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A Closer Look
In this section, you'll find the 850 Pro on the left side and the 850 EVO on the right. For most of the single-drive pictures, we use the 850 Pro, though Samsung's 850 EVO ships with the same package contents.
In the box, there's an installation guide and warranty statement, both in paper form. We also find a small sticker sheet for those who enjoy advertising their hardware elsewhere. The drive is secured in a plastic form-fit case.
Both SSDs employ a 2.5", 7mm form factor, so they'll easily fit in notebooks that require the thinner z-height.
The PSID is clearly printed on the back of each drive, allowing you to manage the SED features either on the host or remotely.
Inside, we observe a new PCB design that allows Samsung to fit eight flash memory packages. To get to 2TB, the company simply doubles the number of packages and dies compared to the 1TB models. Samsung still doesn't need to use the full area inside of its enclosure.
The 850 Pro and 850 EVO 2TB drives look the same inside.
Both models use a new Samsung MHX controller and Samsung LPDDR3 DRAM. We suspect that Samsung needed the updated logic to address more NAND packages. This would also strengthen our hypothesis that Samsung has a modular controller design that can be updated in stages according to application.
Samsung still leads the industry in flash technology. On the left, we see MLC 3D V-NAND; on the right is TLC 3D V-NAND. We don't expect 3D cell structure-based memory from IMFT or Flash Forward in retail products until 2016.
