Seriously, something is wrong with the storage industry. I understand that the technology scales only so fast, but what-s with these 250GB and 500GB drives in 2020? Seriously. 1TB is the bare minimum, unless you use your PC only to browse the web. Email? Photos/videos? Games? 4TB and up, easily. For a laptop I can see 2TB as a good/enough option.
You might think that, but imagine how shocked I was to see a 950 Pro in an office-class NUC that had just been replaced. Quite a bit overkill. Not everyone who deals with hardware actually know the hardware; sometimes they just buy to name/buzzword ("Pro!"). :)
While things are changing with Cloud storage - local storage for enterprise has one priority and that is reliability. You do see better SSDs offered, at least as an ($$) upgrade, fairly often on biz devices.
If you buy for a company and don't go the full OEM route (but the laptop workstation with whatever comes inside) you'll definitely go for the part with the best warranty. For the 4-5 years the asset is still in your accounting you want it to be covered by warranty even with a slightly higher upfront cost.
The pro might be over the top. But I use the EVO's all the time, also for NUC builds. Never had a DOA or even one going the way of the dodo after a couple of years. Who cares about that couple of bucks extra spent in the long run. Other then durability, Office and Windows response time is all that matters. 250Gb is enough in most cases. Especially when a NAS is handeling the office files.
Yeah. Office machines can be cheap, but that is not necessarily the best solution. Let's say an employee is generating $600k of revenue for a company through their computer, why try to save $50 to get a slower SSD? Or a slower cpu or less ram? In my office tasks my top of the line desktop is not always instant. Why not spend a bit more for better office machines that might be faster?
Funny that you mention it. I have a Toshiba Portege Ultrabook with 256GB. Windows takes up to 30GB. 30GB for software, so you start off with ~190GB. My understanding is that with SSD you should not go beyond ~80% capacity to allow wear balancing, so that takes out another 50GB. So I'd be left with 140GB of disk space really available for data. I have easily more than that in emails only. (which is why I need to use an external SD card). So you buy a, what $1500? $2000 laptop, and need to rely on a $100 SD card.
Sure, and then decide how to maximize gains, by selling laptops that will need to be upgraded or by allowing advertising laptops with attractive prices, but insufficient specs, and then charging hefty premium for what people actually need. I have 3 laptops at home, plus 2 obsoleted. In all of them I swapped storage, either because a decent size was not available, or because it was prohibitively expensive compared to market price.
System drives don't need to be 1TB. I've been running this workstation on a 128GB Samsung 830 system drive for over 5 years. Professional VFX workstation, with Houdini/AfterEffects/Photoshop installed on system drive (No folder relocations or any such trickery yet). A bit snug, but still has 33GB free and still works fine.
You are just lucky those 3 programs you use fit in 128gb with windows. Try putting a couple autodesk apps in there or visual studio + some sdks. Also you probably can't even hibernate your computer on your ssd because you probably have 32 GB of RAM or more since you are running houdini
When SSDs were expensive, I was running Windows 7, all of Office (plus Visio), Visual Studio, SQL Server, and more all comfortably on a 250 with plenty of free space. Like a lot of things, the space needed is way overestimated by most people. Yes, I put a 1TB NVME drive in my new machine, but with all that (Windows 10 now) plus some games (high res WoT was nearly a 10GB DL), and another app that is a 75 year collection of a magazine - 12 issues per year x 75 years - I am sitting at 184GB used. STILL would comfortably fit on a 250. My data files are either on OneDrive or on my server - such as all my photos, where they are spanned on redundant disks (not RAID) plus backed up to cloud backup, so other than games, the only thing on C: are the apps themselves. My work laptop has a 250 C:, and I put my old Samsung 500GB in as a second drive - plenty of free space on C, and I put my VMs on the D drive. No, 1TB is NOT the "minumum acceptable" size these days. a realtive minority needs or actually uses all of that. Editing long movies? OK. Keep a cdozen or more games installed PLUS everyday stuff? OK. But I can;t play a dozen different games at the same time so I have like 3 installed right now that are any significant size, any others are a few retro games using DOSBOX which are naturally quite small.
I was talking about laptops. On Workstations, you can have a smaller boot drive (and I agree, 128GB could be enough) and then a few large disks for data storage.
You don't need an SSD for photos and videos. You do need an SSD for the OS and applications if you want fast startup, and you need it for local or workgroup database (MS Access) applications. Think SMB not enterprise.
For gamers, sure. But most PCs are not gaming PCs. Most people actually use their computers to get work done. Consoles, tablets, and phones are used for content consumption and games. PC gamers are a narrow, elite group. It's a lucrative target because PC gamers are PC gamers because they are looking for a competitive advantage and are willing to shell out the shekels Intel and Nvidia for pinnacle hardware which elevates their platform to 4-10x what an entry-level work PC would cost. It's great that those few gamers need 8TB SSDs so they can load their ginormous gaming worlds in a reasonable time frame... but the entire rest of the planet doesn't need that. A 128GB SSD suffices for most users. 256GB is the new entry-level for most PC manufacturers. Some are even using Optane plus an HDD.
Hard disk drives are obsolete for average consumers and it's time you boomers realize that. No one wants 256gb + hdd anymore, they want 500 to 1tb qlc ssd which is not really much more expensive. Hdds are too unreliable, they have moving parts and die in only a few years in portable devices especially, and they are too slow to playback photos and videos at the resolutions many modern phones are taking
Congrats, you used a buzzword that everyone and their brother is now using in a feeble attempt to be humorous. HDDs are unreliable. That’s a good one. For “average” consumers, that’s exactly what they’re for. For power users, SSDs are the way to go. Too slow for playback? Compared to a phone? I think the “boomers” will start calling you fetuses as you have a LOT to learn.
No, average users include both everyday users as well as "power users", all of them should be using ssds. HDDs should only be used in data centers where there is a lot of redundancy and they need a lot of cheap storage. HDDs ARE extremely unreliable compared to even the cheapest ssds, everyone and their dog knows that, but I'm sure you are also the kind of person that still uses cds. I have had many (3+) portable wd hard drives fail on me after only 5 years, but after 8 years, my old cheap 120gb ssd is still working, and why woudnt it? There is no moving parts and even when the ssd runs out of writes (which will probably take another decade) it can still be read from, meanwhile some of the hdds I've had had heads that scratched the platter when they died and completely ruined the data. Maybe you can get your hdd to last long if you dont move it, but that is a small consumer sector, everything is mobile now and hdds are being phased out. I am speaking from experience when I say HDDs are going to be replaced by cheap qlc ssds in a year or two, and I dont see how you could think otherwise given they are close to the same price what consumer would want a hdd. You are definitely in the minority, and maybe you are only defending hdds as a defense mechanism because you are too heavily invested in it
So HDD's are extremely unreliable compared to SSD's? I've deployed hundreds of HDD's and dozen's of SSDs over the last 3 years. I've had 1 HDD die, and 7 SSD's die, 3 of them within 2 weeks of deployment.
Stop it with the stupid 'boomer' rubbish (The poster could be 12 for all you know). Most 'average' people have no idea what they're doing when it comes to computers.
What you say 'might' be true, but that doesn't stop most of the oems still shipping laptops with small SSD+1tb HDD. I've also been handed laptops that are 6/7 years+ and the HDD still works.
it is just a massive pain to do SSD+HDD, stop giving the HDD industry life support, leave the fragile moving parts where they belong, in the past or in big racks
Keeping the base SSD small ensures an artificially high price for the bigger SSDs. The base SSD used to be 128 GB, now it is 250/256 GB. The base sets the price for mid and the top. It makes little commercial sense, right now, to move to a 500/512 GB base SSD; particularly since many people are still using SSDs only as "system drives", using HDDs for the rest.
What's more disappointing to me is that even Samsung ditched MLC for their cutting edge consumer SSD, slashing its endurance in half as a result. SSDs are getting (slowly) larger but their flash memory is steadily deteriorating, and that is partly masked -in terms of speed- by faster and more advanced controllers and fatter portions of pseudo-SLC cache.
While I agree on the 250GB, I feel 500GB is good enough as a boot drive for a regular user who have some advanced apps and do some casual games (not-AAA titles).
I personally have 500GB for my boot drive, and it's enough, having almost all Adobe Apps + few games plus other apps, my main documents on the other hand are on a separate drive though. But if you're talking about the sole drive (like a laptop) then for sure it's not enough.
I will be getting 250GB just for Windows10 and as I did for the last 15 years. It takes around 100GB for my stuff. I always keep my Windows and software on C:\ that is dedicated to the fastest Drive that exist the the time. Games, Music, Pictures, Videos i have separate drives for that. This way your system is the fastest.
250 GB may indeed do for an office system, and, 500 GB is fine for general purpose minimum (mine is fine with 300 GB of 500 used, but. I only have 1 game on it with BF1, and can see where a gamer would run short of space quite quickly with today's blockbusters), with 1 TB certainly spec'd to be in my own rig when I build a new one..
@yankeeDDL, I have a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD in my Dell Inspiron 15 5570 laptop, and the NVMe M.2 slot couldn't hold more than a 500GB NVMe SSD (according to the user manual), so I just filled it instead with an Intel Optane 32GB stick for kicks, and disabled it in BIOS. I also upgraded the laptop with the official power button fingerprint reader found on a Dell parts online store, and installed a 4K Blu-ray player/burner, and 32GB (2 x 16GB) Kingston HyperX DDR4. So now, I don't plan on doing any more future surgeries to that particular laptop, as it's "fully-loaded" for its time.
1TB is fine if you have a mutli drive system. if you are trying to store everything on the drive including data that won't benefit from the speed I would agree.
I'm using a 1TB pcie 4.0 drive now but only for my OS and apps, then have regular Sata SSD's for everything else.
Ouch. Those endurance numbers look pretty bad for the new Pro part. What possible reason is there to buy it over the inevitable 980 Evo?
Well, unless they move the Evo to QLC and it's endurance gets halved too. I was hoping Samsung wasn't part of the race to the bottom, it's why they're worth buying.
Agreed. With the move from MLC to TLC nerfing the sustained write performance of the new drive, it really starts to look like a 970 EVO plus successor and not a 980 PRO successor.
According to the specs, the 980 Pro walks all over the previous pro drive. As far as the drive endurance, I am a heavy user and none of my SSDs have even a fraction of that rating thanks to wear leveling.
Let's compare then, then. The sequential read performance has doubled. That's great. It's not a common operation, but it's a nice simple benchmark. Both drives have the same write endurance. The PRO uses 50% more power. Sequential TLC write is 2000 vs 1700 which isn't much of a lead. Random read IOPS is 22K vs 19K which isn't much of a lead, either. The only things that the PRO do signifigantly better are sequential reads, high queue depth read/write, use power, and cost money.
So, I really see it as an upgrade to the EVO plus, not the older PRO.
The endurance is pales in comparison to what the competition is offering.
All the currently PCIe 4.0 drives based on the PS5016-E16 controller at 1TB are all rated for 1,800 TBW compared to 600 TBW for this drive.
The PS5018-E18 controller that was just announced is already faster than this drive based on specs offers Nvme 1.4 over the 1.3 on this drive. And will most likely have the same TBW as the previous controller(they haven't posted this info yet)
So why would I buy this samsung drive since it looks they have reduced the wear leveling base on that TBW number.
That would be what makes or breaks the value of this drive. If it's priced like an MLC PRO drives, then it's not a good choice. If it's priced more like an upgraded EVO plus, then it may be okay for some uses.
Pathetic bullshit move from Samsung, PRO is now not that anymore and it's TLC garbage like all the other companies and even worst thing is Corsair MP600 has much much higher TBW for their NVMe Gen 4 SSD with Phison.
I think now PRO is irrelevant, majority of them who will buy PRO with PRO Tax was MLC. Always now they are trying to fool people thinking this bs drive is something MLC with all the drama. 860 Pro is the last now with MLC then, bye Samsung. You can join the rest of the mediocrity and claim nothing.
One thing about the Samsung Pro/Evo drives is that they have a very strong brand reputation. Many builds I see on social media and forums seem to default to a 970 Evo without even price checking other drives.
What I'm getting at is that Samsung could sneak in some QLC into the EVO, while retaining the high markup, and barely put a dent in sales.
Well, yes, a strong brand reputation has been earned - it's all I buy..well, have bought and with good reason considering they've pretty much mopped the floor of 99% of reviews for years now.
I'm perfectly happy with TLC, been buying a lot of their EVO drives with no regret. Buuuttt.... a move to QLC.. ick. Worst idea ever, wish they'd just drop it, but I guess there's a market for it.
I thought their MLC (Pro) / TLC (EVO) was a great differentiator and seemed to really match their respective markets but this..just..doesn't..make...sense... (to this consumer, at least).
Umm... no, the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 is not as fast as this 980 Pro. Specs for the Rocket are up to 5000MBps sequential read, and up to 4400MBps sequential write. The 980 Pro is being rated at 7000Mbps seq read, and 5000Mbps seq write (in SLC). Just on read alone, that's a pretty significant difference.
According to the current Rocket 4 site, the seq read performance is 7000, seq write is 6850. But it doesn't have any random I/O or endurance numbers. Still much to learn.
I have long been a major proponent of the Samsung Pro drives, but with this change to TLC and the subsequent halving of endurance, I will be looking for another brand going forward. There has got to be someone out there that understands the importance of endurance. I just replaced 2 EVO drives under warrantee because they failed after heavy use.
To those arguing about HDD endurance, I have not had an HDD fail under warrantee in over 15 years. I have replaced a couple of old 2TB HDDs after 8 to 10 years of heavy NAS use. I stopped buying 2TB and went to 5 and 6 TB drives over 5 years ago. I am currently considering 10-15TB drives for my next build. SSDs have a long way to go before they can satisfy my data needs.
According to some marketing blurb, and a cooler so big that I couldn't place it anywhere on my board?
The real metric is random read-write on low-ish QD, because thats the real-world usage its going to see day in and day out. Peak sequentials just look good on marketing slides.
This drive is almost certainly not the one Sony is going to be using in the PS5. The capacities are all wrong and the read performance is higher.
This drive is probably going to be usable in the PS5 as an aftermarket replacement, but going from ~768GB to 1024GB isn't much of an upgrade. A 2TB 980 PRO would be a more interesting upgrade option for the PS5.
This PS5 SSD hype is funny. Everyone who knows a bit about SSDs knows that they will only achieve such claimed performance through a tricky cache system (one that also needs a lot of work by game developers to work properly), which indeed might be revolutionary, but easily done for the PC as well, with average performance SSDs.
A good highlight of why PCIe 4 has minimal impact on real world SSD performance for client applications: big boosts to sequential read/write speeds, but QD1 random read/writes - what the drive will be spending 99.9% of its time doing, and the biggest impact on perceived performance and particularly responsiveness - see only incremental improvement, mostly from the improved controller rather than the interface.
Write endurance is a problem that has always loomed over the SSD market, but has never become a big problem in practice. For years, we've been sacrificing unneeded endurance to get lower costs and higher capacities, and so far it's been the right choice for almost all kinds of customers and use cases. TLC has been mainstream for a long time now, and it's holding up fine. QLC is genuinely not good enough for some real-world use cases, but it is good enough for most mainstream consumer use cases and many server use cases. MLC is overkill for basically any application that wouldn't be better off with SLC or Optane.
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TEAMSWITCHER - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
1 TB ... is simply too small.cruiseliu - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I'm okay with 1TB (2-bit) MLC, but...yankeeDDL - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Seriously, something is wrong with the storage industry. I understand that the technology scales only so fast, but what-s with these 250GB and 500GB drives in 2020? Seriously.1TB is the bare minimum, unless you use your PC only to browse the web. Email? Photos/videos? Games? 4TB and up, easily. For a laptop I can see 2TB as a good/enough option.
extide - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
256GB is more than enough for the office machines that I build regularly.mczak - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
That might be true, but why would you consider using a presumably expensive enthusiast class Samsung 980 Pro for such a task?romrunning - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
You might think that, but imagine how shocked I was to see a 950 Pro in an office-class NUC that had just been replaced. Quite a bit overkill. Not everyone who deals with hardware actually know the hardware; sometimes they just buy to name/buzzword ("Pro!"). :)Icehawk - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
While things are changing with Cloud storage - local storage for enterprise has one priority and that is reliability. You do see better SSDs offered, at least as an ($$) upgrade, fairly often on biz devices.close - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
If you buy for a company and don't go the full OEM route (but the laptop workstation with whatever comes inside) you'll definitely go for the part with the best warranty. For the 4-5 years the asset is still in your accounting you want it to be covered by warranty even with a slightly higher upfront cost.Foeketijn - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
The pro might be over the top. But I use the EVO's all the time, also for NUC builds. Never had a DOA or even one going the way of the dodo after a couple of years.Who cares about that couple of bucks extra spent in the long run. Other then durability, Office and Windows response time is all that matters.
250Gb is enough in most cases. Especially when a NAS is handeling the office files.
8steve8 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Yeah. Office machines can be cheap, but that is not necessarily the best solution. Let's say an employee is generating $600k of revenue for a company through their computer, why try to save $50 to get a slower SSD? Or a slower cpu or less ram? In my office tasks my top of the line desktop is not always instant. Why not spend a bit more for better office machines that might be faster?Supercell99 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
clearly you havent seen how large 4k porn isyankeeDDL - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
Funny that you mention it. I have a Toshiba Portege Ultrabook with 256GB.Windows takes up to 30GB. 30GB for software, so you start off with ~190GB.
My understanding is that with SSD you should not go beyond ~80% capacity to allow wear balancing, so that takes out another 50GB.
So I'd be left with 140GB of disk space really available for data.
I have easily more than that in emails only. (which is why I need to use an external SD card). So you buy a, what $1500? $2000 laptop, and need to rely on a $100 SD card.
gunnys - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
"1TB is the bare minimum, unless you use your PC only to browse the web."Uh... no.
I'm pretty sure Samsung is capable of doing basic market research.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
Sure, and then decide how to maximize gains, by selling laptops that will need to be upgraded or by allowing advertising laptops with attractive prices, but insufficient specs, and then charging hefty premium for what people actually need.I have 3 laptops at home, plus 2 obsoleted. In all of them I swapped storage, either because a decent size was not available, or because it was prohibitively expensive compared to market price.
seerak - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
System drives don't need to be 1TB. I've been running this workstation on a 128GB Samsung 830 system drive for over 5 years. Professional VFX workstation, with Houdini/AfterEffects/Photoshop installed on system drive (No folder relocations or any such trickery yet). A bit snug, but still has 33GB free and still works fine.sanjay20 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
You are just lucky those 3 programs you use fit in 128gb with windows. Try putting a couple autodesk apps in there or visual studio + some sdks. Also you probably can't even hibernate your computer on your ssd because you probably have 32 GB of RAM or more since you are running houdinirrinker - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
When SSDs were expensive, I was running Windows 7, all of Office (plus Visio), Visual Studio, SQL Server, and more all comfortably on a 250 with plenty of free space. Like a lot of things, the space needed is way overestimated by most people.Yes, I put a 1TB NVME drive in my new machine, but with all that (Windows 10 now) plus some games (high res WoT was nearly a 10GB DL), and another app that is a 75 year collection of a magazine - 12 issues per year x 75 years - I am sitting at 184GB used. STILL would comfortably fit on a 250. My data files are either on OneDrive or on my server - such as all my photos, where they are spanned on redundant disks (not RAID) plus backed up to cloud backup, so other than games, the only thing on C: are the apps themselves. My work laptop has a 250 C:, and I put my old Samsung 500GB in as a second drive - plenty of free space on C, and I put my VMs on the D drive.
No, 1TB is NOT the "minumum acceptable" size these days. a realtive minority needs or actually uses all of that. Editing long movies? OK. Keep a cdozen or more games installed PLUS everyday stuff? OK. But I can;t play a dozen different games at the same time so I have like 3 installed right now that are any significant size, any others are a few retro games using DOSBOX which are naturally quite small.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
I was talking about laptops. On Workstations, you can have a smaller boot drive (and I agree, 128GB could be enough) and then a few large disks for data storage.linuxgeex - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
You don't need an SSD for photos and videos. You do need an SSD for the OS and applications if you want fast startup, and you need it for local or workgroup database (MS Access) applications. Think SMB not enterprise.For gamers, sure. But most PCs are not gaming PCs. Most people actually use their computers to get work done. Consoles, tablets, and phones are used for content consumption and games. PC gamers are a narrow, elite group. It's a lucrative target because PC gamers are PC gamers because they are looking for a competitive advantage and are willing to shell out the shekels Intel and Nvidia for pinnacle hardware which elevates their platform to 4-10x what an entry-level work PC would cost. It's great that those few gamers need 8TB SSDs so they can load their ginormous gaming worlds in a reasonable time frame... but the entire rest of the planet doesn't need that. A 128GB SSD suffices for most users. 256GB is the new entry-level for most PC manufacturers. Some are even using Optane plus an HDD.
sanjay20 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Hard disk drives are obsolete for average consumers and it's time you boomers realize that. No one wants 256gb + hdd anymore, they want 500 to 1tb qlc ssd which is not really much more expensive. Hdds are too unreliable, they have moving parts and die in only a few years in portable devices especially, and they are too slow to playback photos and videos at the resolutions many modern phones are takingRailgun - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Congrats, you used a buzzword that everyone and their brother is now using in a feeble attempt to be humorous. HDDs are unreliable. That’s a good one. For “average” consumers, that’s exactly what they’re for. For power users, SSDs are the way to go. Too slow for playback? Compared to a phone? I think the “boomers” will start calling you fetuses as you have a LOT to learn.sanjay20 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
No, average users include both everyday users as well as "power users", all of them should be using ssds. HDDs should only be used in data centers where there is a lot of redundancy and they need a lot of cheap storage. HDDs ARE extremely unreliable compared to even the cheapest ssds, everyone and their dog knows that, but I'm sure you are also the kind of person that still uses cds. I have had many (3+) portable wd hard drives fail on me after only 5 years, but after 8 years, my old cheap 120gb ssd is still working, and why woudnt it? There is no moving parts and even when the ssd runs out of writes (which will probably take another decade) it can still be read from, meanwhile some of the hdds I've had had heads that scratched the platter when they died and completely ruined the data. Maybe you can get your hdd to last long if you dont move it, but that is a small consumer sector, everything is mobile now and hdds are being phased out. I am speaking from experience when I say HDDs are going to be replaced by cheap qlc ssds in a year or two, and I dont see how you could think otherwise given they are close to the same price what consumer would want a hdd. You are definitely in the minority, and maybe you are only defending hdds as a defense mechanism because you are too heavily invested in itJames5mith - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
So HDD's are extremely unreliable compared to SSD's? I've deployed hundreds of HDD's and dozen's of SSDs over the last 3 years. I've had 1 HDD die, and 7 SSD's die, 3 of them within 2 weeks of deployment.Which one is more unreliable again?
HDD's: Seagate 4TB ES.3's
SSD's: Samsung 950 Pro, Samsung 970 Evo+, "HP" EX950
One 950 pro died, 2 Evo+ died, and 4 EX950's died.
damianrobertjones - Sunday, September 6, 2020 - link
Stop it with the stupid 'boomer' rubbish (The poster could be 12 for all you know). Most 'average' people have no idea what they're doing when it comes to computers.What you say 'might' be true, but that doesn't stop most of the oems still shipping laptops with small SSD+1tb HDD. I've also been handed laptops that are 6/7 years+ and the HDD still works.
mikeatx - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
it is just a massive pain to do SSD+HDD, stop giving the HDD industry life support, leave the fragile moving parts where they belong, in the past or in big racksmikeatx - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
hear hearyankeeDDL - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
I'm talking about laptops.Byte - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I guess we cloud everything. But seriously phones are starting to come to 256GB standard soon.Santoval - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Keeping the base SSD small ensures an artificially high price for the bigger SSDs. The base SSD used to be 128 GB, now it is 250/256 GB. The base sets the price for mid and the top. It makes little commercial sense, right now, to move to a 500/512 GB base SSD; particularly since many people are still using SSDs only as "system drives", using HDDs for the rest.What's more disappointing to me is that even Samsung ditched MLC for their cutting edge consumer SSD, slashing its endurance in half as a result. SSDs are getting (slowly) larger but their flash memory is steadily deteriorating, and that is partly masked -in terms of speed- by faster and more advanced controllers and fatter portions of pseudo-SLC cache.
Xajel - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
While I agree on the 250GB, I feel 500GB is good enough as a boot drive for a regular user who have some advanced apps and do some casual games (not-AAA titles).I personally have 500GB for my boot drive, and it's enough, having almost all Adobe Apps + few games plus other apps, my main documents on the other hand are on a separate drive though. But if you're talking about the sole drive (like a laptop) then for sure it's not enough.
Kvaern1 - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
I'd wager the market for Pro priced 2/4TB drives is very very limited. It's not like Samsung doesn't want your money.SonicRyu - Friday, September 4, 2020 - link
answer: game streamingGODLIKE99KINGZ - Monday, September 7, 2020 - link
I will be getting 250GB just for Windows10 and as I did for the last 15 years. It takes around 100GB for my stuff. I always keep my Windows and software on C:\ that is dedicated to the fastest Drive that exist the the time. Games, Music, Pictures, Videos i have separate drives for that. This way your system is the fastest.MDD1963 - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
250 GB may indeed do for an office system, and, 500 GB is fine for general purpose minimum (mine is fine with 300 GB of 500 used, but. I only have 1 game on it with BF1, and can see where a gamer would run short of space quite quickly with today's blockbusters), with 1 TB certainly spec'd to be in my own rig when I build a new one..JamesAndersonJr - Thursday, October 15, 2020 - link
@yankeeDDL, I literally couldn't agree more! You ripped the words right out of my mouth!JamesAndersonJr - Thursday, October 15, 2020 - link
@yankeeDDL, I have a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD in my Dell Inspiron 15 5570 laptop, and the NVMe M.2 slot couldn't hold more than a 500GB NVMe SSD (according to the user manual), so I just filled it instead with an Intel Optane 32GB stick for kicks, and disabled it in BIOS. I also upgraded the laptop with the official power button fingerprint reader found on a Dell parts online store, and installed a 4K Blu-ray player/burner, and 32GB (2 x 16GB) Kingston HyperX DDR4. So now, I don't plan on doing any more future surgeries to that particular laptop, as it's "fully-loaded" for its time.Makaveli - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
1TB is fine if you have a mutli drive system. if you are trying to store everything on the drive including data that won't benefit from the speed I would agree.I'm using a 1TB pcie 4.0 drive now but only for my OS and apps, then have regular Sata SSD's for everything else.
twtech - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Yep - for that reason, I primarily use the 970 Evo Plus drives because they come in a 2TB variant.Luminar - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
I have a free 2280 slot in my Thinkpad. Would this be a good drive to put in there?MDD1963 - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
The 970 EVO Plus is the current 'go to'...FXi - Friday, September 4, 2020 - link
Agreed. 2TB is the target today and when 4's become more common I'll more of those.trivik12 - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
So Samsung wont release any more MLC drives. That is disappointing. At this rate in next 5 years "Pro" will move to QLC !!!!Mr Perfect - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Ouch. Those endurance numbers look pretty bad for the new Pro part. What possible reason is there to buy it over the inevitable 980 Evo?Well, unless they move the Evo to QLC and it's endurance gets halved too. I was hoping Samsung wasn't part of the race to the bottom, it's why they're worth buying.
dwillmore - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Agreed. With the move from MLC to TLC nerfing the sustained write performance of the new drive, it really starts to look like a 970 EVO plus successor and not a 980 PRO successor.eek2121 - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
According to the specs, the 980 Pro walks all over the previous pro drive. As far as the drive endurance, I am a heavy user and none of my SSDs have even a fraction of that rating thanks to wear leveling.dwillmore - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Let's compare then, then. The sequential read performance has doubled. That's great. It's not a common operation, but it's a nice simple benchmark. Both drives have the same write endurance. The PRO uses 50% more power. Sequential TLC write is 2000 vs 1700 which isn't much of a lead. Random read IOPS is 22K vs 19K which isn't much of a lead, either. The only things that the PRO do signifigantly better are sequential reads, high queue depth read/write, use power, and cost money.So, I really see it as an upgrade to the EVO plus, not the older PRO.
Makaveli - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
The endurance is pales in comparison to what the competition is offering.All the currently PCIe 4.0 drives based on the PS5016-E16 controller at 1TB are all rated for 1,800 TBW compared to 600 TBW for this drive.
The PS5018-E18 controller that was just announced is already faster than this drive based on specs offers Nvme 1.4 over the 1.3 on this drive. And will most likely have the same TBW as the previous controller(they haven't posted this info yet)
So why would I buy this samsung drive since it looks they have reduced the wear leveling base on that TBW number.
XabanakFanatik - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I expect you'll be very surprised when the destroyer shows the new 980 PRO TLC drive performing on par or worse than the old 970 PRO MLC drive.shabby - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Hopefully it's priced like the evo then.dwillmore - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
That would be what makes or breaks the value of this drive. If it's priced like an MLC PRO drives, then it's not a good choice. If it's priced more like an upgraded EVO plus, then it may be okay for some uses.Ushio01 - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
With HDD's going to SMR, SSD makers can downgrade performance and still be orders of magnitude superior to their competition.It's honestly looking like we have past peak performance for storage and the future will just be worse.
imaheadcase - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
huh? endurance is fantastic for drive. lolXabanakFanatik - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I assume the Pro series being knocked down from MLC to TLC means the Evo series will be knocked down from TLC to QLC.Imagine a world where the 900 Pro was TLC and the 900 evo was QLC.
Samsung's really screwing the people who actually needed these drives to be MLC.
Hxx - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I love these “accidental” leaks . I’m sure Samsung did not under any circumstance hype up this itemQuantumz0d - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Pathetic bullshit move from Samsung, PRO is now not that anymore and it's TLC garbage like all the other companies and even worst thing is Corsair MP600 has much much higher TBW for their NVMe Gen 4 SSD with Phison.I think now PRO is irrelevant, majority of them who will buy PRO with PRO Tax was MLC. Always now they are trying to fool people thinking this bs drive is something MLC with all the drama. 860 Pro is the last now with MLC then, bye Samsung. You can join the rest of the mediocrity and claim nothing.
romrunning - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
860 Pro isn't the last one with MLC; the 950 Pro and 960 Pro both have MLC. Unless that was just a typo and you meant 960 Pro.Billy Tallis - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
The 860 PRO is a newer product than the 950 PRO and 960 PRO.DigitalFreak - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
I'm going to guess 1TB for $299 @ Amazon.brucethemoose - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
One thing about the Samsung Pro/Evo drives is that they have a very strong brand reputation. Many builds I see on social media and forums seem to default to a 970 Evo without even price checking other drives.What I'm getting at is that Samsung could sneak in some QLC into the EVO, while retaining the high markup, and barely put a dent in sales.
ranran - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Well, yes, a strong brand reputation has been earned - it's all I buy..well, have bought and with good reason considering they've pretty much mopped the floor of 99% of reviews for years now.I'm perfectly happy with TLC, been buying a lot of their EVO drives with no regret. Buuuttt.... a move to QLC.. ick. Worst idea ever, wish they'd just drop it, but I guess there's a market for it.
I thought their MLC (Pro) / TLC (EVO) was a great differentiator and seemed to really match their respective markets but this..just..doesn't..make...sense... (to this consumer, at least).
Alistair - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
These high end drives are not that fast, they are limited by NAND speed.This drive is 10 percent faster in random read of queue depth 1, the only thing I care about. And no write improvements.
Srikzquest - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Well, Sabrent with their Rocket plus immediately one upped 980 Pro on the performance metrics without giving any chance for Samsung to shine.romrunning - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Umm... no, the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 is not as fast as this 980 Pro. Specs for the Rocket are up to 5000MBps sequential read, and up to 4400MBps sequential write. The 980 Pro is being rated at 7000Mbps seq read, and 5000Mbps seq write (in SLC). Just on read alone, that's a pretty significant difference.Billy Tallis - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Sabrent just put up a page for the Rocket 4 Plus, which uses the Phison E18 controller instead of the Phison E16 used in the Rocket 4.Makaveli - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
This was news yesterday Billy :)Billy Tallis - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Yeah, but we don't usually publish news on weekends except during big trade shows.Rοb - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
Yes, it's tomorrow's news which should be better; today's news is that Sammy was sandbagged.dsellens - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
According to the current Rocket 4 site, the seq read performance is 7000, seq write is 6850. But it doesn't have any random I/O or endurance numbers. Still much to learn.I have long been a major proponent of the Samsung Pro drives, but with this change to TLC and the subsequent halving of endurance, I will be looking for another brand going forward. There has got to be someone out there that understands the importance of endurance. I just replaced 2 EVO drives under warrantee because they failed after heavy use.
To those arguing about HDD endurance, I have not had an HDD fail under warrantee in over 15 years. I have replaced a couple of old 2TB HDDs after 8 to 10 years of heavy NAS use. I stopped buying 2TB and went to 5 and 6 TB drives over 5 years ago. I am currently considering 10-15TB drives for my next build. SSDs have a long way to go before they can satisfy my data needs.
nevcairiel - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
According to some marketing blurb, and a cooler so big that I couldn't place it anywhere on my board?The real metric is random read-write on low-ish QD, because thats the real-world usage its going to see day in and day out. Peak sequentials just look good on marketing slides.
waldoh - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
TLC and 600 TBW? This seems like a 980 Evo Plus rather than a Pro...Kvaern1 - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
That was by last years standard.romrunning - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
This drive probably is the one that will be used in the PS5. That read speed especially would be great for consoles!Billy Tallis - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
This drive is almost certainly not the one Sony is going to be using in the PS5. The capacities are all wrong and the read performance is higher.This drive is probably going to be usable in the PS5 as an aftermarket replacement, but going from ~768GB to 1024GB isn't much of an upgrade. A 2TB 980 PRO would be a more interesting upgrade option for the PS5.
Kvaern1 - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
"A 2TB 980 PRO would be a more interesting upgrade option for the PS5."But at what price?
Beaver M. - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
This PS5 SSD hype is funny.Everyone who knows a bit about SSDs knows that they will only achieve such claimed performance through a tricky cache system (one that also needs a lot of work by game developers to work properly), which indeed might be revolutionary, but easily done for the PC as well, with average performance SSDs.
edzieba - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
A good highlight of why PCIe 4 has minimal impact on real world SSD performance for client applications: big boosts to sequential read/write speeds, but QD1 random read/writes - what the drive will be spending 99.9% of its time doing, and the biggest impact on perceived performance and particularly responsiveness - see only incremental improvement, mostly from the improved controller rather than the interface.blzd - Monday, September 7, 2020 - link
Why is the industry now moving backwards in rated write endurance?Isn't that the biggest issue with running an SSD?
Billy Tallis - Monday, September 7, 2020 - link
Write endurance is a problem that has always loomed over the SSD market, but has never become a big problem in practice. For years, we've been sacrificing unneeded endurance to get lower costs and higher capacities, and so far it's been the right choice for almost all kinds of customers and use cases. TLC has been mainstream for a long time now, and it's holding up fine. QLC is genuinely not good enough for some real-world use cases, but it is good enough for most mainstream consumer use cases and many server use cases. MLC is overkill for basically any application that wouldn't be better off with SLC or Optane.