Does any other SSD really compare overall to Samsung's 850 Evo/Pro?

jimthebob

jimthebob

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Kinda curious about this as I'm generally pretty picky about what brand I use for my storage. Spinners I generally stick with Western Digital or HGST. SSD's (for my main rig, anyway) I've always stuck with Samsung. However, my current 120gb Evo is getting fuller by the minute and I'm finding it hard to keep space freed up. So I'm wondering, is the price premium of Samsung really worth it? Are there any other brands out there that hold up to the overall speed, quality, and longevity of Samsung? If paying the price premium for a 250gb or 500gb Samsung is worth it, I'll gladly do it. BUT, I know other brands prices are cheaper. So my question is this; any suggestions that compete overall (IOPS, writes, reads, fault tollerance, resiliency, etc) to Samsung drives?
 
For general home usage performance between most of them is transparent to the end user. They all have their strengths and weakness, for specialized workloads and unique tasks, that's where you'll notice the difference from one to another. Ex; Some are designed to hold consistant duration of writes at high speeds longer without performance drop during the task, while others not so much but may be a bit faster in bursts, some better in I/O, etc. There was a site that showed much of this, can't remember the link off hand. Most important should be reliability. Then look at warranty/price ratio, etc.
 
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Imo best thing to do is just look at the star rating on a site like Amazon. Crucial's mx series and the 850 are comparable. I've done lots of research, and cheaper drives generally break down much more often. Not worth the risk, imo.

There are 2 aspects to warranties though - years and Total Bytes Written (TBW). Crucial mx drives have higher TBW for larger storage sizes. Samsung might aslo do this now (they didn't used to). So if you move a lot of data (you probably don't) and care about warranties, that's the only hidden thing to know that I've been able to turn up.

Only other recommendation is to look into business series drives like Crucial bx. You might save some money there, but I think many of those lines have been discontinued.
 
StealthNinja007 said:
Imo best thing to do is just look at the star rating on a site like Amazon. Crucial's mx series and the 850 are comparable. I've done lots of research, and cheaper drives generally break down much more often. Not worth the risk, imo.

There are 2 aspects to warranties though - years and Total Bytes Written (TBW). Crucial mx drives have higher TBW for larger storage sizes. Samsung might aslo do this now (they didn't used to). So if you move a lot of data (you probably don't) and care about warranties, that's the only hidden thing to know that I've been able to turn up.

Only other recommendation is to look into business series drives like Crucial bx. You might save some money there, but I think many of those lines have been discontinued.
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Amazon ratings are iffy, since a lot of users don't pay attention to types of NAND and controllers, they'll just five star even drives with slow TLC or read speed degradation (BX200). The MX300 is crucials first 3D-TLC and it has done great at work and is a good choice though its pricing is fairly similar to the 850 Evo.
 
PliotronX said:
Amazon ratings are iffy, since a lot of users don't pay attention to types of NAND and controllers, they'll just five star even drives with slow TLC or read speed degradation (BX200). The MX300 is crucials first 3D-TLC and it has done great at work and is a good choice though its pricing is fairly similar to the 850 Evo.
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I was thinking the same, I don't usually look at reviews on Amazon or Newegg simply because a lot of people will knock a device for not including a SATA cable, or installing it on a SATA II system and complaining about the slow speed. If I want a good review of something specific, I go to a review site.
 
I would trust Intel reliability to be better than anyone else. Intel is all I'll use for server duty. I use Samsung primarily on client machines and my personal rigs. I've had a couple Samsung 850 EVOs fail on me and yet to lose a single Intel SSD *knocks on wood*. My sample size is a guess at 300 to 400 drives ranging from the X25 through 850 Pro. I use Crucial, Sandisk, Adata, Kingston, or pretty much any name I've heard of if the price is right on business client machines.

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/321575/touring-intel-s-ssd-validation-labs-in-folsom
 
Ya'll are right about the Amazon reviews. But if there's 50+ reviews I think it's still a good indicator of how many units die (1-star) vs how many units don't die (5-stars). I've had good experiences buying things below 3.5 stars, but I always do additional research. IMO, more detailed reviews aren't generally that worthwhile unless you're doing something specific or just feel the urge to learn... which I'm totally with you on that haha

I've seen other people write what ochadd wrote, so I'd be inclined to believe it.
 
For me, i first look into ssds by Crucial and Samsung, if i couldnt find an SSD with the speed/features/price im looking for, then i check Intel, Sandisk and Plextor, but very likely that i end up with a Crucial or Samsung ssd.
 
Thanks for the words, guys. My birthday is coming up in a couple weeks and the wife wants to know what I want so I'm trying to find an alternative brand that is still rock solid like Samsung has been for me. I'd rather her not pay $160ish for a 500gb SSD and I'm not sure if I want to "settle" for a 250gb or not.
 
If you can find a good deal for nVME and your motherboard supports it, go for nVME.
 
I had to hack the bios on my p8z77v-pro to get my 960 evo to work as a boot drive. I got this card because it was cheap https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER_M2_X4_MINI_CARD/

Is the rampage IV Z77 chipset like mine was? If so, the hack should work for you (no guarantees though). I used this guide http://www.win-raid.com/t871f16-Gui...for-Intel-Chipset-systems-from-Series-up.html and had no issues.

Wait, I did have an issue. There was a conflict between the the mobo SATA slot 1 and also the onboard ASMedia SATA slots. If I had anything plugged in there, it would not recognize my 960 EVO.

I installed windows 10.

Anyway, I have not run any benchmarks as I LITERALLY installed it last night. But installing Windows, restoring games and files, I can definitely see a difference over my old 512 GB Sandisk Extreme Pro. I just did a fresh windows reinstall on the Sandisk about a month ago.

My plan though is to upgrade to Ryzen and go native M.2.
 
My Z97-Extreme6 supports it natively.

If you guys run linux, you can boot the boot sector on an SSD & the rest of the OS on the nvme storage.
 
I don't use Samsung 850 EVO nor PRO, because their fsync performance is of the worst kind. My Intel S3500 has 10 timer better fsync performance.
 
olavgg said:
I don't use Samsung 850 EVO nor PRO, because their fsync performance is of the worst kind. My Intel S3500 has 10 timer better fsync performance.
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Whats Fsync? and why is so important to you?
 
Fsync is a command to the operating system that tells it to flush data from ram to disk. This matter for a lot of things, from web browsers to virtual machines.

The easiest way to benchmark this is to install Postgresql and run pg_test_fsync.

You can also do it with fio or dd.
 
850 Pros are hard to beat.
But I have 4 x MyDigitalSSD 512s for hot swaps that use a Phison controller since they were 650 for all 4.
Don't pay much attention to benchmarks other than transaction time.
BP Slims are a hell of a deal, but limited warranty.
 
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