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  • Sabresiberian - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    Always glad to see someone step in with a different controller than the majority have, and see it perform very well. Good job Corsair!

    I have to say, the price/performance is excellent and I'm very tempted to replace the 840 Pro as the choice for my next build. That being said, what I really hope it does at this point is cause Samsung to drop the price of the 840 Pro lineup.
  • extide - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    I wouldn't expect much of any change-up in the market as these drives have already been out for a few months. They are not brand new at this point.
  • Sabresiberian - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Heh well I wasn't implying there would or even should be any kind of change-up, I'm just saying I want competition to stay alive as long as possible, and if everyone jumps onto one controller from one source the only competition point will more rapidly come down to just price.

    The differences are basically controller, NAND, and price, in today's consumer market, and frankly I'd like to see controllers in particular get a lot better. They are good at pumping out high peak numbers, but consistency and even reliability just aren't there yet, in my opinion. (I mean reliability in terms of getting a bug-free controller, not in terms of life of the SSD.)
  • Flying Goat - Thursday, January 3, 2013 - link

    Hmmm...The Samsung 840 Pro 512GB has dropped by at least $100 in the past month. Not making any claims about the reason for that.
  • Drazick - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    Hi,
    Why don't you update your Google+ Page?

    Thank You.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    What's Google+?
  • Snotling - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    google it, you'll know.
  • Sabresiberian - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Google+ is an even less secure version of Facebook.

    If you like Google laying claim to every word you say, then by all means sign up for it.
  • blanarahul - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    When are you going to review lower capacity models of 840 Pro and 840?

    Nice review though.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    I have a 128GB and 512GB 840 Pros but we are still waiting for additional 840 capacities.
  • nedjinski - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    I wish you could somehow get Mushkin SSD's into the mix :)
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    I've asked Mushkin for review samples several times but for some unknown reason, they have never sent us any. And yes, I've tried emailing them again and again but I haven't gotten any replies...
  • Mumrik - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    That's weirdly worrying.

    AT isn't exactly a small hardware-grabbing site.
  • ICBM - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    It was mentioned that the LAMD controller isn't in the same class as Vector/840Pro, however it seems like it only loses a couple of benchmarks. The others it is winning or just slightly behind. So is it really not up to par with OCZ and Samsung? Would the average user, heck scratch that. Would the most avid enthusiast know the difference between an 840 Pro and a Neutron GTX running in their system?
  • Beenthere - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    In actual use no one is likely to be able to tell the difference in performance between a SATA 2 drive compared to a SATA 3, let alone between the recent crop of SATA 3 SSDs.

    People should do their homework before jumping in to an SSD. If you chose to go forward at least you'll know which drives to definitely avoid and which ones are the cheapest. Don't assume because an SSD is a familair brand name that it is either reliable nor fully compatible because you may be in for quite a rude awakening. It's foolish to pay more based on some perceived benefit in benchmarks when it means nothing in actual use.
  • Denithor - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    This is very true.

    I switched from a 120GB Intel 320 (SATA 2) to a 180GB Intel 330 (SATA 3) and the only difference I could see/feel was the increased capacity of the new drive. Boot times were nearly identical, apps open at the same speeds, no discernible improvement from the upgrade.
  • hammer256 - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - link

    Those consistency results are pretty remarkable. From newegg reviews, however, it appears to have a bimodal distribution of 5's and 1's, but the sample size is pretty small. Still, I wonder how good their QC is...
  • skytrench - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Not really, the consistency tests on a 100% full and 100% fragmented drive with nonstop 4k random writes, doesn't reflect reality. You wouldn't even allow your ZFS filesystem to reach that state! Some better test should be devised.
  • nushydude - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    which SSD to get strictly for OS, applications and games? i think Neutron GTX is too much because i won't be writing much data. a Samsung 840 should suffice? i want better performance than a 120GB Kingston HyperX (original one) btw.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Simple, use the light workload storage benchmarks and select any drive that performs better than your current SSD.

    I'll even be really nice and provide you with a link. :-)
    http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/269
  • infoilrator - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Better in what way?
    Perceived, benchmark, or price?
    Raid0 with another Kingston might be the most cost effective.
    The SAMSUNG 840 certainly offers a lot for the price
  • celestialgrave - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Guess I'll be sticking with my Agility 3 a while longer in the laptop, until someone releases a more frugal powered ssd with good performance.
  • lmcd - Monday, December 24, 2012 - link

    ... Samsung 840 sips. Doesn't Sandforce take a lot of power?
  • lmcd - Monday, December 24, 2012 - link

    Whoops, nvm

    well, OCZ 4 series does better than 3 series, either way. And Samsung's results may be faked, as per Oxford Guy's comments.
  • pattycake0147 - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    Why did you choose different scales on the graphs for the final set of consistency graphs? Some top at 50,000 iops and others top at 40,000 iops this makes looking at comparisons more difficult. Even the same drive (840 Pro) has a different scale for the standard and 25% OP graphs.
  • Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 21, 2012 - link

    I was aware of this. At first 40K IOPS was enough but when we started including 25% OP tests, many SSDs managed over 40K IOPS so it was obvious that the scale had to be extended. I'll try to make all graphs 50K IOPS for the next review - Anand has done most of the tests so I couldn't create new graphs for this one.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, December 21, 2012 - link

    Anandtech should expose Samsung's lies, regarding the load power usage of their SSDs.

    It certainly does not here:

    "the 840 Pro boasts incredibly low power consumption both at idle and under load"

    Perhaps, but the actual usage is much higher than Samsung's packaging claim.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6328/samsung-ssd-840...

    Or here:

    "Until we get lower capacity drives it's impossible to tell how much the power consumption story will change."

    How convenient it was for Samsung to only provide a 512 GB unit.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4863/the-samsung-ssd...

    Let's see what Samsung claims with their "full specs" page:
    http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/...

    .13W — miraculous!

    And, let's see what Samsung provided Newegg for its 512 GB drive, eh?

    Power consumption idle: .008W
    Power consumption load: .13W

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    People have routinely cited Samsung's "efficient" design, citing these false numbers, in comparisons with other drives. This has to stop. Anandtech, you have a responsibility to report on this, not cover for them.

    Let's see what the 840 512's "full specs" are, eh?

    http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/...

    Well, Samsung certainly learned their lesson thanks to Anandtech. They've raised the power consumption to .15W!
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, December 21, 2012 - link

    Oh, and let's take a look at the numbers Samsung provided Newegg for the 512 GB 840, shall we?

    power consumption idle: 0.054W
    power consumption load: 0.069W
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, December 21, 2012 - link

    OCZ has felt heat from Anandtech over its sleazy practice of changing the NAND of its drives from 32-bit to 64-bit without changing the specs on the packaging.

    Why not Samsung? The 830 has the highest power consumption in this latest roundup, and yet did Anandtech compare the claimed .13W power usage to the actual power usage?

    "Until we get lower capacity drives it's impossible to tell how much the power consumption story will change."

    How about "This 512 GB drive uses vastly more power than Samsung claims it does. We are going to find out just how much the lower-capacity drives use and write a story about these serious discrepancies."?

    That would have been more appropriate.
  • derGhostrider - Saturday, December 22, 2012 - link

    What is your problem "Oxford Guy"?
    Almost noone cares about power consumption of 1W or 3W or 0.15W for a SSD, except when you try to build an ultra durable ultra-book or tablet PC.

    But even then you have to consider that the Samsung 840 pro has the lowest "disk busy time" of all SSDs tested so far.
    So it uses more power during its active time but it shortens this time to a minimum.

    Take a calculator! It won't be that bad compared to others that use less power but twice as long.

    And, if you really care about this little secondary detail that much: Take another SSD that offers the lowest overall power consumption. It won't be that fast but it will satisfy your needs.

    Your postings look like a senseless try of bashing the best SSD on the (consumer) market for an almost unimportant little detail. And: You seem to know about it. So make your decision based on your knowledge but don't tripple post just to arouse the image of an issue that might be important.
  • Oxford Guy - Sunday, December 23, 2012 - link

    Ad hominem much?

    Plenty of buyers would be interested in knowing that the 830, for instance, tops the charts in terms of power usage under load, particularly given the fact that Samsung's "full specs" advertised number is impossibly low.

    People have been tricked by this, which is exactly why Samsung publishes that low number.

    Ever heard of laptop battery life? What about heat? I suppose not.
  • Kristian Vättö - Saturday, December 22, 2012 - link

    The figures Samsung reports are with Device Initiated Power Management (DIPM) enabled. That's a feature that is usually only found on laptops but it can be added to desktop systems as well.

    With DIPM disabled, Samsung rates the idle power at 0.349W, which supports our figures (we got 0.31W).

    The same goes for active power, Samsung rates it at 3.55W (sequential write) and 2.87W (4KB random write QD32). The 0.069W figure comes from the average power draw using Mobile Mark 2007, which is something we don't use.
  • Oxford Guy - Sunday, December 23, 2012 - link

    So, in a laptop, the load power for the 830 amazingly plummets from, what 5+ watts, to .13 watts?

    That's really amazing. I guess the next thing to ask is why these amazing results aren't part of the published charts.
  • Cold Fussion - Saturday, December 22, 2012 - link

    I think the power consumption tests are particularly useless. How come you don't test power consumption under some typical workload and heavy workload so we can see how much energy they use?
  • Kristian Vättö - Sunday, December 23, 2012 - link

    Because we don't have the equipment for that. With a standard multimeter we can only record the average peak current, so we have to use an IOmeter test for each number (recording the peak while running e.g. Heavy suite would be useless).

    Good power measurement equipment can cost thousands of dollars. Ultimately the decision is up to Anand but I don't think he is willing to spend that much money on just one test, especially when it can somewhat be tested with a standard multimeter. Besides, desktop users don't usually care about the power consumption at all, so that is another reason why such investment might not be the most worthwhile.
  • Oxford Guy - Sunday, December 23, 2012 - link

    And we know only desktop users buy SSDs. No one ever buys them for laptops.
  • lmcd - Monday, December 24, 2012 - link

    Howabout you buy the equipment for them, if it's such a great investment?
  • Cold Fussion - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link

    That line of thinking is flawed. If you're only catering to desktop users, why even present the power consumption figures at all? The 3-5w maximum power consumption of an SSD which will largely be idle is not at all significant compared to the 75 watts the cpu is pulling while gaming or the 150watts the gpu is pulling.

    The tests as they are server no real purpose. It would be like trying to measure power-efficiency of a cpu purely by it's maximum power consumption. I don't believe a basic datalogger is going to run into the 1000s.
  • Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link

    I didn't say we only cater desktop users, but the fact is that some of our readers are desktop users and hence don't care about the power consumption tests. It's harder to justify buying expensive equipment when some will not be interested in the tests.

    Don't get me wrong, I would buy the equipment in a heartbeat if someone gave me the money. However, I'm not the one pulling the strings on that. If you have suggestions on affordable dataloggers, feel free to post them. All I know is that the tool that was used in the Clover Trail efficiency article costs around $3000.
  • Cold Fussion - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link

    But it doesn't cater to mobile users because the data provided is simply not of any real use. I can go to my local retail electronics store and buy a data-logging multimeter for $150-$250 AUD, I am almost certain that you can purchase one cheaper than that in the US from a retail outlet or online.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, December 27, 2012 - link

    So, you're saying Anandtech is unable to verify Samsung's power usage claims — completely.

    That's very interesting.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, December 27, 2012 - link

    "That line of thinking is flawed. If you're only catering to desktop users, why even present the power consumption figures at all?"

    Of course. This is a very interesting line of thinking, isn't it?

    1. Samsung provides only extra special "mobile" figures that are extremely low at .13 (830 512 GB) and .14 (840 512 GB).

    2. Samsung, if Anandtech is to be believed, is providing not particularly interesting data, since their charts apparently don't apply to mobile usage.

    3. According to Anandtech, desktop users don't care about SSD power usage and so Anandtech only cares about desktop SSD power usage (hence the existence of charts/comparisons/commentary).

    It's all quite fascinating.
  • Movieman420 - Thursday, December 27, 2012 - link

    from article:

    "While 240/256GB is undoubtedly the most popular capacity at the moment...'

    Most 120/128's outsell their larger stablemates almost 2 to1 in some cases. 240/256's are the most popular to be REVIEWED cuz they pump out the best numbers. That may change n the future...say another year...year and a half.
  • ashjas - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    Can anybody who have dealt with manufacturers claiming for warranty.. what does warranty actually mean?

    Like we all know that the ssds fail without notice and without any reason,, so if i ask the manufacturer for a replacement of the ssd within the warranty,.. will they replace the drive?

    Performance does not matter to me all that much,,, but reliability of ssds not failing.. atleast for like 2-3 years of good use.. is what concerns me.. and ofcourse if manufacturers would replace failed ssds.

    Thanks

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