The Samsung 860 PRO (512GB And 4TB) SSD Review: Replacing A Legend
by Billy Tallis on January 23, 2018 10:00 AM ESTSequential Read Performance
Our first test of sequential read performance uses short bursts of 128MB, issued as 128kB operations with no queuing. The test averages performance across eight bursts for a total of 1GB of data transferred from a drive containing 16GB of data. Between each burst the drive is given enough idle time to keep the overall duty cycle at 20%.
The burst sequential read speeds of the 860 PROs are good but not record setting, and the differences between the SATA drives are all dwarfed by the performance of the NVMe drive.
Our test of sustained sequential reads uses queue depths from 1 to 32, with the performance and power scores computed as the average of QD1, QD2 and QD4. Each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB transferred, from a drive containing 64GB of data.
With the exception of the 500GB 850 EVO, all of the Samsung SATA drives in this bunch offer about the same sustained sequential read speed. These drives have a substantial advantage over the competing drives, which are led by the Intel 545s at about 85 MB/s slower than the 860 PRO.
The two Samsung 860 PROs have the clear lead for power efficiency during sequential reads, above even the fast PM981 NVMe drive.
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The sequential read speed of the Samsung 860 PROs starts out quite close to the SATA limit, but they don't actually reach it until QD4. After that point, they are completely steady while the competing drives tend to be both slower and less consistent.
Sequential Write Performance
Our test of sequential write burst performance is structured identically to the sequential read burst performance test save for the direction of the data transfer. Each burst writes 128MB as 128kB operations issued at QD1, for a total of 1GB of data written to a drive containing 16GB of data.
Both models of the Samsung 860 PRO show a bit of a regression on the burst sequential write test, with the 4TB 860 PRO coming in at 13 MB/s slower than the 4TB 850 EVO, and the 512GB 860 PRO is behind the 512GB 850 PRO by twice that margin.
Our test of sustained sequential writes is structured identically to our sustained sequential read test, save for the direction of the data transfers. Queue depths range from 1 to 32 and each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB, followed by up to one minute of idle time for the drive to cool off and perform garbage collection. The test is confined to a 64GB span of the drive.
The sustained sequential write speeds of the Samsung 860 PRO are slightly lower than some of the 850s, but not noticeably. Only the Intel 545s and SanDisk Ultra 3D are slow enough to really care about.
The power efficiency of the 860 PRO continues to be a huge improvement over the 850s, with the 512GB 860 PRO taking a big lead over everything else in its class.
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Most of the SATA drives are at full speed by QD2 or QD4, but the SanDisk Ultra 3D takes a bit longer to get up to speed and the Crucial MX300 can't maintain that speed. Once they've all (mostly) plateaued at the same performance level, it is clear that the 860 PRO requires less power than any of its competitors or predecessors.
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WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Impressive drive. We've definitely hit the point where the SATA bottleneck prevents any serious performance improvements. Looks like the 860 EVO nearly matches the PRO's speeds (at least on paper) and costs 33% less at all capacities. It seems like the trend will continue of recommending the latest Samsung EVO drive to anyone who needs a SATA SSD and people with extra money to spend can upgrade to the PRO. Almost no reason to buy any other drives unless you can find them at ridiculous sale prices.generaldwarf - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
the 860 evo is 33% cheaper and 50% less endurant = 860 pro is cheaper on the long runDanNeely - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Unless you're doing insanely high write levels (for anything in the consumer/prosumer space) both drives will probably fail in 5-10 years of old age without coming anywhere near their endurance limits. The pro just has extra overkill on that number.Flunk - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Definitely, for client loads you're not going to hit that write endurance before the drive dies from something else.But if the Samsung 860 PRO dies within 10 years it's still under warranty. I recently had a 4.5 year old Samsung 840 PRO die on me and Samsung shipped me an essentially brand new 850 PRO as a replacement. The EVO comes with a 5 year warranty, which while good, is not as good.
DanNeely - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
The 860pro is down to the same 5 years as the 860 EVO.chrcoluk - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
My 850 pro almost died at 4 years and 10 months (mirroring your view that a 5 year warranty is pushing it close).Sent to samsung RMA, they ran what was clearly a very basic test only (they completed RMA testing in just 40 mins according to status page) and returned as non faulty.
They returned a drive that was randomly not appearing at post and had corrupted boot files as non faulty. I didnt trust it so put it in a spare rig, installed windows on it, and ran some i/o tests, on the first test it locked up during heavy i/o load. After giving it a while to recover I rebooted and the drive was gone in bios, but this time it hasnt recovered at all now seemingly completely dead.
For the curious the erase cycles are extremely low only 40 or so erase cycles, data written was at over 20TB, nowhere near the 150TB warranty.
Given these figures I would say a higher amount of years on the warranty is far more valuable than a higher TBW limit, so the 860 pro's are a nerf. The fact samsung are no longer willing to offer 10 years on their pro units is quite telling. If the 10 year policy wasnt costing them money then they wouldnt mind doing it, which must mean the failure rate at 4+ years is high enough to warrant the change.
Alistair - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
MX500 is cheaper, performs almost the same. And they actually provide warranty service in Canada properly, unlike Samsung.Check this forum:
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/has-anyone-dealt-s...
Samus - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Yeah, hard to ignore the MX500 and BX300 (if looking for a smaller capacity drive) because they are so easy to find, inexpensive, and the support is solid. I’ve had great luck with crucial/Micron drives, especially models with Marvell controllers, for nearly a decade. I’ll never forget when I installed the C300 in my laptop in 2010, my first experience with 500MB/sec data transfers and 5 second windows startups.Samus - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
The long run of what? By the time the drive warranty is up SATA will go the way of PATA/IDE. Does anybody seriously think SATA will be around in 5 years? We already have consumer hard drives bottlenecked by SATA2!smilingcrow - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I fully expect SATA3 to be still around in 5 years. Hard Drives and even DVDs aren't going away and it would seem pointless to replace SATA for those types of devices as it offers sufficient bandwidth for years to come.