
FunBunny2 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
"QLC is garbage."alas, which manufacturers are going to ignore QLC? unless we, the consumers, stop buying QLC SSDs, vendors will continue to spit them out. and, yes, in due time, the SSD will perform much like HDD. progress and capitalism seldom coincide.
Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive.8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!
The real problem here is that all SSDs cost roughly the same amount per GB, so there's no reason not to buy a better drive.
Maybe someday when there's a bigger pricing delta between "DRAM-less SATA" and "midrange PCIe" the numerous speed categories will make more (any) sense...
descendency - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
The problem with QLC is that there aren't really substantial price savings from that of TLC or MLC that are passed onto the consumer. In the US (at least), the QVO drives are more expensive than some respectable TLC drives of the same capacity but without the performance limitations of QLC.I'm not going to call it garbage, but I would say these drives (the 8TB) models make more sense at ~650-750 USD given the compromises over EVO drives and other TLC drives. It's basically insane to see the 4TB QVO at $500 when some TLC drives are $480 (like Sandisk).
Gigaplex - Saturday, July 11, 2020 - link
"8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!"You can do that now with an HDD. At a much cheaper price, and with somewhat equivalent performance.
Mitch89 - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
Wow, I’m disappointed at my ignorance as to how slow these QVO drives get once you exhaust the SLC cache, I had no idea they crashed to 2.5 inch HDD speeds.Sure, the “limited time only!!!!” speed of the SLC cache will be enough for many, but those speeds are still incredibly disappointing.
Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
They're still better than spinning rust, especially for burst performance. The real problem here is that they cost the same as other SSD technology.Dragonstongue - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
I am sure Sammy can do much better pricing then this on QLC tech (just cause they fancy it up by calling QVO) does not mean an automatic $50+ price is in order.Worse overall flash memory style, therefore better pricing should be very much part of the thought process, but I suppose they must have thought, 80mb/s is plenty fast, so therefore, $400+ for 4tb is more then acceptable.
IMO make
4tb $325 max (consider horrendous perf. specs) the 1tb 120 flat, 2tb $215
does not matter what others are doing, or if their perf. power use etc is better or worse is how you price your product, @#$ on that logic lol
Lolimaster - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Thing is you can already get 2TB ssds for that price or less. MX500 2TB hovers around $189-219.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
"QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive."That's true.
It can be used as a Christmas tree ornament, if dissected.
The case can be used to provide a protective cover for a number of earwigs.
The innards can be strapped to a vinyl suit for a retro sci-fi show.
The mind boggles at the potential usefulness.
Slash3 - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
Great for sliding underneath a wobbly table leg, too.sonicmerlin - Saturday, July 4, 2020 - link
Was kind of hoping for 4 TB for $100. I guess we’re still years offyetanotherhuman - Friday, July 24, 2020 - link
To me, even TLC is sketchy, and QLC is sub-shit-tier trash, fit only for propping up a wonky table or something.cbjwthwm - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
It depends who makes it: https://www.micron.com/products/ssd/product-lines/...Micron was making enterprise TLC drives that could do 75k steady state random write IOPS years ago too.
I'm not much of a Samsung fan due to their sloppy firmware support. The 840 series issues and their inconsistent releases of proper fixes industry wide was the nail in their coffin for me.