
Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB - artsandsci
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12670/the-samsung-970-evo-ssd-review
======
jerf
On an only sort-of related note, has anyone found a USB (or anything else
external) adapter that can read these yet?

I know why it's hard, and I know about the ones that read that form factor but
not NVMe drives, and why that is. Just curious if my searches are coming up
dry because they don't exist or because they're getting flooded by the results
that match the search but don't work.

I enjoy the performance of the drive I have but it makes me nervous that the
only thing in my house that can read it is the laptop it is in. If push came
to shove I could create some options, but the best would be a stand-alone
reader, like you can get for basically every other kind of storage tech.

~~~
eumoria
As another user stated Startech makes one and I use it as a technician. It's
not fast at all... it's mainly for recovery when you don't have a motherboard
with an available M.2 slot you can still pull the data off it.

For that purpose it does the trick. The drive is capable of speeds 100x above
USB 3.0 so there really isn't good to use that bus for anything other than
emergency.

\- Here is an image of the circuit it uses (ASM1163E Controller)
[https://i.imgur.com/ZmwppR4.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ZmwppR4.jpg)

\- I can't find that IC anywhere but here's the closest thing:
[http://images.100y.com.tw/pdf_file/35-Asmedia-
ASM1042A.pdf](http://images.100y.com.tw/pdf_file/35-Asmedia-ASM1042A.pdf)

PCI-E to USB 3.0 host bridge. Hopefully that helps.

~~~
kevarh
Do you have a product number for the Startech adapter? The reviews I can find
for current products say they do not work with the PCIe based Evo SSDs.

> PCI-E to USB 3.0 host bridge

Close, but this is the other direction, from PCI to USB.

~~~
kevarh
No cigar, it's a USB -> SATA interface, the newer drives would need a USB ->
PCIe.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170706000700/http://www.asmedi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170706000700/http://www.asmedia.com.tw/eng/e_show_products.php?cate_index%3D97%26item%3D133)

------
whitepoplar
Do these drives feature power-loss capacitors? I'm still wondering why most
manufacturers think it's okay to offer SSDs that lose data on power loss (!!)

~~~
nine_k
I really wonder why a $10 capacitor add-on (a capacitor, a diode, two
connectors) plugged in between main board power supply and a disk power
receptacle is not a common item.

Or maybe it is, but I have no idea?

~~~
marshray
A common minimum voltage requirement for the nominal +5V supply is 4.5 V.
Let's assume a voltage below that won't damage the drive, but it won't
operate.

The diode is going to drop 0.6V, leaving you with only 4.4 V max for the
drive. Then the capacitor is going to immediately start dropping in voltage as
soon as you start pulling the stored energy out of it.

So, in practice, to do a quality job of this it will probably need a DC-DC
converter. These aren't necessarily expensive, but definitely more complicated
than the old diode trick.

~~~
nine_k
This makes sense! OTOH low-drop diodes do exist [1], and the drive likely
needs just a (small) fraction of a second to flush the caches; it's SSD, not
need to wait for the disk to rotate to the right position or move heads. I
suppose the power loss signal from the controller still propagates, even if
the computer's PSU plug is just yanked out of socket.

[1]:
[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/282471/9909](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/282471/9909)

~~~
londons_explore
The caches on some SSD's can be multiple gigabytes.

They also frequently cache data which can be difficult (slow) to write, for
example a single modified 4kb page which is part of a large unmodified area.
Completing that write would involve reading the original data, erasing the
entire erase-block, and rewriting the new data.

SSD's with built in power loss prevention typically reserve an area on the SSD
which is pre-erased ready to dump the contents of the cache into. Then on
powerup, they reload the cache and properly flush the data to the actual place
it's supposed to be.

------
joenathanone
I really wish there was a little more effort put into this "article", the 970
PRO and EVO spec tables aren't very useful. They would be a lot more helpful
if they included the 960 versions for direct comparison or even if they were
side by side so the EVO and PRO could be directly compared.

------
veesahni
real benchmarks are here: [https://hothardware.com/reviews/samsung-
ssd-970-evo-and-pro-...](https://hothardware.com/reviews/samsung-ssd-970-evo-
and-pro-review)

------
gautamb0
Hoping this reduces used 960 EVO/PRO prices. Not a whopping improvement.

~~~
MrMember
I bought a 500GB 960 EVO on sale for $200 last week. Now I know why it was on
sale.

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baldfat
I just changed my work video editing workstation order. I will have two 970
EVO NVMe for my OS and Project drives. There actually is a bottle next with
raw 4K, 5K and 8K Video and playing it in an editor.

~~~
copperx
I'm curious about the specs required to edit raw 4K video. What's your
workstation order like?

~~~
baldfat
Here is a great article for Davinci Resolve (Industry standard for color
grading) [https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-
Resolve-1...](https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-
Resolve-14-GPU-Scaling-Core-i9-vs-Xeon-W-vs-Dual-Xeon-SP-1121/#4KMedia-
LivePlaybackFPS\(RAWDATA\))

The issue is after you have done a few processes on the video for color
balance and grade things can just grind to a halt.

~~~
Rafuino
I searched through the article and didn't see much discussion at all on
storage as a bottleneck. If it actually is a bottleneck, is color grading more
of a sequential or random data access workload?

------
rhn_mk1
The PRO table doesn't specify any RAM in it. Does it mean that it's not going
to lose data on power loss?

~~~
garmaine
SLC caching, so hopefully not? But I think you’d have to test this.

~~~
amluto
I have no idea whether Samsung uses it, but the NVMe spec allows a device to
request use of _host_ memory for caching. It’s considered a low-end feature,
since it’s slow and inherently volatile. It’s called “host memory buffer” for
those who are curious.

~~~
ahjaiM7r
Volatile is ok, as long as it honors barrier commands.

~~~
amluto
I think the bigger issues are bandwidth and power consumption. If software is
doing heavy IO, it doesn’t really want to have to contend with the HMB for
PCIe and memory bandwidth.

Also, a DRAM chip is a DRAM chip. I’d rather pay a couple dollars for a local
DRAM chip in the NVMe device than a couple dollars for extra host RAM that
will be permanently reserved for the HMB.

~~~
rhn_mk1
The heavy IO case is addressed by write-back characteristic of block devices.
In the end, the cache is in host RAM regardless of the underlying device type.

~~~
amluto
I think you may be misunderstanding the issue. A flash controller that tries
to look like a block device needs to manage a mapping between logical and
physical blocks along with various other pieces of metadata. The on-flash
representation needs to be structured in a flash-friendly way, which often
means that it’s not efficient to find the metadata needed to process an IO
request unless that metadata is cached in memory.

On an HMB device, the metadata will be cached in _host_ memory, which will
likely adversely affect performance and power efficiency.

------
baybal2
White plastic on a controller microchip? Few month ago I saw an orange chips
on Mediatek devkit.

A new trend it seems?

~~~
jhpankow
Well it is a 3D rendering, and that color might suggest the device has a metal
heat spreader not a colored plastic molding.

~~~
joezydeco
The Anandtech review says it's nickel plated. The sticker is also a copper
heat spreader:

"The Samsung Phoenix controller introduces a nickel-coated heatspreader, and
the 970 EVO retains the copper foil layer in the label on the back of the
drive that was introduced with the 960 generation, but there are no more
serious cooling measures on the drive."

~~~
baybal2
Oh, I'm such an inattentive reader.

------
Everlag
For those looking, here's the full anandtech review that also came out today.
[0]

@dang maybe change the link as the review is a superset of the announcement.

[0] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12670/the-samsung-970-evo-
ssd...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12670/the-samsung-970-evo-ssd-review)

~~~
dang
Sure, changed from [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12674/samsung-
announces-970-p...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12674/samsung-
announces-970-pro-and-970-evo-nvme-ssds). Thanks!

(It's best to email hn@ycombinator.com to tell us things, though — I only saw
this by accident.)

