https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/s ... iew,1.htmlSamsung 970 EVO Plus 2 Terabyte M.2 NVMe SSD
Recently Samsung has released their Plus series of the 970 EVO, let's call this series the supercharged edition of the M.2. 970 EVO drives which on their end were blazingly fast as well already. The one thing missing however is a bigger volume size as everything halted at 1 TB models, and wel yeah that has changed as we just received a nice 2TB unit for review.
Basically, the 960 Pro and 970 EVO series did already have a 2TB model, Samsung waited a bit longer to release a 970 EVO Plus version. The previous models have been based on Samsung 96-layer TLC written NAND paired with a Phoenix controller. The M.2 EVO Plus units will be the popular ones for the enthusiast desktop end-users. Armed with the latest 96-layer (3-bit per cell) NAND flash memory, DRAM caching the new 970 Plus series are based on the latest iteration of the Samsung Phoenix controller, which have been introduced in there OEM PM981 already. Phoenix is a Samsung Polaris Gen 2 controller now delivering up-to 3,500 MB/s sequential read speeds on even the smaller 500 GB and 1 TB versions, with up-to 3,500/3,300 MB/writes for the EVO series. For a little more shock and awe, Random 4KB numbers run up to 500,000 IOPS read and 480,000 IOPS write, which is pretty crazy.
Samsung now has the 970 EVO Plus models available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB volume sizes.
Performance wise you'll get a smile on your face. The precise performance values differ slightly per model/volume size though, we'll discuss and show you that on the next page. The 970 Plus series is available in an M.2 (NGFF-2280) form factor (8cm). These units obviously will require PCI-Express 3.0 with x4 lanes as the SSDs are using the latest iteration of the NVMe protocol. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus still offers plenty of endurance, depending on volume size 600 Terabytes written (TBW) for the 1 TB capacity, and double that to 1200 TBW for the 2TB. The EVO Plus series will receive a five-year warranty (or the TBW value - whichever one comes first). These new M.2 units use the NVMe protocol and that means storage technology at hyper-fast speeds while remaining competitive in pricing. The model we test today is capable of passing that 3.5 GB/s marker for reads and close to 3300 MB/second.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD is Samsung’s last generation consumer-ready Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) M.2 form factor SSD with vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology (96 layers/256Gb & stacked). Storage technology keeps advancing at the fast pace it does, the performance numbers a good SSD offers these days are simply excellent as you can reach say 450 MB/s to 500 MB/sec on SATA3 which is the norm for a single controller based SSD. Next to that, over the past year, NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become much cheaper as well.
is this probably the best ssd for QNAP right now?
2tb....
TLC or MLC NAND?
Samsung refers to this as MLC VNAND for the EVO line which is confusing and yes a little shady, it really is TLC but .. Triple-level cells (TLC) and future quad-level cells (QLC) are ALL versions of MLC memory, which can store 3 and 4 bits per cell, respectively. Note that due to the convention, the name "multi-level cell" is sometimes used specifically to refer to the "two-level cell", which is confusing. Overall, the NAND memories are named as follows:
-SLC (1 bit per cell written) - fastest, highest cost
-MLC (2 bits per cell written)
-TLC (3 bits per cell written)
-QLC (4 bits per cell written) - slowest, least cost
Performance
Samsung plays with the MLC moniker for naming which I wish they wouldn't, this NAND is written 3 bits per cell, that's TLC and thus that discussion ends here. Three bits is multiple bits as in Multi as in MLC. Really this is TLC, period. Technologies like TLC and QLC face some challenges writing more bits per cell of NAND, we noticed a dropoff in performance with mixed heavy workloads that exceed writing dozens of gigabytes continuously. After you pass that 80~85 GB of writes (and I do mean continuous sustained/linear writes minute after minute), then the SLC buffer is full and start to write directly to TLC, and then perf drops. After a few minutes or even seconds the SLC cache will have written out and boom, performance is back full speed. This, in a nutshell, is what you need to be aware of with TLC and QLC SSDs. However, the Plus still managed 1.5 GB/sec here in a worst-case scenario which is still ridiculously fast as 'worst performance' metric.
Pricing
At the time of writing, the driver has just started listing, so a rough exchange rate brings the 2TB model to 499 EUR and roughly 599 USD which brings the price per GB towards 25 to 30 cents depending on your currency and local VAT: