Samsung 870 EVO 500GB 2.5″ SSD Review

It's been many years since we featured a Samsung product here on eTeknix, and back then it was their fantastic DDR3 memory! However, today we're looking at one of their latest SSDs, the Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SSD. Promising competitive speeds and prices, it's not the bleeding edge of storage technology. However, there's still a lot to love about SSD storage. It's compact, silent, and these days, it's more affordable and reliable than ever! Samsung 870 EVO 500GB I'll be taking a look at the 500GB model today. However, it's also available in 250GB, 2TB and 4TB. However, the 500TB is likely going to be the most popular and strikes a good balance between capacity and price. Promising speeds that'll max out the SATA limit of 560/530Mbps performance shouldn't be an issue. However, it also comes with Intelligent Turbo Write and Samsung Magician 6 Software, ensuring the drive is well maintained and monitored. Features Interface: achieves the maximum SATA limit of 560/530 MB/s sequential speedsIntelligent Turbo Write: accelerates write speed and maintains long-term high performanceSamsung Magician 6 Software: manage your drive with a range of useful tools to help you keep up with the latest updates, monitor the drive’s health and statusDesigned for anyone with a desktop PC or laptop that supports a standard 2.5-inch SATA form factorAvailable capacity: 500 GB For in-depth specifications, please visit the official Samsung 870 EVO product page here. What Samsung Had to Say "Everyday users can now enjoy professional-level SSD performance with the 870 EVO, which maximizes the SATA interface limit to 560/530 MB/s sequential speeds, accelerates write speeds and maintains long-term high performance with a larger variable buffer that lets the SSD work faster, longer." - Samsung "Meet the demands of each task. From everyday computing to 8K video processing — with up to 300 TBW* under a 5-year limited warranty¹, plus a stable host experience, low lag with the 6th generation VNAND, and steady performance when multi-tasking with the powerful MKX controller." - Samsung A Closer Look The drive comes in a compact and slim box, albeit, that's to be expected given the general size of an SSD. The box fairly simple, with just the product name and warranty information on the box. You'll find the drive is well protected with a plastic mould air gapping it from the cardboard exterior. There's also all the usual documentation in there, which doubles as extra packing material. The drive its self is clean and simple, and I like that. Sure, RGB flair is fun sometimes, but I still prefer a clean and crisp design like this. On the underside, we can see it's the 500GB model, as well as all the usual serial numbers. All the usual standard SATA connectivity hardware here. I quite like the design though, with the top panel and screw mounts all made from a single piece of aluminium. This makes the drive more robust, and of course, it'll also act as a large heatsink for the drive; not that we expect it to ever get overly warm. Preparation The drive will be formatted as NTFS with default settings, as most users will do. The quick format option isn’t used as that might affect the performance the first time data is written. Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something to worry about for regular users. However, for these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drive’s performance with minimal interference from the operating system. Data We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various fillage scenarios. However, depending on how a drive is built, the performance may differ depending on how much data it is already storing. The drive will be tested empty and at 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage for this area. We're using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark for this part of the review. Application and Gaming Besides the synthetic fill tests, the drive is tested with PCMark 10’s storage benchmark to get real-world performance results for various gaming and application usages. Drive Conditioning Durability is a vital factor in NAND-based drives as the chips can only be rewritten so often before they’ll stop working properly. Modern SSDs come with wear-level algorithms to increase the lifetime and reduce this factor as much as possible. Where appropriate, we will test this using Anvil’s Storage Utilities. Following this conditioning process, all of the previous benchmarks will be run again in the same scenarios and the same order. Hardware MSI MEG Z490 GodlikeIntel Core i9-9900KSNvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiCrucial Sport 4 x 8GB 3200MHz DDR4Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSDbe quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W)Noctua NH-D15S Software Anvil's Storage UtilitiesAS SSD BenchmarkATTO BenchmarkCrystalDiskMarkPCMark 10 Storage BenchmarkWindows 10 64 bit Anvil's Storage Benchmark Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a complete benchmark solution used to test any writeable storage drive. AS SSD Storage Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD, and they aren’t using the operating system cache. The copy tests are cached and as such not viable results at this time. ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD and SSD benchmark utility that allows you to measure a drive’s sequential and random performance. All results are MB/s, and higher is better. PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark PCMark 10 also features a storage benchmark test now, replacing the older PCMark 8 benchmark, so it's only fitting that we include this in our reviews too. It gives a general overall score, the higher, the better! PCMark 10 Score - 1486 (Good!) 25%, 50% & 75% Fillage Testing 25% 50% 75% How Much Does it Cost? Now is a great time for buying a new SSD, at just £65 the latest drive from Samsung is excellent value for money. However, while you can get the Samsung 870 EVO for just £65 for the 500GB version, the 250GB version is £48, the 1TB is £118 and the 2TB is £205. However, there's a 4TB model, but I couldn't see accurate pricing information for this. However, £400-500 would be a safe bet. Find stock and prices on Amazon here. Most most modern gaming builds, however, I think the 500GB or the 1TB model will be the most popular. 240 GB just doesn't sound like enough these days, but I'm sure there's a market for it for non-gaming systems. Overview Samsung is one of the biggest and best-respected names in the world. They've got a strong history of high-performance products, and while the 870 EVO isn't setting new world records, it certainly upholds the Samsung reputation. It's not hard to find an SSD that maxes out what SATA has to offer. Thankfully, I'm happy to report that this is one of them, and I saw no issues in any of my testing. Performance A lot of the benefits for this drive come from the addition of Samsung's Intelligent Turbo Write. It's a simple built-in tool that can accelerate the drives write speeds and protect the drive's long-term performance. It's effectively a buffer and will help you maintain the maximum throughput of the drive. That being said, I didn't see any issues with the drive being throttled or bottlenecked. Even when the drive was filled, read and write speeds were consistently maintained. Scores actually increased by a small margin in AS SSD, albeit within a margin for error. Overall though, the drive performed exactly as expected, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that! Build Quality The Samsung 870 EVO comes with a gorgeous aluminium top cover design, making the drive feel like a quality product that should survive a few knocks and bumps. Samsung rate it at 1,500G, duration: 0.5ms, 3 axis shock reliability and 20~2,000Hz, 20G vibration resistance. Of course, the aluminium top also acts as its own heatsink to ensure optimal performance. It features the Samsung MKX Controller, and Samsung V-NAND 3bit MLC across all capacities, so performance should be consistent. The 250GB and 500GB models rely on 512MB LPDDR4 DRAM Cache, increasing for higher capacity models. Samsung rates the drive with 1.5 million hours MTBF and gives the drive a 5-year limited warranty. Should I Buy One? There's no shortage of competitive SSDs on the market today. However, with a reputation as strong as Samsung's, as well as knowing they use their own high-quality V-NAND, with excellent build quality and a great warranty, it's hard not to be impressed with the price of the Samsung 870 EVO 500GB! Samsung 870 EVO 500GB 2.5" SSD