Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

2011 has certainly been the ‘Year Of The Solid State Drive', with many manufacturers vying for sales in various, competitive sectors. Today we are looking at the new Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD which embraces the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, claiming speeds up to 520 Mb/s read and 400 Mb/s write. Is this drive capable of going head to head against the latest Sandforce powered 2281 units? Today we aim to find out.

Samsung are not new to the Solid State Sector, having made memory and logic controllers now for some time, specifically for the OEM market. We reviewed their 470 series 256GB drive last week, and while good, it seemed rather overpriced considering the SATA 3 Gb/s bandwidth limitations. It makes sense therefore that they want to step into the high performance league.

The 830 Series is being sold in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. All four drives feature the same 520 Mb/s read performance, but due to the architectural design the 128GB drive is rated at 320 Mb/s write and the 64 GB model just 160 Mb/s write. The 256 GB and 512 GB models are both rated at 400 Mb/s write.

All drives are shipped with a full 3 year warranty for peace of mind.

Technical Specifications

• Dimensions (L* W* H): 100 x 69.85 x 7 (mm)
• Interface: SATA 6Gb/s (compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s)
• Form Factor: 2.5 inch
• NAND Flash Memory: 2x nm Samsung Toggle DDR MLC NAND Flash Memory
• Performanc: Sequential Read: Max. 520 MB/s (64GB/128GB/256GB/512GB)
• Sequential Write: Max. 400 MB/s (256GB/512GB)
• 4KB Random Read: Max. 80,000 IOPS (128GB/256GB/512GB)
• 4KB Random Write: Max. 36,000 IOPS (256GB/512GB)
• TRIM Support: Yes (Requires OS Support)
• Garbage Collection: Yes
• S.M.A.R.T: Yes
• Weight: Max. 62.5g (256GB/512GB)
• Reliability: 1.5 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
• Power Consumption: Active : 0.127W (Typical) Idle : 0.078W (Typical)
• Shock: 1500G & 0.5ms (Half sine)

Become a Patron!