Samsung 870 EVO Internal SSD (MZ-77E2T0B/AM) 2TB 2.5" SATA III

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Next, we looked at our VDI benchmarks, which are designed to tax the drives even further. These tests include Boot, Initial Login, and Monday Login. Looking at the Boot test, the 1TB Samsung 870 EVO peaked at 26,502 IOPS at a latency of 1,304ms while the 4TB model peaked at 27,582 IOPS at 1,234ms. Looking inside the cases, it’s interesting to see how small the drives have become. While the 2.5″ SATA case is a bit overkill for these drive innards, the compact nature of these next-generation drives is more towards how they get leveraged in small external devices. Not a lot is needed to hit the capacity requirements. Samsung 870 EVO Performance The numbers we saw out of the overall PCMark 10 score are quite promising, putting this SATA drive in the same leagues as M.2 PCI Express 3.0 NVMe drives like the ADATA Spectrix S40G or Crucial P2.

The drive also loses slightly to the Samsung 870 QVO in our AS-SSD copy tests, though not by enough to be perceptible to most users in real-world use. On paper, the 870 EVO seemed like a modest refresh of the last-gen model; however, results from our benchmarks told a slightly different story. For performance, we looked at both the 1TB and 4TB models and compared them to three other consumer-grade 2.5-inch SATA SSDs: the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, Seagate FireCuda 120, and its predecessor, the 860 EVO. Given the roughly three-year cadence Samsung has set for their SATA SSD updates, the 870 generation may also be the last. Samsung 870 EVO Specifications In 64K write, the 1TB Samsung 870 EVO peaked at 5,902 IOPS (or 369MB/s) with 2,692ms before taking a hit in performance at the very end. The 4TB model showed a peak at 6,680 IOPS (or 418MB/s) at 2,379ms. The Samsung 860 EVO showed performance right in between the two 870 EVO capacities.

The 4TB Samsung SSD 870 EVO is ratedat 2,400TBW with a five-year warranty (whichever happens first, the warranty end or the write limit), which is right within standard expectations for SATA-based TLC drives these days at that capacity. TBW scales with capacity, as you can see in the chart above. I feel like this part of the review should be copied and pasted by now when looking at Samsung SSDs. Because, as always, the answer is yes. And unlike the 870 QVO which launched last year, it doesn't just make the most sense when buying the highest capacity, more expensive versions. Then again, the 870 QVO is also targeted at a different type of user. Random Read (4KB, QD32) Up to 98,000 IOPS Random Read * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration ** Measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated When looking at our VDI benchmarks results, both capacities demonstrated a significant improvement over the last-gen EVO drive. In boot, the 1TB 870 EVO peaked at 26,502 IOPS and the 4TB model peaked at 27,582 IOPS, while initial Login had the 1TB with a peak performance of 14,193 IOPS and 17,021 IOPS for the 4TB model. Lastly, for Monday Login, 1TB Samsung 870 EVO had a peak performance of 12,161 IOPS and 14,323 IOPS for the 1TB and 4TB models, respectively. All of these tests leverage the common vdBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices, including flash arrays and individual storage devices. Our testing process for these benchmarks fills the entire drive surface with data, then partitions a drive section equal to 5% of the drive capacity to simulate how the drive might respond to application workloads. This is different than full entropy tests which use 100% of the drive and take them into steady state. As a result, these figures will reflect higher-sustained write speeds.

We are seeing the usual upgrades in the spec table for the 870 EVO compared to the 860 EVO from 2018. The controller is now Samsung's MKX, a minor iterative update to the 860's MJX. The NAND flash memory is a more significant jump: the 870 EVO is using Samsung's 128-layer 3D TLC, first seen on the 980 PRO. More specifically, our 1TB and 4TB 870 EVO samples are using the 512Gbit dies that were introduced on the 2TB 980 PRO, a model that arrived much later than the smaller capacities built around 256Gbit dies. The preceding Samsung 860 EVO launched with Samsung's 64L 3D NAND, and they appear to have skipped over their 92L generation with their TLC SATA drives.

Samsung is one of the few companies still putting significant effort into SATA SSDs and releasing new consumer SATA models. As PC OEMs have overwhelmingly switched to using NVMe SSDs in new systems, even on the smaller capacities, the client/consumer SATA SSD market now exists almost entirely for the sake of DIY system builders and aftermarket upgrades on older systems. Most major consumer SSD brands have either stopped updating their SATA models, or decided to quietly update components without the fanfare of a new model release. Then there are companies creating odd-ball models, such as a 15.36 TB design. Either way, we don't get many new consumer SATA SSDs in for review these days. That said, it’s been a while since we’ve seen another EVO release (the last one being the 970 EVO Plus in the summer of 2019 and even longer since a 2.5-inch release), so we are certainly happy to get our hands on it. The 870 EVO uses TLC (or 3bit MLC, as dubbed by Samsung) 3D V-NAND, is available in capacities from 256GB up to 4TB, and features the company’s newest in-house controller. The 870 EVO also offers an endurance of up to 2,400TBW for the highest capacity model. This hard drive weighs only 45 grams and is suitable for all kinds of uses. The Samsung 870 Evo 2.5 is compatible with all major systems, chipsets, motherboards and other video devices. It can be easily combined with desktop computers and laptops. With its 6th generation 3D V-NAND memory, the hard disk guarantees the expected performance and reliability. This product from Samsung embeds a technology whose quality has been proven since 2003. It is a drive designed for regular daily use and very high resolution video processing, even in 8K. It's a drive that has the ability to multitask seamlessly thanks to a powerful MKX controller. High Read and Write Speed VDI Initial Login, the 1TB Samsung 870 EVO had a peak performance of 14,193 IOPS at a latency of 2,108ms while the 4TB model hit a peak of 17,021 IOPS at 1,755ms before taking a pretty big dip in performance at the very end (though easily taking first place among the tested drives). It'll be a sweater-weather kind of day down below before we see SATA 3.0 speeds make any sort of jumps in sequential throughput, so until then, companies like Samsung are focusing their storage efforts where they can: improving speeds for real-world 4K random read and write scenarios.

Both these SSDs are great in terms of reliability as well. They offer a good warranty period along with the TBW limits. Let’s compare them below. Specifications Of course, even with all those big wins in our games and programs testing, ultimately the SSD 870 EVO is still based on SATA, and SATA has a speed ceiling that even the best controllers and NAND flash in the world can't break through. The other factor in this is that we recently updated our SSD test suite for 2021, which means re-testing older drives for new performance numbers. In our SSD test suite 2021 article, we prioritized NVMe SSDs, as that is where the market is. We are getting around to retesting the older SATA drives, although these take the longest time to complete - 24 hours for a fast 1 TB drive, up to 100 hours or more for a 4 TB drive,not including the analysis. In that quest, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO succeeds handily, setting new records for SATA while also keeping the drive just about competitive with M.2 drives when launching games or Adobe Photoshop. If you're married to SATA pricing (or your PC can't handle anything else) but want to optimize 4K performance, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO is the best new SATA drive of the early days of 2021. It should be at the top of anyone's list who wants the best combination of performance, product quality, and price in a 2.5-incher.random write showed similar performance between all tested drives. Here, the 1TB Samsung 870 EVO peaked at 63,269 IOPS with 2,022µs, while the 4TB model showed a peak at 63,542 IOPS at 2,012µs. First up is random 4K read, where the 1TB Samsung 870 EVO 74,587 IOPS at 1,715µs in latency, while the 4TB model had slightly better results with a peak of 75,310 IOPS at 1,695µs in latency. Their predecessor, the Samsung 860 EVO, wasn’t far behind. In sequential Crystal DiskMark speeds, the SSD 870 EVO hits Samsung's own rated spec without a sweat, while 4K results were just a bit stronger, but still a bit slower than expected when comparing the 4TB and 1TB variants of the same drive.