Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup
Internals:
I must say I was caught a bit off guard when I saw the need to bust out my iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit just to crack open the 840 Pro.
Yes thats right, Samsung used pentalobular screws to clamp shut the 840 Pro. If you want to peek insde of one of these, youll need a #5 pentalobe screwdriver. This is the size used for the screws tyically used to crack open a MacBook Air.
Once inside we got to see the goodies. Here are the front and rear PCB shots:
As you can see, this is very high capacity flash chip packaging – only 8 for a 512GB SSD, making for 64GB per package. Now for a closer chip shot:
Controller: Triple core Arm Cortex MDX @ 300MHz
RAM: Samsung DDR 2, 512MB
Flash: 2x-nm class Samsung DDR2 toggle-mode NAND, running at 400 Mbps per channel.
Finally, I busted into my SSD stores and composed this family shot for your viewing pleasure:
From left: FlashSSD 32GB SLC, PB22J (OEM), 470 Series, 830 Series, 840 Series
Testing Methodology
Our tests are a good mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we'll help you out!
Test System Setup
We're currently qualifying a new Z77 testbed along with some new (non-standard) benches, but there are a few more kinks to work out for consistent results. I'm therefore sticking with our tried and true Z68 SandyBridge unit for this piece.
PC Perspective would like to thank ASUS, Corsair, and Kingston for supplying some of the components of our test rig.
Hard Drive Test System Setup | |
CPU | Intel Core i5-2500K |
Motherboard | Asus P8Z68-V Pro |
Memory | Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9 |
Hard Drive | G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD |
Sound Card | N/A |
Video Card | Intel® HD Graphics 3000 |
Video Drivers | Intel |
Power Supply | Corsair CMPSU-650TX |
DirectX Version | DX9.0c |
Operating System | Windows 7 X64 |
- PCMark05
- Yapt
- IOMeter
- HDTach
- HDTune
- PCPer File Copy Test
Wow! Everything is getting
Wow! Everything is getting more energy efficient nowadays. Good job Samsung!
I just picked up a 830 120g
I just picked up a 830 120g for $97 on Newegg, I didnt even need it but I had to considering the good deal (impulse buy), makes sense considering this release, Samsungs on top!.
Got the 830 and I don’t think
Got the 830 and I don’t think I would know the difference with an 840- but I’m glad the tech is getting better.
Now if they can just get the price down ….
Go competition!
i really dont see a reason to
i really dont see a reason to get the 840 pro yet
the 840pro/830 seems to be trade blows, with the 830 coming out ahead in more tests.
am i missing something?
My Samsung 830 has been the
My Samsung 830 has been the most reliable SSD over the years.
I’m sticking with Samsung in this department.
Any reason to upgrade from my
Any reason to upgrade from my Intel X-25M 160GB?
Core i7 2600K OC 16GB ram main desktop
Seems to me like the 840
Seems to me like the 840 fails to consistently beat the 830 or the intel 520 in some of your tests. It’s not clearly better across the board, and when it does win it looks like a modest incremental improvement.
I don’t know if it’s the controller, or what, but it seems to me like the next leap in SSD performance will come only with a controller change. Samsung and Intel seem to have squeezed out every drop out of the Sandforce controller.
Nonetheless Allyn, thanks for your review. I wouldn’t buy or recommend an SSD these days without reading your reviews. There’s something about the SSD market that makes reviewers act like fanboys, and even otherwise serious review sites are filled with low-depth OMG IT’S FAST OH WOW reviews that don’t get to more in depth testing, including reliability testing and speed degradation, RAID behavior, type and frequency of firmware updates, etc.
840 Pro is an evolutionary
840 Pro is an evolutionary upgrade with 21nm 2bpc MLC NAND. The regular 840 is said to have the performance inline with the 830
http://www.anandtech.com/show
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6328/samsung-ssd-840-pro-256gb-review
i now see the reason to upgrade to the 840 over the 830
power consumption is nice!
Unfortunately there was no
Unfortunately there was no time to get this data prior to the flight out to the press event. I will be measuring power consumption on both the 840 Pro and the standard 840 upon my return.
You care about power
You care about power consumption in your SSD? Really? Talk about stepping over dollars to pick up pennies! If you have enough wiggle room in your budget to pick something based on power usage, there are a lot more bang for the buck areas than an SSD that uses (and dissipates) enough power that it can be cooled by a passive plastic housing. You sir, are a moron.
Apparently you’ve never heard
Apparently you’ve never heard of “laptops” or “battery life”.
Why don’t you try testing the
Why don’t you try testing the drives with data on them and see how they really perform.
Every drive we test is
Every drive we test is properly preconditioned prior to any benchmarks run.
it’s tough to do a test like
it’s tough to do a test like that and get accurate results. each drive would have to have the exact same amount of data on it in order to rule out any variables, which alone is difficult, but also some of the disks tested are different sizes and would be impossible to get a good comparison of the drives.
So, where do I buy one of
So, where do I buy one of these?
Isn’t tlc supposed to have
Isn’t tlc supposed to have only 1/4 of the writing endurance of current mlc? At least according to that article http://www.anandtech.com/show/5067/understanding-tlc-nand/2
Going from 3k writing cycle to 0.75k looks like huge dip rather than a “minor” dip in endurance like you said in your conclusion.
I can already imagine people not aware of this aspect bashing those sdd for unreliability once they discover that their sdd is almost dead after a period of heavy use.
Good review of drive
Good review of drive performance. I’d like to see you include a review of the endurance spec and actual measure if possible. Further would like to see what the impact is running these tests when the drive is already > 80% full.
Tom Stephenson
I’m curious to find out what
I’m curious to find out what blog system you are working with?
I’m having some minor security problems with my latest site and I would like to find something more
safe. Do you have any recommendations?
Feel free to surf to my blog – garcinia cambogia hca
Looks like the SAMSUNG 840
Looks like the SAMSUNG 840 now catches up with the INTEL 540.
Main reason for SAMSUNG seems to be the power consumption and reliabilty and Price/GB ratio. But all this isn’t really tested or documented here. I’ve seen the 840 Pro already for much lower prices (but now it’s a month ago that this article was written).
Could you please add the following points:
– performance when disk is 80-90% full
– power consumption
– raid behavior ?
Thanks in advance!
Its funny that people pick at
Its funny that people pick at the the lower power consumption. I bought a neutron gtx 240gb and have now replaced it with a 840 pro 256gb all b/c of power consumption. I cant tell a difference in real world activities but I am so glad i spend the extra money for the drive b/c it lasts 30 minutes longer or more on average. Given it comes with a 5 year warranty over standard 3 year warranties and my laptop lasts 30 minutes longer before i plug it in, I think $80-100 extra for the convenience and reliability with a 5 year warranty is well worth it when you can use the drive over a 5 year period. That will mean a lot to people with laptops. It even beat my agility 2 drive and that used a lot less power too.