Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup
Internals
I'm leaving the heat spreading labels in place and undisturbed until I can do some detailed temperature testing (these samples came in just before the holiday weekend).
Here are the 960 EVOs next to the 960 PRO, for comparison. Note that the EVOs have DRAM peeking from behind their labels (lower right), while the PRO has only its controller and a set of four flash packages. This is made possible by Samsung stacking the DRAM on top of the controller in the PRO, which leads to part of its added expense.
The 250GB model uses 128Gbit dies, while the 500GB and 1TB both use 256Gbit dies. They do this to help maintain parallelism (therefore performance) on the 250GB model.
Testing Methodology
Our tests are a mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. We have developed a custom test suite as off-the-shelf tests just no longer cut it for in-depth storage testing. More details on the next page. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we'll help you out!
Test System Setup
We have several storage testbeds. A newer ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt and a Gigabyte Z170X SOC Force (for RAID testing). Future PCIe and SATA device testing, including this review, take place on a new ASUS Sabertooth X99, which comes equipped with USB 3.1, M.2, and can also handle SFF-8639 devices with the proper adapter.
PC Perspective would like to thank Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte, Corsair, Kingston, and EVGA for supplying some of the components of our test rigs.
| Hard Drive Test System Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.125 GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS Sabertooth X99 |
| Memory | 16GB Micron DDR4 @ 3333 |
| Hard Drive | G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD |
| Sound Card | N/A |
| Video Card | EVGA GeForce GTX 750 |
| Video Drivers | GeForce Game Ready Driver 347.88 |
| Power Supply | Corsair CMPSU-650TX |
| DirectX Version | N/A |
| Operating System | Windows 8.1 Pro X64 (update) |
PCPer File Copy TestHDTachHDTuneIOMeterYAPT- NEW TEST SUITE!!!
Hmm, maybe add 850 evo raid
Hmm, maybe add 850 evo raid into the chart? Obviously testing every single drive in raid takes way too long, but raid 850 evo or raid of a budget drive seems like an interesting data point that doesn’t take way too long.
As tempting as it may be I
As tempting as it may be I cannot find myself ever buying a TLC drive for anything other than a scratch drive, cache drive etc.
Why? Because of the lifespan
Why? Because of the lifespan of TLC drives?
https://us.hardware.info/reviews/4178/hardwareinfo-tests-lifespan-of-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-tlc-ssd-updated-with-final-conclusion
As an AMD owner, I’d love to
As an AMD owner, I’d love to see benchmarks of this on a motherboard with a PCIe 2.0 4x m.2 connector (like the Gigabyte 990fx-gamer). Does it completely saturate the 20Gb/s bandwidth?
Wow, poor showing in the
Wow, poor showing in the Intel 600p. I feel bad for those who upgraded to the Intel drive on the assumption NVME would be a big boost over a SATA6GB SSD.
The Client QD weighted chart makes it look like it might actually be worth upgrading from a SATA to NVME SSD for real world performance.
I’m curious where the OEM LiteON SSD in my Dell laptop would fit into the mix.
Awesome review. Really like
Awesome review. Really like the detailed info about the topic. I would love to ask one thing about these drives. Will I gain any performance boost by moving from X79 (DMI 1) to Z170 (DMI 3) ?
Thanks 😉
question about endurance or
question about endurance or TBW ssd 960 evo 250gb.
it’s said 100 TBW but is it true
for for example i have ssd mx300 and according to crucial software
and other software like crstal disk the total write is 500000gb and life of the ssd around 15%, in the website of crucial the TBW of the ssd 160 TBW so it clean way above that.
i am interesting in buying the SSD 960 evo 250GB SO MY QUESTION IS :
WHAT IS THE REAL TWB OF THE SSD 960 EVO or the max write of the ssd until it die ?