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Inside Of Samsung's 845DC EVO

Samsung 845DC EVO SSD Review: 3-Bit MLC Hits The Enterprise
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Opening up the 845DC EVO gives us flashbacks to our coverage of the 840 EVO. Its PCB and general layout, along with most of the components, are identical. Samsung's consumer-oriented 840 EVO employs a smaller PCB, which creates more empty space inside the 2.5" chassis. But the 845DC EVO's circuit board is larger to accommodate the power-loss protection capacitors, filling the enclosure.

Samsung's 845DC EVO uses the same MEX 400 MHz triple-core Cortex-R4-based controller (labeled S4LN045X01-8030) as the 840 EVO.

Also, the same 1 GB of LPDDR2 DRAM cache is present on the largest 845DC EVO model.

As mentioned in the introduction, Samsung's 845DC EVO employs 3-bit-per-cell NAND. Our 960 GB review unit includes 1024 GiB of raw flash capacity. Each of the on-board packages contains eight dies, with 16 GiB per die. The spare area (12.7%) is greater than what the 840 EVO (9.05%) offers, helping improve consistency and extend the NAND's life.

In the above shot, you can see some of the 23 power-loss capacitors used to keep the SSD's controller running just long enough, in the event of an outage, to flush all pending writes.

Overall, Samsung appears to take a direct approach to the 845DC EVO's design, only making changes deemed absolutely necessary. After all, the 840 EVO is already a fairly mature platform.

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  • 3 Hide
    SteelCity1981 , June 2, 2014 6:28 AM
    So basicly it's the more durable version of the 840 evo much like opertons and xeons are to the FX and core i7 series.
  • -8 Hide
    Plusthinking Iq , June 2, 2014 6:48 AM
    like we know now after the ssd endurance test samsung is the worst enterprise candidate.
  • 3 Hide
    drewriley , June 2, 2014 7:43 AM
    Quote:
    So basicly it's the more durable version of the 840 evo much like opertons and xeons are to the FX and core i7 series.


    Yes, that's a fair analogy. Just like the Xeon E3-1275v3 is an i7-4770K, but with ECC support.

  • 2 Hide
    damric , June 2, 2014 12:45 PM
    I've yet to see an SSD fail due to read/write endurance. I only see them fail when the controller gets bugged, which seems to happen all the time, especially on loss of power.



  • 0 Hide
    soundping , June 2, 2014 1:13 PM
    I'm guessing this SSD doesn't have to new firmware code that extends life and speed.
  • 0 Hide
    jase240 , June 2, 2014 3:02 PM
    Another win for the EVO. This SSD modified for enterprise workloads makes it a good buy for webservers.

    Hopefully the price will go down after launch, and then I see this being the best choice of webhosts.

    Cheaper and adequate for that workload.
  • 0 Hide
    Nightmare Twily , June 2, 2014 5:18 PM
    Eh I'll keep my 840 EVO 250GB
  • 0 Hide
    Nuckles_56 , June 3, 2014 4:12 AM
    "Even still, I wand to commend Samsung's execution." (last page 1st paragraph) I guess that is supposed to be want, unless Drew Riley has become a wizard now :D 
  • 0 Hide
    Menigmand , June 3, 2014 7:07 AM
    Commending their execution would be a bit harsh, don't you think?
  • 0 Hide
    drewriley , June 3, 2014 8:31 AM
    Quote:
    Commending their execution would be a bit harsh, don't you think?


    I'm sure worse things were said about Samsung at WWDC '14 yesterday ;) 
  • 0 Hide
    drewriley , June 3, 2014 8:33 AM
    Quote:
    "Even still, I wand to commend Samsung's execution." (last page 1st paragraph) I guess that is supposed to be want, unless Drew Riley has become a wizard now :D 


    Now that you mention it.....
  • -1 Hide
    eriko , June 3, 2014 9:53 PM
    4KB random write, and average response time.

    Nuff said.

    You'd have to be out your mind to put TLC in a a critical environment.
  • 1 Hide
    patrick47018 , June 3, 2014 10:30 PM
    @eriko everyone's critical environments need a little tender loving care
  • 1 Hide
    photonboy , June 4, 2014 5:28 PM
    The 845dc isn't necessarily the "worst enterprise candidate"; for one thing it wasn't the bottom in every test.

    For another, it's more about VALUE and that's the main point of the article. I assume the top SSD's in this category were MLC not TLC and also more expensive.