The Samsung 860 Evo came early 2018 and it is still one of the most popular SATA SSDs today. Now comes the successor, the 870 Evo. The SSD is again with 250 and 500 GByte as well as 1, 2 and 4 TByte. Samsung has currently only announced versions in the 2.5-inch case – whether it is the 870 as the predecessor also as M.2-SATA -SSD will give is so far unclear.

Samsung uses for the 870 Evo Flash- Memory with more than a the manufacturer does not name. The company provided us with two SSDs in advance, one with 1 TByte, the other with 4 TByte. Both were a tad faster than their predecessor when writing sequentially with 530 MByte / s; more important, however, is the speed when accessing random addresses. Here both achieved just under reading 100. 000 IOPS, in comparison they were particularly fast with low query depths: Knapp 12. 000 IOPS with a queue depth of 1 are good for a SATA SSD.

Constant write performance The write performance sank in our 4 TByte test sample after filling the 78 GByte SLC caches not, also the 1-TByte model with 42 GByte SLC cache was able to maintain the speed. For the smallest models with 250 and 500 GByte should the write speed drop to 300 MByte / s – at the SLC cache is also significantly smaller. The 870 Evo is very stable under load, the PCMark 10 she just attested 1200 points in the drive consistency test – almost double a used and only 250 GByte 860 Evo and far more than many PCIe SSDs.

The endurance should be sufficient for the vast majority of applications: the SSD may per TByte of storage space within the scope of the five-year guarantee with 600 TByte. A system with SATA SSD does not experience any further acceleration from the 870 Evo, but the SSD is well suited as a replacement for a system hard drive.

The prices announced by Samsung for the SSDs are quite high: The 250 – GByte version should 40 cost euros that 500 he 70 Euro. For the versions with 1, 2 and 4 TByte, Samsung calls 140, 270 or 550 euros. Compared to the 860 Evo, this is around 100 Euro surcharge; however, street prices are likely to fall in the next few weeks.

(ll)