The Samsung 860 QVO (1TB, 4TB) SSD Review: First Consumer SATA QLC
by Billy Tallis on November 27, 2018 11:20 AM ESTThe introduction of four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory continues with Samsung's launch of their first consumer SATA SSD with QLC NAND. The new 860 QVO establishes a new entry-level tier in Samsung's highly successful SSD product family. Unlike previous low-end offerings like the 750 EVO and the plain 850, the 860 QVO is getting a broad release and is here to stay.
Samsung 860 QVO: Koo-vo?
The Samsung 860 QVO is the first of a new wave of SATA SSDs that should be able to beat the prices on even DRAMless TLC-based SSDs thanks to the increased density of QLC NAND—and the 860 QVO itself is equipped with a full-size LPDDR4 DRAM cache.
Samsung 860 QVO Primary Specifications | |||||
Capacity | 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | ||
Form Factor | 2.5" 7mm SATA | ||||
Controller | Samsung MJX | ||||
NAND Flash | Samsung 1Tb 64L 3D QLC | ||||
DRAM (LPDDR4) | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | ||
Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | ||||
Sequential Write |
SLC Cache | 520 MB/s | |||
QLC | 80 MB/s | 160 MB/s | 160 MB/s | ||
Warranty | 3 years | ||||
Write Endurance | 360 TB 0.3 DWPD |
720 TB 0.3 DWPD |
1440 TB 0.3 DWPD |
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MSRP | $149.99 | $299.99 | $599.99 |
Samsung's consumer SATA product line now consists of the 860 QVO, 860 EVO and 860 PRO. The 860 QVO, EVO and PRO all share a common hardware platform based around Samsung's MJX SSD controller and their 64-layer 3D NAND, with the product tiers differing primarily in the number of bits stored per flash memory cell.
The 860 QVO, from the box, is given a write endurace rating equivalent to 0.3 Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD), which even for the 1TB means 300GB a day, every day, which goes above and beyond most consumer workloads. Pricing is set to run at $150 for the smallest 1TB model, up to $600 for the 4TB model, making an equal cost per GB for the full range. It should be noted that the introductory MSRPs for the 860 QVO are not that aggressive in comparison to the record-setting sales we've been seeing on TLC SSDs recently.
MLC vs TLC vs QLC: Why QLC Matters
Two bit per cell MLC as used in the 860 PRO is now quite rare in the consumer SSD market and almost entirely absent from current enterprise SSD, having been largely replaced by three bit per cell TLC as used in the 860 EVO. With each increase in bits stored per cell, performance and write endurance decrease as SSDs need to be more careful to correctly discriminate between voltage levels, now up to 16 for QLC NAND.
While controller advances and other NAND process improvements (especially the switch from planar to 3D NAND) allowed TLC to overcome almost all of its disadvantages relative to MLC, QLC NAND is not expected to do the same. Early projections for QLC NAND called for at most a few hundred program/erase cycles, which would produce drives that would require careful treatment with workload that treated the storage more or less as a write-once, read-many (WORM) media. As QLC got closer to mass production, the story shifted and it became clear that QLC NAND would have adequate endurance for use as general-purpose storage.
Intel and Micron were the first to ship their QLC NAND, initially in the Micron 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD and then in the Intel 660p and Crucial P1 consumer M.2 NVMe SSDs. The 660p and P1 introduced QLC NAND to the consumer SSD market, but as NVMe drives they still carry a price premium over SATA SSDs. However, as mentioned above, the introductory MSRPs for the 860 QVO are not at all aggressive in comparison to the record-setting sales we've been seeing on TLC SSDs recently. Those sales are not due entirely to the holiday season—flash memory prices in general have been crashing now that everyone has their 64-layer NAND in full mass production while PC and smartphone sales have been slowing. Meanwhile, rumors indicate that yields on QLC NAND have been poor, so the true cost is close to that of TLC instead of reflecting the ideal 25% discount per-GB.
Samsung 860 QVO Secondary Specifications | |||||
Capacity | 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | ||
DRAM (LPDDR4) | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | ||
SLC Cache Size |
Min | 6 GB | 6 GB | 6 GB | |
Max | 42 GB | 78 GB | 78 GB | ||
Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | ||||
Sequential Write |
SLC Cache | 520 MB/s | |||
QLC | 80 MB/s | 160 MB/s | 160 MB/s | ||
Random Read IOPS |
QD1 | 7.5k (SLC) 4.4k (QLC) |
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QD32 | 96k (SLC) 36k (QLC) |
97k (SLC) 60k (QLC) |
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Random Write IOPS |
QD1 | 42k (SLC) 21k (QLC) |
42k (SLC) 38k (QLC) |
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QD32 | 89k (SLC) 21k (QLC) |
89k (SLC) 40k (QLC) |
89k (SLC) 42k (QLC) |
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Power | Read | 2.1 W | 2.3 W | 2.3 W | |
Write | 2.2 W | 3.1 W | 3.1 W | ||
Idle | 30 mW | 30 mW | 30 mW | ||
DevSlp | 3 mW | 3.5 mW | 7 mW |
The two main shortcomings of QLC NAND relative to the more mainstream TLC NAND are in write performance and write endurance. Both problems can be alleviated by the use of more NAND total, allowing writes to be spread across more NAND dies in parallel. That and the (hopes of) lower prices make QLC NAND best suited for large capacity SSDs. Thus, the 860 QVO product line starts at 1TB. Even at that capacity, the 860 QVO only needs 8 dies of QLC NAND and can only sustain writes at 80 MB/s. That means that the SLC write cache on the 860 QVO is even more important than for TLC SSDs. When working within the cache, the 860 QVO can saturate the SATA link with random or sequential writes. The cache functions much the same as the SLC cache on the 860 EVO, with a capacity that varies from a minimum of 6 GB when the drive is relatively full, up to 42 GB on the 1TB model or 78 GB on the 2TB and 4TB models. The Intel and Crucial consumer QLC drives also feature variable-size SLC caches but with much higher limits on the maximum cache size and a policy of retaining data in the cache until the drive needs the extra space. By contrast, the 860 QVO seems to take a more typical approach of aggressively flushing the cache during idle time in order to prepare for future bursts of write activity.
The performance specs for the 860 QVO when operating out of the SLC cache are typical for a mainstream SATA SSD. After the cache is full, performance drops significantly, with sequential writes showing the most severe effect. Power consumption is also comparable to Samsung's other recent SATA SSDs, with the 1TB model requiring a little over 2W at peak and the larger models drawing just over 3W during writes. The 2TB and 4TB models have very nearly identical performance and power ratings, indicating that 2TB of QLC is sufficient to populate all the NAND channels of the MJX controller.
The warranty and endurance ratings for the 860 QVO are the other clear area where the use of QLC NAND has its impact. The 860 QVO's warranty period is three years, typical for low-end SSDs but shorter than the 5 years that the 860 EVO and PRO carry. Write endurance is rated for 360 full drive writes, or 0.3 DWPD for the duration of the 3-year warranty. This is comparable to some of the cheaper TLC drives currently on the market, and in terms of total bytes written the 860 QVO's rating is about 80% higher than the Intel 660p and Crucial P1, despite those NVMe QLC drives having the advantage of a five-year warranty.
The 860 QVO's case follows the same basic design as Samsung's other recent SATA SSDs, but is painted dark gray instead of Samsung's traditional black. Internally, the 1TB 860 QVO illustrates how comically oversized even the 2.5" drive form factor is compared to the requirements of modern consumer SSDs. The PCB features three main BGA packages: the DRAM, the controller, and the stack of eight 1TB QLC dies. There's an empty pad on the back that can accommodate another NAND package. Samsung commonly packages up to sixteen NAND dies together, so even the 4 TB QVO may be able to get by with this same small PCB—placing DRAM becomes the more important problem. Samsung states that their current MJX controller supports up to 8TB SSDs, but there's clearly very little demand for consumer SSDs in that capacity yet. The 2.5" form factor itself can now accommodate at least 16TB, or 32TB if two PCBs are stacked in a 15mm thick drive. These capacities may show up in enterprise products, but are probably still several generations away from hitting the consumer SSD market.
Samsung has not announced a M.2 version of the 860 QVO, but that's clearly possible if the demand is there. They can probably fit even the 4TB 860 QVO onto a single-sided 80mm M.2 card.
Samsung 860 Family Price Comparison |
||||||
Capacity | NAND | 250GB 256GB |
500GB 512GB |
1TB | 2TB | 4TB |
860 QVO (MSRP) |
QLC | N/A - |
N/A - |
$149.99 (15¢/GB) | $299.99 (15¢/GB) |
$599.99 (15¢/GB) |
860 EVO | TLC | $55.99 (22¢/GB) | $72.99 (15¢/GB) |
$127.98 (13¢/GB) | $294.88 (15¢/GB) |
$797.99 (20¢/GB) |
860 PRO | MLC | $97.00 (38¢/GB) | $147.00 (29¢/GB) | $284.99 (28¢/GB) | $577.99 (28¢/GB) | $1179.99 (29¢/GB) |
The launch MSRPs for the 860 QVO do not compare favorably against SATA SSDs already on the market. The 860 EVO is currently below the QVO's 15 cents per GB at 1TB and 2TB capacities, and plenty of other mainstream TLC drives are priced similarly. Samsung currently has no competition in the 4TB SATA SSD space, so their 4TB 860 EVO is substantially more expensive per GB, leaving appropriate room below for the 860 QVO. In order to be a strong competitor in the consumer market, the 860 QVO really needs to priced at no more than 13 cents per GB, and that limit is liable to come down further over the next several months as flash memory prices continue to drop and QLC yields improve.
A Note on Our Testing: The Occasional Drive Failure
Samsung provided us with samples of the 1TB and 4TB 860 QVO. Testing the 1TB model went smoothly, but the 4TB 860 QVO has run into some problems causing the drive to disappear from the system interface. These issues are most noticeable when hot-swapping the drive, which is a regular part of our SATA SSD testing routine. There have also been challenges getting the 4TB drive recognized by a motherboard during the boot process, and this causes the boot to stall indefinitely on some of our systems.
It should be noted that our testing regime is fairly streunous, and we sometimes get drive failures. It happens, and only a few of them are ever drive specific.
As a result, these problems do not appear to be specific to the 860 QVO or its use of QLC NAND and have been replicated on both the 4TB 860 EVO and 4TB 860 PRO with multiple host systems, but have not occurred with any of the smaller 860s. The 3.84 TB 860 DCT and the 4TB 850 EVO have also been trouble-free, so this isn't a problem with 4TB SSDs in general. We are still working with Samsung to determine the scope and nature of these issues with the 4TB drives, and it is not yet clear whether there is a general compatibility problem or if our testing procedure has triggered a firmware bug that put our samples permanently into an uncooperative mood.
Because of these issues, some benchmark results for the 4TB drives have been delayed. Performance and price notwithstanding, I am unable to recommend any of the 4TB 860 series SSDs until I have a better understanding of the nature of the problems.
The Competition
There are no other consumer QLC SATA SSDs on the market yet, though ADATA has announced their SU630, which will feature alarmingly low capacities. The Intel 660p and Crucial P1 are the only other consumer QLC SSDs currently available, but they are priced for the NVMe market. Most of the competition for the 860 QVO will come from SATA SSDs with TLC NAND, both entry-level models with DRAMless controllers (eg. Toshiba TR200) and more mainstream models like the 860 EVO, Crucial MX500 and WD Blue. Almost all SATA SSD product lines feature a 1TB class model, but there are still relatively few 2TB models and no 4TB competitors have been announced. This will likely change as other QLC drives come to market, and even 2TB TLC drives have been getting more common this year.
AnandTech 2018 Consumer SSD Testbed | |
CPU | Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5 |
Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC |
Chipset | Intel C232 |
Memory | 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15 |
Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz |
Software | Windows 10 x64, version 1709 |
Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.6 | |
Spectre/Meltdown microcode and OS patches current as of May 2018 |
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E3 1240 v5 CPU
- Thanks to ASRock for the E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
- Thanks to G.SKILL for the Ripjaws DDR4-2400 RAM
- Thanks to Corsair for the RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler
- Thanks to Quarch for the XLC Programmable Power Module and accessories
- Thanks to StarTech for providing a RK2236BKF 22U rack cabinet.
109 Comments
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Santoval - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
"Right now there is exactly zero reason to choose it over the EVO. The 500GB EVO costs about $130 US where I'm from, there's very little incentive for me to buy it given the "inflated" price."Assuming the 500GB EVO actually costs as much as the 1TB EVO in your country (I'm frankly skeptical about this, but let's take you at your word) what makes you thing that the 1TB QVO will not in turn cost as much as the 2TB QVO?
Are you seriously suggesting that your country's taxmen or tariffmen are going to place much lower taxes/tariffs on QLC based SSDs than one TLC based SSDs?
Lolimaster - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
Import the 1TB from Amazon, you can do that to any south american country.Impulses - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
Even at 25% cheaper than an EVO it would barely beat the (current) best sale price of other mainstream TLC SSD... And TLC is probably not going away any time soon. I'd love to see the price gap reach 25%+ sooner rather than later tho.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
It may be that companies are hoping for higher margin. It is not impossible for that to happen. CDs, for example, were a higher margin product than the LPs they replaced.If supply of TLC shrinks, as companies move to QLC production, the competition between TLC and QLC also shrinks, making room, potentially, for more margin.
Amandtec - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
The yields are poor at the moment so there is no point selling them low. It has a big effect on your share price if you release new game changing technology like QLC to market, because shareholders are sophisticated and understand the long term term strategy here.moozooh - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
> The yields are poor at the moment so there is no point selling them low.I think you misunderstand: there's no point *buying them high*. The only point of these drives is buying them low. So not selling them low means *not selling them*, period.
Customers may not be shareholders, but they aren't idiots, either. They understand QLC is a step down in almost every aspect of the drive's operation. It's an inferior product, and the price needs to reflect that for it to be considered for purchase.
jjj - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Actually , R&D is surprisingly low compared to the revenue generated and, aside from that, they might be close enough to 5 cents per GB production costs now for QLC so if there is a global economic crash caused by Trump and his tariffs, we could see 50$ per TB in half a year from now.Otherwise, could be 2020-2021 for that kind of price, especially if China manages to ramp output.
NAND prices are down a bit from peak but folks still have 40-50% overall NAND margins,there is room for much lower prices and production costs decline 15-25% per year.
R0H1T - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
>they might be close enough to 5 cents per GB production costs now for QLCSure but that's at least 6~12 months away from now. So how can anyone realistically expect Samsung to debut the QVO at such prices given there's no competition (SATA QLC) nor any reason for Samsung to not make hay while the sun shines? For anyone who says the $130 US for 1TB EVO is the normal price, it's not in the ROTW.
sonny73n - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
“Yeah no one's selling you 8TB for $400 anytime soon. Aside from the fact that the R&D costs for QLC need to be recuperated first & companies need to reinvest an increasing amount for future development, there's also a point after which it doesn't make sense for the SSD, or NAND, maker to sell these at a loss.If you really want something that big, for dirt cheap, try spinners instead.”
You sound like a Samsung shill. If HDD manufacturers decide to keep on R&D for those spinners, are you willing to pay extra for their future development? Beside, SSD tech has been around for a decade, now it costs less to make an SSD than to make an HDD for the same capacity.
R0H1T - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
>You sound like a Samsung shill.Oh sure let's all forget the aftermath of the Thai floods ~ insane prices, insane quality (as in really bad) w/warranties as low as just a year long! So while the HDD makers sat on their collective behind, much like Intel, the SSD makers out paced them, out innovated(?) them & could make spinners virtually obsolete, except bottom of the barrel 5400/5900 rpm drives especially in $/GB.
So let's see, arguing for higher prices because R&D is an ever increasing (one time) cost that needs to be recuperated, is shilling now? Do you also want me to feel sad because vacuum tubes are dead or that NAND prices will continue to fall, in the foreseeable future?