Samsung 840 Series 500GB TLC SSD Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Samsung 840 Series 500GB TLC SSD Review - Samsung has released the first TLC NAND equipped SSDs into the market, creating the lowest price points we have witnessed for SSDs bringing large capacity SSDs within reach for average users. Today we test the 500GB TLC Samsung 840 Series SSD to test the performance in steady state of a large capacity TLC Solid State Drive.
 
Have mine as a Steam/Apps drive and loving it completely, and it didn't even break the bank.
 
Thanks for reviewing this! I've been curious as to the performance and power consumption of the new 840 line in the various capacities.
 
Great, this review comes out TWO DAYS after I bought the 840 Pro 512GB. Luckily I only paid $450 for it.
 
Outlook constantly makes small writes to any open pst files, so does anyone know if outlook's behavior will cause excessive wear or premature end of life for SSDs? My pst is well over 1GB because I use outlook to organize my life, so I am concerned that I'll kill my SSD keeping outlook open all the time, and I am wondering if it will be worse for these TLC drives.

Is there any way to measure or test this? See if keeping a large PST file open in outlook results in enough writes to affect either performance or lifespan?

For those who are quick to dismiss this possibility, remember that microsoft explicitly states that PST files should not be on shared network drives or kept on servers, because the constant touching of the pst files by many users even when outlook is "idle" will thrash server hard drives, leading to early hardware failure.
 
Keep in mind that the life-span suggestion is with an awful write amplification factor, and assuming the drive explodes after reaching its cycle spec -- which doesn't seem to be the case with forums that hammer on SSDs 24/7 for fun.
 
flenser said:
Outlook constantly makes small writes to any open pst files, so does anyone know if outlook's behavior will cause excessive wear or premature end of life for SSDs? My pst is well over 1GB because I use outlook to organize my life, so I am concerned that I'll kill my SSD keeping outlook open all the time, and I am wondering if it will be worse for these TLC drives.

Is there any way to measure or test this? See if keeping a large PST file open in outlook results in enough writes to affect either performance or lifespan?

For those who are quick to dismiss this possibility, remember that microsoft explicitly states that PST files should not be on shared network drives or kept on servers, because the constant touching of the pst files by many users even when outlook is "idle" will thrash server hard drives, leading to early hardware failure.
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First, find out what type of NAND your SSD has. Then grab an application like Crystal Disk Info and look at the Total Host Writes number. Divide that up by the number of days you've owned. That should give you a good estimate on how long your SSD is going to last based on the chart at the bottom of this page.
 
Thanks for great review. Looking forward to a time when I can grab 500 MB version for $99.99. Until then, not interested. I'll keep my platter(s) spinnin'. :p

Good enough!
 
ICOM said:
Thanks for great review. Looking forward to a time when I can grab 500 MB version for $99.99. Until then, not interested. I'll keep my platter(s) spinnin'. :p

Good enough!
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No need to wait for 500MB for $99, you can get 40GB for $55 today! :D
 
Longevity concerns aside, am I going to see any real-world performance difference between this and the M4 I currently have? Assume a fairly normal use case. I don't intend for this drive to see a bunch of writes after I install Windows, programs, and several games on it.

I just need to upgrade from this 128 I have. Yes, I could read the review, but I don't really know what to look at (beside "steady state", but even that I'm a bit lost with) to get a "real world picture"
 
ICOM said:
gah...typin' with me pecker again. :(
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Without question though, the best way to type.

Erm...

As to the review, very interesting. Will be cool to see real life durability differences between the TLC and the (Pro) MLC some time down the line, if there are any.
 
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BigJayDogg3 said:
Longevity concerns aside, am I going to see any real-world performance difference between this and the M4 I currently have? Assume a fairly normal use case. I don't intend for this drive to see a bunch of writes after I install Windows, programs, and several games on it.
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Okay I finally got off my butt and installed my 840 non-pro 500GB into my machine with the m4 512GB ... they are both lightning quick compared to the installed 2TB spinner. Not sure what else anyone could say without running benchmarks. What I nightmare, I mixed up my 4 sata cables twice, and had to hunt down the motherboard manual, lol. The ports are numbered 5,6,3,4,1,2,7,8 wtfbbq.
 
flenser said:
Outlook constantly makes small writes to any open pst files, so does anyone know if outlook's behavior will cause excessive wear or premature end of life for SSDs? My pst is well over 1GB because I use outlook to organize my life, so I am concerned that I'll kill my SSD keeping outlook open all the time, and I am wondering if it will be worse for these TLC drives.

Is there any way to measure or test this? See if keeping a large PST file open in outlook results in enough writes to affect either performance or lifespan?

For those who are quick to dismiss this possibility, remember that microsoft explicitly states that PST files should not be on shared network drives or kept on servers, because the constant touching of the pst files by many users even when outlook is "idle" will thrash server hard drives, leading to early hardware failure.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't even worry about it. SSD's are WAY WAY more durable than most people think. Looks up some results of real world SSD endurance testing. Also, how many people complain about 'worn out' SSD's on the forums? Nobody, and SSD's have been out long enough for people to wear out some of the earlier ones. yes, they have a finite life, but it is significantly longer than you might think, ad there is no need to worry about it. I would say make your partition a bit smaller than the drive (like 450GB) so you give the controller some extra free space, which will help keep write amplification low, which will, in turn, help make the drive last as long as possible.
 
Honestly , life time usage is a concern for me but it seems like Samsung did its homework. I still refuse to keep ANY critical work on an SSD and prefer HDD's for such tasks or even better tape back up (which has proven to be incredibly reliable despite the medium).

Once these drives fall under the $250 mark , I'll jump on board.
 
I'm looking to pick up a couple of these to replace my current RAID. I don't think the 840 Pro would benefit me any more for the price.

Even though I always like to have the best, I can't justify the difference with the regular 840's so cheap, comparatively.
 
KENNYB said:
That's exactly what I'm going to do. The Pro is +$150 and I won't feel the speed difference.
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And I just discovered that Steam has the option of multiple folders natively (Steam -> Settings -> Download & Cloud -> Steam Library Options -> Add Library Folder) so I probably don't need to use "mklink /J" from my C: drive to the D: drive manually for each game folder, though I haven't played with it yet.
 
BostonHXC said:
Have mine as a Steam/Apps drive and loving it completely, and it didn't even break the bank.
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Blind Man said:
Looks like this drive is available for 329.99 right now on B&H (must add it to cart to see)

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/897033-REG/Samsung_MZ_7TD500BW_500GB_840_Series_2_5_.html
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Bought one. See what ya made me do?!?!?!? :D

xorbe said:
And I just discovered that Steam has the option of multiple folders natively (Steam -> Settings -> Download & Cloud -> Steam Library Options -> Add Library Folder) so I probably don't need to use "mklink /J" from my C: drive to the D: drive manually for each game folder, though I haven't played with it yet.
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Thanks I didn't know about that. My WD 1.5TB drive is acting just like my other WD 1.5TB drive did right before it died. Steam is being moved to the SSD. With this option it's now easy to add another 500GB drive in the future for more Steam.

840_baseline.png


I had to restore from a Windows 7 backup. I had what I can only describe as a colossal software fuckup on Windows 8 that caused my m4 and 840 to perform terrible. Random read and write on both drives were in the 10s. Sequential performance wasn't nearly as good as the above.

The above is with power settings at balanced. I have an M4 running the OS and it doesn't perform nearly has good on balanced as it does on performance.
 
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I picked up a 500GB Samsung 840 yesterday. I also have a 512GB 840Pro as a system disk. I used to have my games on a 240GB Intel 520, but have since moved them (Steam & Origin) to the 840, and subjectively noticed no difference. The 500GB 840 doesn't write as quickly as the Intel 520, but a gaming drive doesn't do a lot of writes anyway. It's all about the read speed, and on that bill, the 840 rocks. Heck, the sequential write speed isn't too shabby either, so even if you're saving your in-game progress game saves to the 840, most of those writes tend to be big sequential writes anyway.

So yeah, IMO, the 840 serves very well as a gaming drive.

On the subject of drive lifespan before wearing out. In had an old Intel X-25M 80GB G2 which I only replaced 3 weeks ago with the 840 Pro as the new system drive. The G2 was never used for swap, but Windows does do a fair amount of back-ground writing to the system drive.

I grabbed CrystalDiskInfo, and for the G2, it reports 22837 hours of total on-time (up until recently I hadn't configured my computer to go into sleep mode, and it just got left on almost full time), and the G2 has spent 99% of those hours as a primary system/boot/Windows drive (with the Swap Space disabled for it, and moved to a spinning spindle instead). Total Host Writes is reported as 47.33TB. So, in ~2.5 years of possibly 90% total on-time of the computer, Windows as a system drive wrote 47.33TB of data. If we assume a write amplification of 3x, that's around 150TB. Anandtech predicts ~270TB of total write lifespan for the 250GB 840 Drive, so really we're looking at around ~550TB of total write life-span for the 500GB 840 Drive. Even used as a system drive, with the rest of the space used to store games, you're still looking at around 8 years of 100% on-time before a 500GB 840 comes close to wearing out.

I wouldn't use a TLC drive like the 840 for swap storage though. Right now my X-25M G2 is serving that role after the drive rejig, and I'll keep an eye on the total host writes for a month and see what's what there.
 
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Cathar said:
I picked up a 500GB Samsung 840 yesterday. I also have a 512GB 840Pro as a system disk. I used to have my games on an 240GB Intel 520, but have since moved them (Steam & Origin) to the 840, and subjectively noticed no difference. The 500GB 840 doesn't write as quickly as the Intel 520, but a gaming drive doesn't do a lot of writes anyway. It's all about the read speed, and on that bill, the 840 rocks. Heck, the sequential write speed isn't too shabby either, so even if you're saving your games to the 840, most of those writes tend to be big sequential writes anyway.

So yeah, IMO, the 840 serves very well as a gaming drive.
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Yes it does. And yes I'm spoiled. And you're probably spoiled too. ;)
Running Steam off on SSD is the epitome of spoiling oneself. Can you please post crystaldiskmark benchmarks?
 
KENNYB said:
Yes it does. And yes I'm spoiled. And you're probably spoiled too. ;)
Running Steam off on SSD is the epitome of spoiling oneself. Can you please post crystaldiskmark benchmarks?
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Uh, okay. Just downloaded it. This is running on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4, with a 3770K CPU @ 4.0GHz, using the Intel RAID controller in JBOD configuration (ie. not AHCI, and no actual RAID being employed). This is the 500GB Samsung 840 drive being measured here. I set my partition size to 400GB, and left the rest for OP (for now). I ran a test with your settings, as well as the standard settings that the test starts up with.

S840_CDM_500_MB.png


S840_CDM_1000_MB.png
 
Oh, and here's CDM being run on the System Disk 840Pro with your settings for comparison. I use a 300GB partition on the 840Pro for capturing video as its standard application. The system partition (C: Drive) is 108GB, and the rest is set aside for OP.

As you can see, the standard 840 holds up pretty well against the 840Pro, except for when it comes to write performance, but for games, and even if you're saving your in-game progress saves to the standard 840, then unless each game save file is >70MB or so (the amount written in 0.2s which to me is the point where the user starts to noticeably feel like they waited for the disk to do something), then as a gaming drive it works really well.

I use the 840Pro as a video capture drive, because even though I don't even exceed the 840's write speed capability, the 840Pro will be a lot more resilient to writes over time.

S840_Pro_CDM_500_MB.png
 
KENNYB said:
I got around to updating my driver.
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Impressive.

Yeah, I need to switch back to AHCI mode. I tried doing it without re-installing windows, but I can't seem to get that going. Looks like it's back to the install disk again.
 
Those writes are disgustingly fast.


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I picked up this exact drive at Christmas from NewEgg for $328 with FC3 coupon.

Love the drive. Makes the perfect Steam/Games drive, didn't notice any difference in loading speeds of games after moving from 3x SATA II intel 330 series 160gb drives in raid 0 considering that did 815mb/s Seq. read and 470mb/s Seq write.

Either way it is funny when you play a game that has a video as the loading transition and you know its already loaded in the background, just waiting on the movie clip.(ie. Mass Effect 1 elevator transitions)
 
I've been debating picking one up at MicroCenter to replace my old F3 game drive. Great review, I think it's convinced me to purchase :)
 
LastLegion said:
Either way it is funny when you play a game that has a video as the loading transition and you know its already loaded in the background, just waiting on the movie clip.(ie. Mass Effect 1 elevator transitions)
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Changing locations in Borderlands 2 I'm always the first person running toward our objective.
 
KENNYB said:
840_intel_rst_01_22_2013.png

I got around to updating my driver.
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The above was taken in Windows 7.

Using the iaStorA driver via the Intel RST kit in Windows 8 causes me problems. I can't use Windows system back up using my Blu Ray writer. The back up fails because the BD-R disc can't be formatted.

Uninstalling RST and reverting to the inbox StorAHCI driver allows the back up to start, but it fails to complete. I'm asked to insert another disk only to see the progress meter to revert back to almost zero. Wasted a handful of disks trying to fix this.

The ability to format BD-R disks has been fixed in RST 11.7.0.1013. System back ups complete to DVD-R, but not BD-R disks.
 
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After a month of use the 840 is now dead. I woke my system from sleep and my VPN software was acting up. I rebooted, but after staring at the "restarting" message for a long time I manually powered down. I powered back up and the drive was not detected by Windows. I removed the Intel RST driver and went back to the MS version.

That's the last time my system could boot with the drive attached. I booted partedmagic and the drive was not mountable. I placed the drive in an USB enclosure and Windows would detect the USB device, but not drive.

The drive was running the latest firmware. I thought the repeated power shutdowns may have affected the drive, but I have an M4 running the OS and that drive was fine.
 
KENNYB said:
After a month of use the 840 is now dead.
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I don't know if Samsung drives act like Crucial drives at all in this scenario (I have both, but no problems so far). Try leaving the drive powered up over night (even if it seems unresponsive). At least for Crucial, what happens is the drive appears unresponsive while it scrubs the entire drive after it thinks some sort of bad power event has happened. Just a shot in the dark ...
 
This probably killed my drive:
WARNING – storahci – Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.
WARNING – disk – The IO operation at logical block address X(varies) for Disk 1 was retired.

The fix for this is enabling hot swap, even if you don't use it.
 
xorbe said:
I don't know if Samsung drives act like Crucial drives at all in this scenario (I have both, but no problems so far). Try leaving the drive powered up over night (even if it seems unresponsive). At least for Crucial, what happens is the drive appears unresponsive while it scrubs the entire drive after it thinks some sort of bad power event has happened. Just a shot in the dark ...
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I tried that. The SSD was bahaving just like a bad HDD where Windows would wait, and wait, and wait during boot trying to detect the drive.

It got "better" in the sense that Windows would actually boot. The drive would show up in device manager, but not under disk management. Samsung gave me an RMA the same day I submitted the request. It came with an UPS next day air shipping label. Hopefully this won't take too long.
 
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