The Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on July 11, 2016 10:00 AM ESTSequential Read Performance
The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The 4TB 850 EVO scores slightly better than the 2TB for sequential reads, but it is still a hair slower than the fastest drives.
Samsung's large drives draw a lot of power during the sequential read test, but at least the 4TB 850 EVO improves over the 2TB and 1TB 850 EVOs.
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The 4TB 850 EVO does not suffer from the modestly impaired QD1 performance of the 2TB model, but for the rest of the test the 4TB is slightly slower than the other two.
Sequential Write Performance
The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The 4TB 850 EVO manages to just barely break the record of the 1TB 850 Pro for the fastest sequential write speeds at low queue depths.
With the fastest performance and the fourth-lowest power usage, the 4TB comes out on top for efficiency.
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The 4TB 850 EVO shows substantially better QD1 performance and slightly better QD2 performance than the 2TB 850 EVO while having power consumption that is more in line with the 850 Pro.
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Eden-K121D - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Too Expensive. $999 would have been a sweet spot and a potential option for meZak - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
The price will come down. Eventually.Ratman6161 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Doesn't really mater if the price goes down, its still a niche product. The EVO's are great general purpose desktop drives. But the people who need a general purpose desktop drive, mostly don't need 4TB and would not buy one at $500 let alone at $1500. In my case, I've got a 250GB Evo and a 1 TB spinning disk for storage of music, pictures, video etc. So I guess a cheap enough 2 TB SSD could work for me just because it would be marginally easier to not have two separate chunks of storage to deal with...but thats just a marginal increase in convienience. The stuff I have on a spinning disk doesn't really need the performance of an SSD anyway.I know, now someone will jump in with "well I sure need that 4 TB" but I still say that isn't the norm. I really don't believe they will sell very many of these compared to the 1 TB and below even if the price comes down.
Meteor2 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I don't need it. But it's exciting to see this progress in SSDs. It'll take a while but mass production will bring the price/size ratio down.Impulses - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
OTOH lack of competition will probably counter that to an extent... But I'm glad it exists too, if nothing else it might mean more sales on the 2TB. :pleexgx - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
was so funny when i clicked on 25% OP, but really the extra OP is really only needed for places where your writing constantly as normally the drive is Trimmed (most SSD/HDDs life is read then write, unless in a server setup that does lots of writes) the drives normal hidden OP is what 400-500MB ?beginner99 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Agree. This shows that HDDs are here to stay for another decade. The same for 4 TB in form of a HDD can be had for about $130. So that 1/10th of the SSD price and as you said for media files, you don't need an SSD at all.Impulses - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Another decade? That seems like a stretch unless you're hoarding BD tips and the like... A decade ago we didn't even have SSDs.joex4444 - Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - link
If you have 4TB of stuff to store and it's mostly media that is accessed infrequently, it would only make sense to buy a 4TB SSD over a 4TB HDD if the prices are comparable. We've technically had SSDs for decades, it's just that they used to be in the millions of dollars per drive rather than $100 or so. Exactly how production will change to make 4TB drives cheaper isn't clear. It could be that we've already reached the lowest price per GB and all that remains is to have that scale linearly. This would mean that if 250GB drives cost $60, then a 4TB drive should cost 16 times that, or $960. Maybe some kind of discount could bring it into the $750 range, but in order to get down to $130 we need significant changes. That would put a 250GB drive on the order of $25.JimmiG - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Of course it's not "needed" right now, but it's nice to see progress. The 6 GB HDD I used in my Pentium system was plenty at the time - I didn't "need" those fancy new 20 GB drives...