Do you remember SATA? We are not talking much more about the older storage standard, not since M.2 became popular, but there are still a large number of SATA SSDs on the market. Samsung’s 870 EVO SSD family is the latest version of Samsung hardware serving in that market, and several reviews today testify to the overall effectiveness of the product.
The question of whether to use a SATA versus an M.2 SSD is an interesting example of an area where benchmarks can be accurate and yet not convey the experience of using a product. The practical differences between the daily use of an M.2 and a SATA disk are unnoticed. If your daily usage patterns include a lot of copy data, you will probably benefit from an M.2, but if not, you can sometimes save money and maximize the available capacity by opting for a SATA disk. A casing of 2.5 offerings offers much more space for NAND ICs than an M.2 stick.
We rounded up reviews from PCMag, PCWorld and Hot Hardware to see what people have to say. Everyone on the board praises this new family. The 870 EVO is based on Samsung’s triple-bit (TLC) V-NAND and starts with a capacity of 250 GB ($ 49), 500 GB ($ 80), 1 TB ($ 139), 2 TB ($ 269 ) and 4 TB ($ 529). The price per GB varies from 20 cents on the 250 GB disk to 13 cents on the 4 TB disk. All of these drives have a five-year warranty.
Image by PCMaghttps: //www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-ssd-870-evo
One reason to buy a SATA SSD as opposed to an M.2 drive is the difference in price. Looking back at previous drives, Samsung’s 1TB 860 EVO 2.5 ″ SSD is $ 109 at Newegg, while its M.2 counterpart – which also uses SATA 6G signal, even if it fits into an M.2 slot – $ 149 is. Although M.2 chips will perform better than their SATA counterparts, the difference in commercial software may not be large. (Artificial tests on consecutive read / write performance will always favor M.2 drivers).
According to PCMag, “[T]he has proven Samsung SSD 870 EVO not only as a leader among SATA drives, but also as a regular competitor to both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 based NVMe M.2 drives. While both of these standards are excellent for what they do (to hit consecutive continuous records), the added bandwidth may not always translate to better 4K random read and write counts, which is a large percentage of SSD buyers in this category . tends to care for most. ”
The performance figures they refer to can be seen below:
Separately, PCWorld notes that while the 870 EVO and 870 QVO offer similar performance in many respects, the 870 EVO can keep its performance high, even when writing large single files. The 870 QVO is a QLC NAND drive that relies on an SLC case to keep performance at acceptable levels. This is a common method to improve SSD performance when using QLC NAND, but once the SLC memory runs out, the performance of the disk drops significantly.
Image by PCWorld
The 870 EVO does not have this problem. Again, how often you encounter this depends on how many large file entries you make frequently, but these are the scenarios where an MLC or TLC disk is visible on a QLC + SLC cache device.
In this case, the conclusions are simple. Hot Hardware writes: ‘If you need a high-capacity SATA SSD and perform best and want something from a reputable brand with a long-standing record in space, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO series should be on top your shortlist. PCWorld says: “The Samsung 870 EVO is easily the best in its class and a top performer in any class in all usage scenarios.” PCMag writes that the 870 EVO “should be at the top of everyone’s list of those who want the best combination of performance, product quality and price in a 2.5-inch.”
If you’re trying to figure out if you want to buy a SATA SSD or an M.2 SSD, here’s ExtremeTech’s advice: if you are satisfied with the I / O performance of your current SATA SSD, do not be afraid be a few dollars by opting for SATA, especially if you need to cut costs or if you want to put the money in a better CPU or GPU. If you want to maximize capacity and are happy with the current performance, do not be afraid to opt for a larger SATA disk over a smaller M.2. If you are still sitting on an old-fashioned hard drive and do not want to upgrade anymore because SATA is old and your motherboard does not support M.2, forget it and buy yourself a SATA SSD. Switching from an HDD to an SSD is one of the few guaranteed ways to improve the performance of even an old machine.
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