Samsung SSD 970 EVO
The Samsung 970 EVO series was released in 2018, but it still stands as the latest series from Samsung in its NVMe drive. Since then there has been the “EVO Plus” series, and we’d love to get one of those to review. The 970 EVO is an M.2 NVMe 1.3 PCI-Express 3.0 x4 (Gen3x4) SSD. It has drive sizes up to 2TB in storage size. This is accomplished using more dense packaging. The exact model we are reviewing today is the MZ-V7E1T0BW (1,000 GB) model. It is currently $179.80 on Amazon.
Memory
The 970 EVO series uses 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory. In fact, Samsung can support 2TB of NAND technology memory on just one side of the drive thanks to its 512Gb die that can put 1TB in a single BGA package. The 1TB model we have for review today uses 256Gb dies in two 512GB BGA packages on one side of the drive. Literally all of the circuitry and chips are on just one side.
The memory type used is TLC (3-bit MLC.) Samsung has thankfully given us a DRAM cache on board to mitigate the degradation associated with TLC. The LPDDR4 DRAM size is dependent on the storage size. The 250GB and 500GB drives have 512MB of DRAM, the 1GB storage size we have has 1GB of DRAM, and the 2TB version has 2GB of DRAM.
The Samsung 970 EVO is also smart in that it has Samsung Intelligent Turbowrite Technology which is an SLC write cache to help performance. On the 1TB model, we are reviewing the dedicated SLC write cache is 6GB and it has a dynamic SLC write cache of 36GB. The 2TB model also has a 6GB dedicated write cache, but a 72GB dynamic cache. The 500GB and 250GB model have 4GB of dedicated cache, with the 500GB model having 18GB of dynamic cache and the 250GB model has 9GB of the dynamic cache.
Rated Speed
On the 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB models the rated sequential read speed is 3400MB/s. The 2TB model is rated at 3500MB/s.
The sequential write speed also varies by the storage capacity. The 250MB model can write up to 1500MB/s, the 500GB model can write up to 2300MB/s and the 1TB and 2TB models can write up to 2500MB/s.
Therefore, the 1TB model we are reviewing today can read at 3400MB/s and write at 2500MB/s. In terms of Random Read (4KB, QD32) the 1TB model can hit up to 500,000 IOPS. In Random Read (4KGB, QD1) up to 15,000 IOPS. In Random Write (4KB, QD32) it is up to 450,000 IOPS. In Random Write (4KB, QD1) up to 50,000 IOPS.
Features
All of this achieved thanks to the Samsung Phoenix Controller onboard. This controller uses a PCIe Gen3 interface and has 8 channels for NAND flash. The controller has dedicated support for host-side communication and supports the latest features of NVMe 1.3. This is a very high-end controller and ensures the best possible host performance.
The 970 EVO supports TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. as well as AES 256-bit Encryption and Garbage Collection with a device sleep mode. This is an M.2 2280 internal SSD NVMe PCIe solid state drive. The average rated power consumption at the system level for the 1TB model average 6W and maximum 10W. The idle power consumption is 30mW and the sleep mode power draw is 5mW. The drive can operate between 0-70c before throttling. It has a MTBF of 1.5 million hours and on the 1TB model, and a 5 year warranty or 600 TBW.