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What Samsung 840 to get?

C

Compman55

Golden Member
Samsung makes it ultra confusing:

840 Pro
840 EVO
840

So back when I bought my 830, it was that simple. Only one model with 4 sizes to pick from. I like the drive a lot and failures are not talked about much.

840's on the other hand do fail. And was wondering which is the best for reliability, and which would be best for typical desktop performace. I have my systems on a server for photos, videos, music. I will use my SSD for windows / programs, and a place to copy my info to temporarily until I put on my server.
 
Just get the 840 EVO... it's the most mainstream unit right now.

Yea... I had my 840Pro fail in less than a year, so I'm not to hip on Samsung SSD's right now. Personally, I'd go with Crucial or Intel... but that's me.
 
Charlie98 said:
Just get the 840 EVO... it's the most mainstream unit right now.

Yea... I had my 840Pro fail in less than a year, so I'm not to hip on Samsung SSD's right now. Personally, I'd go with Crucial or Intel... but that's me.
Click to expand...

:\ I hate it when people do this. Samsung SSDs are widely considered one of the best performing, most reliable drives out there. Just because a single drive died does not mean that they're less reliable. You were unlucky, don't totally change your views on a company because of one thing.
 
The Pro is faster and has better endurance.
The EVO is cheaper, and ideal for a normal users system drive.
 
Compman55 said:
So I guess its between the EVO and PRO.

What advantages does the pro have over the EVO?
Click to expand...
MLC (3000+ rated writes) v. TLC (1000+ rated writes), a very small amount of usable space, and realistically, not much else, today, compared to the competition.

The plain 840 you should avoid. The Evo's pseudo-SLC caching was a godsend.
 
Chapbass said:
:\ I hate it when people do this. Samsung SSDs are widely considered one of the best performing, most reliable drives out there. Just because a single drive died does not mean that they're less reliable. You were unlucky, don't totally change your views on a company because of one thing.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hate when people share their useful hands on experience with products 🙄
 
I will use my SSD for windows / programs, and a place to copy my info to temporarily until I put on my server.
Click to expand...

840 EVO or 840, whichever is cheaper. I'd also look into prices on the Crucial m500 and SanDisk Ultraplus if you're not married to Samsung.
 
Chapbass said:
:\ I hate it when people do this. Samsung SSDs are widely considered one of the best performing, most reliable drives out there. Just because a single drive died does not mean that they're less reliable. You were unlucky, don't totally change your views on a company because of one thing.
Click to expand...

I didn't tell the whole story 'cause I don't want to thread crap. The biggest disappointment was the Samsung RMA process, if you must know. Samsung has one strike as far as I'm concerned. All things being equal, choosing between an EVO, an M500, or an Intel 530... I'll take the Intel or Crucial over the EVO. Choosing between an EVO, a Kingston and some other off-brand... I'll take the EVO. I'm not full of Samsung hate... I love most of their products, but after dealing with their SSD RMA process (which is run independently by a contractor, I believe...) I won't buy another unless I just have to.

OP, as far as the choice between the PRO and the EVO, they use two different kinds of NAND, and the PRO is typically more expensive (it is not discounted like the EVO has been.) There may be some other technical differences... nothing that would concern the average consumer-level user. The EVO wasn't out when I bought my PRO, or I would have just gotten the EVO.
 
Just to offer another perspective, I had a very positive Samsung RMA experience when my 840 Pro failed (cause turned out to be a power surge, nothing to do with the drive). However, you should use their phone support--the online support is terrible.
 
FYI M500 240GB is at $110 on amazon right now. Different drive, I know, but it's cheaper than EVO, uses MLC unlike TLC on EVO, and performance is the same. I'd get that over EVO or even PRO since PRO is so much more expensive.
 
How is the m500? I have not researched that drive.

Durability is what is important. My 830 is amazing, and brought new life to my old D820 laptop. I was hoping for the same out of the 840.
 
The M500 is the 840 Evo's main competition, as far as any DIYers go, anyway. Slightly slower as a regular drive, but not enough you'd ever notice (benchmarks linked), and surprisingly good with random IO mixes, and keeping itself performance when not given idle time. A bit higher in power consumption, but for a Latitude power hog from several years ago, or a desktop, that's no biggie.

I'm quite the fan of it, myself, as it offers top GB/$ pretty consistently, pretty solid performance, and Crucial's CS if it goes TU. It, the Samsung 840 Evo, and/or Sandisk Ultra Plus are usually in a price/performance/quality sweet spot, at any given time.

Unless you're writing some tens of GBs per day every day, NAND endurance should not be a concern.

http://techreport.com/review/25763/...s-crucial-m500-960gb-vs-samsung-840-evo-1tb/8
http://techreport.com/review/25763/...s-crucial-m500-960gb-vs-samsung-840-evo-1tb/9
 
Compman55 said:
How is the m500? I have not researched that drive.

Durability is what is important. My 830 is amazing, and brought new life to my old D820 laptop. I was hoping for the same out of the 840.
Click to expand...

I've been running two M400 Drives (replaced by the M500) for the past couple of years. Crucial has had many firmware updates to enhance the drives and I have never had a problem with them. $109 at the egg right now for 240Gb...hard to beat.
 
I have 8-9 Samsung ssds from pro to 830s. I really can't tell the difference between pro and evo, they're so fast, you can barely see the difference.

I use my 840pro on a Lenovo x230 and 840evo on a dell e6230. Also have the regular 840 non pro. Fortunately non of my have any failure.
 
I have a 256GB Samsung 830 in my desktop, and a 250GB Samsung 840 in my laptop, and a Intel 320 120GB in my wifes laptop.

I would never be able to tell the difference in daily use.
 
I've been reading a lot of reviews lately, and I would throw the Sandisk Extreme II's into the mix. 5 year warranty (Samsung Pro 512=5, Pro 256=3,EVO and M500= 3 years), 2 million hours MTBF (mean time before failure) Pro 1.5 & EVO = 1.5, M500= 1.2. Performance wise it seems to fit slightly above or slightly below the EVO depending on who is testing.
 
Bearmann said:
2 million hours MTBF (mean time before failure) Pro 1.5 & EVO = 1.5, M500= 1.2.
Click to expand...
MBTF is worthless, and pulled out of thin air. Any drive sold as higher-class one will have a higher MBTF decided for it.
Performance wise it seems to fit slightly above or slightly below the EVO depending on who is testing.
Click to expand...
And, regardless of who is testing, it's minimum performance is only matched by 840 Pros with user-added OP, or LAMD SSDs.

If available for a good price, it's a good choice. The prices on them go up and down a lot.
 
Cerb said:
...
And, regardless of who is testing, it's minimum performance is only matched by 840 Pros with user-added OP, or LAMD SSDs.

If available for a good price, it's a good choice. The prices on them go up and down a lot.
Click to expand...

Please explain. What is user-added OP?

Thanks!

Yes, I was window shopping at newegg and noticed that the M500 is $250, the SanDisk 480GB is $300, the EVO 500GB is $315, and the Pro is $400. Unless you want the M500, it seems like the best value currently.
 
Last edited:
Bearmann said:
Please explain. What is user-added OP?
Click to expand...
Using less than the total drive, so it has more non-fragmented LBAs of spare area than just the hidden space from the factory. The Extreme II 240GB, FI, has 256GB of NAND, and uses the extra to help with performance. The X210, which appears to be an OEM version of the drive, has substantially worse, though still excellent, worst-case performance, exposing 256GiB to the user, rather than only 240GiB.

AT's testing of such, with a handful of the drives mentioned so far:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7006/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb/2
Also, baseline, including the Evo:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/...w-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested/6

Yes, I was window shopping at newegg and noticed that the M500 is $250, the SanDisk 480GB is $300, the EVO 500GB is $315, and the Pro is $400. Unless you want the M500, it seems like the best value currently.
Click to expand...
That's why I hardly ever say much positive for the Evo, when it comes to what to buy. It tends to be European posters that find it cheaper than others, or cheapest among their limited selections, for the most part, of what I've seen. There's usually some excellent competition at lower prices in the U.S., and the performance differences, without some known disk-heavy uses, or likelihood thereof, are noise. If Samsung wanted to compete on price, given that their TLC should be much cheaper to make than MLC, I'd be all for it.
 
norseamd said:
are there any slc drives that you can buy?
Click to expand...
Sure. Any you want to pay for? No. SLC is strictly for special uses, like servers that are going to write a ton. Even in servers, MLC is taking over, though. eMLC offers enough endurance at a low enough cost for most uses (consumer MLC probably does, but you'd have to be exceptionally confident in your predictions about current and future NAND writes, and be OK not having your drive sufficiently warrantied).
 
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