How bad is the new Samsung 970 Evo Plus?

[Filingo]

I was planning to buy the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB since it's on a sale, but then found out it's not the original one. They replaced the controller to QLC, and also there are issues with firmware where Samsung SSDs just die.

Should I avoid Samsung SSDs at this point? Or the 970 Evo Plus is not that bad even with the changes?

 

 

[will0hlep]

If all your doing is gaming you don't need a super amazing expensive NVMe drive. Any decent NVMe will do. I usually recommend the Kingston NV2 atm as it's great value for money (if your PC is used for gaming).

[Filingo]

2 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

If all your doing is gaming you don't need a super amazing expensive NVMe drive. Any decent NVMe will do. I usually recommend the Kingston NV2 atm as it's great value for money (if your PC is used for gaming).

Yes but the 970 Evo Plus is on a really good sale right now ($55 for 1TB) so at this price difference I don't think it matters? I wonder besides the tier of it, if it's even safe now with all that controller changes and the bricking issues

[will0hlep]

2 minutes ago, Filingo said:

Yes but the 970 Evo Plus is on a really good sale right now ($55). I wonder besides the tier of it, if it's even safe now with all that controller changes and the bricking issues

Kingston NV2 is PCIe gen 4 instead of gen 3 and is $5 less (assuming you mean USD).

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FnYmP6/kingston-nv2-1-tb-m2-2280-pcie-40-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-snv2s1000g

[Electronics Wizardy]

Got any source on the QLC? Ive seen them change the nand around, but I don't see any news about qlc.

 

The drive is still fine. I wouldn't worry about using it at all. Yea it could fail at any time with no warning, but so could any other drive, and you should always have backups. The performance is more than plenty for desktop tasks.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Filingo said:

I was planning to buy the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB since it's on a sale, but then found out it's not the original one. They replaced the controller to QLC, and also there are issues with firmware where Samsung SSDs just die.

Should I avoid Samsung SSDs at this point? Or the 970 Evo Plus is not that bad even with the changes?

 

 

The advantage the 970 evo plus has was reasonable speed and near top shelf data longevity,  the question is are those two things still there?

 

 

[Filingo]

4 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

Kingston NV2 is PCIe gen 4 instead of gen 3 and is $5 less (assuming you mean USD).

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FnYmP6/kingston-nv2-1-tb-m2-2280-pcie-40-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-snv2s1000g

thanks, yes I mean USD, and Amazon doesn't ship all items to my country, and the nv2 is one of them 

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Got any source on the QLC? Ive seen them change the nand around, but I don't see any news about qlc.

 

The drive is still fine. I wouldn't worry about using it at all. Yea it could fail at any time with no warning, but so could any other drive, and you should always have backups. The performance is more than plenty for desktop tasks.

This is what I saw: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

The advantage the 970 evo plus has was reasonable speed and near top shelf data longevity,  the question is are those two things still there?

 

 

Yep, not sure. Also my previous 970 Evo non-plus failed once and I Got a replacement. Really not sure if Samsung is so trust worthy with SSDs now, especially with the quiet components swap and the bricking SSDs

[seon123]

2 minutes ago, Filingo said:

This is what I saw: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

Quote

The best news for impacted 970 Evo Plus owners is that they should "only" be taking a massive performance hit, without a corresponding decrease in write endurance. That's because unlike Crucial and Western Digital's part-swaps, Samsung didn't drop from TLC flash to QLC—it just swapped out the controller.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Filingo said:

This is what I saw: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Looks like a controller swap, not QLC. Still a fast ssd, and you likely won't notice the difference between any of these drives in normal use.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, Filingo said:

thanks, yes I mean USD, and Amazon doesn't ship all items to my country, and the nv2 is one of them 

This is what I saw: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

Yep, not sure. Also my previous 970 Evo non-plus failed once and I Got a replacement. Really not sure if Samsung is so trust worthy with SSDs now, especially with the quiet components swap and the bricking SSDs

I’ve never had a bricked SSD myself. It might be worth looking into how common it is.  Samsung is truely huge.  Together with LG they more or less own South Korea.  There’s a special word for companies bigger than meggacorps.  I can’t remember it zaibatsu or something. Amazon is downlow apparently trying to become one.  Google, Microsoft, and apple are all too specialized.  Samsung runs airlines, makes dishwashers, you name it.

 

I’ve got a 970+ 2tb as my storage drive.  I’m not particularly concerned about speed on that drive.  Just data integrity.  I don’t know if I have an old one or a new one.  CrystalDiskInfo lists it  at 95% so it should be good for a while.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Bombastinator

[Somerandomtechyboi]

55$ for a 970 evo is a very good deal so id reccomend buying it since at that price its cheap enough to not be murdered by proper gen4 ssds (not the dramless garbage kind) and outperforms its gen3 competition. If its at the usual 70 or 80$ dont bother (crushed by gen4 ssds)

[evievi]

Yeah I agree with the above statements. Unless you're really hitting swap space hard on your SSD, you probably won't notice the difference between a worse controller. I do have some engineering friends who do CFD and in those situations it definitely matters because their simulations will run out of RAM but for most consumer applications you probably won't notice it.

 

Even if the swap was to QLC and not the controller, the main difference you'd notice would be durability. And even then, I've heard, new tech like 3D NAND SSDs and better controllers have meant that QLC drives are getting better. If you really do want a new SLC SSD though, you can buy them, but you're going to be looking at spending easily 5-10x even a TLC drive of the same size because they're mostly used in industrial applications where durability is the most important thing.

[evievi]

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’ve never had a bricked SSD myself. It might be worth looking into how common it is.  Samsung is truely huge.  Together with LG they more or less own South Korea.  There’s a special word for companies bigger than meggacorps.  I can’t remember it zaibatsu or something.  I’ve got a 970+ 2tb as my storage drive.  I’m not particularly concerned about speed on that drive.  Just data integrity.  I don’t know if I have an old one or a new one.  CrystalDiskInfo lists it  at 95% so it should be good for a while.

 

Yeah for all the recent Samsung drama with the 990 pro and 980 pro, they generally make pretty good SSDs at the end of the day. Puget systems did drop (https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2023/02/02/update-on-samsung-ssd-reliability/) Samsung SSDs from new systems for Sabrent, but their post also reads like they aren't actually super concerned about Samsung SSDs in the long term and were already planning to move to Sabrent.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, evievi said:

 

Yeah for all the recent Samsung drama with the 990 pro and 980 pro, they generally make pretty good SSDs at the end of the day. Puget systems did drop (https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2023/02/02/update-on-samsung-ssd-reliability/) Samsung SSDs from new systems for Sabrent, but their post also reads like they aren't actually super concerned about Samsung SSDs in the long term and were already planning to move to Sabrent.

Who is “their” in this instance?

[evievi]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Who is “their” in this instance?

Oh haha I meant Samsung. I think generally Samsung SSDs are well made and they have been my go-to for an SSD upgrade in my or my friends' laptops with a SATA bay. I think the drama surrounding Samsung's 980 Pro and 990 Pro are just teething issues on new firmware and will get sorted out. As Linus said in a video once: "I trust a mature Samsung product"

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, evievi said:

Oh haha I meant Samsung. I think generally Samsung SSDs are well made and they have been my go-to for an SSD upgrade in my or my friends' laptops with a SATA bay. I think the drama surrounding Samsung's 980 Pro and 990 Pro are just teething issues on new firmware and will get sorted out. As Linus said in a video once: "I trust a mature Samsung product"

Such a thing is always subject to change without notice, as the 990pro showed.  Samsung crushed the reliability game for some time which sort of made them goto.  It’s all about the numbers.

[evievi]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Such a thing is always subject to change without notice, as the 990pro showed.  Samsung crushed the reliability game for some time which sort of made them goto.  It’s all about the numbers.

Very true, never a good idea to buy it "because that brand is reliable". Samsung could very easily start producing garbage SSDs tomorrow and a lot of people would probably still buy them because they think Samsung SSDs are supposed to be good.

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, evievi said:

Very true, never a good idea to buy it "because that brand is reliable". Samsung could very easily start producing garbage SSDs tomorrow and a lot of people would probably still buy them because they think Samsung SSDs are supposed to be good.

A behavior known as “mining the brand”

[Filingo]

Yep, I only have Samsung SSDs (SATA and NVMe), but after what they did with the 970 Evo Plus, I will look for another brand. They swapped the controller, making it a completely different device (different speeds), yet kept calling it 970 Evo Plus.

 

Puget Systems also have an article about this: https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2023/02/02/update-on-samsung-ssd-reliability/

 

How is it legal to completely change a device spec without telling, and selling it for the same name? There is no such law about consumer deception?  

 

[evievi]

13 hours ago, Filingo said:

How is it legal to completely change a device spec without telling, and selling it for the same name? There is no such law about consumer deception?  

 

 

I'm not a lawyer, but I would have to assume that most countries would allow you to change product internals without renaming the product so long as there is transparency about it. In US law, I think people call that the "mattress tag law" such that the manufacturer has requirements to tell you what's stuffed in your mattress and can't just stuff it with hay and not answer what it's stuffed with. 

 

An analogous example I can think about would be game consoles, where consoles go through revisions and there can be almost zero indication that the internals have changed by marketing or serial # materials. The Sega Game Gear and Wii come into mind as examples. The Game Gear went through multiple revisions, swapping for a worse color depth and cheaper chips and the only way to know which one you have is to open it up. I think when the Wii dropped GC ports, it was technically rebranded as the "Wii Family Edition" but I think it was mostly still called the Wii in marketing materials. Even besides that, the original Wii motherboard went through die shrinks on the GPU and CPU with no changes to the model number, seemingly indicating it's perfectly legal to change the internals so long as the functionality of the product isn't significantly altered. However, NVIDIA was notably sued for the GTX 970's VRAM being misrepresented, so I think Samsung could be liable if the read/write speeds or durability they advertise isn't reachable with the new controller. I think it would be about whether the product can still perform what it advertises and the new device isn't dangerous if you were trying to see if Samsung is vulnerable to legal action.

[Occulus]

Let me help everyone out here.

I just (ELEVEN days ago) bought a 970 Evo Plus 2Tb model from Amazon. On installing Steam and trying to install games to it, I get 100% disk activity but 0.0Mb/s read/write repeatedly (Steambros say "this is normal" on the forums; it is DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL!).

 

Today it started vanishing on reboot. The Samsung driver claims there's no NVMe drive connected and will not install. The Magician SMART test sees it and claims there are no errors, but their own driver says "nope". 

Eleven. days. Of. Use.

On further investigation it seems the entire 900 line of Samsung NVMe SSDs are complete garbage. DO NOT BUY THESE. They're complete trash.

Thank FSCK I was only using it to install apps and games to. If this had been my system drive I'd have been totally screwed.

Again: DO NOT BUY SAMSUNG SSDs. They're not even usable for any length of time.

[mMontana]

2 minutes ago, Occulus said:

On further investigation it seems the entire 900 line of Samsung NVMe SSDs are complete garbage.

Hey, I'm sorry for your bad experience.

 

Unfortunately this phrase I quoted from you... do not translate in truth, for my experience. More than 200 drives managed of Samsung NVMe drives, all TLC. Some are lasting from 3 years to medium/mild use.

Sorry for your experience.  

[StefanH_STHLM]

I had and still have issues with 970 evo plus. There were a sort of slow reaction in windows and in softwares.

I read some articles about issues and followed one proposed solution. Switching place on main board. After doing so I experienced a huge improvement, but.... still. 

Using Samsung magician benchmark test I get the following numbers. 

3500 Mb/s sequential read

2100 Mb/s sequential write

Is that acceptable? 

[NobleGamer]

1 hour ago, StefanH_STHLM said:

I had and still have issues with 970 evo plus. There were a sort of slow reaction in windows and in softwares.

I read some articles about issues and followed one proposed solution. Switching place on main board. After doing so I experienced a huge improvement, but.... still. 

You'd need a SSD test that shows latency numbers (sometimes measured in milliseconds) to prove that SSD is the root cause of "slow reaction" for sure.

 

Otherwise...

1 hour ago, StefanH_STHLM said:

Using Samsung magician benchmark test I get the following numbers. 

3500 Mb/s sequential read

2100 Mb/s sequential write

Is that acceptable? 

Random IOPS should've been way lower if that was a root cause of perceived slow reaction, because depending on the SSD and file chunk size, random operations in MBps could get as low as single digits or low double digits for a weak SSD.

 

Random IOPS and endurance are the reasons I went with your drive model, because I'll be damned if loading Windows or handling apps with a bunch of random reads & writes was going to be noticibly slower because I cheaped out on a budget SSD.

 

If an SSD existed that had sequential speeds of a SATA drive but random IOPS & speed of NVME, and it were cheaper than middle tier NVME SSDs, I might buy it - That's how much I value random IOPS over sequential, as I dont do huge file transfers often.

 

As for your bench: Sequential read basically maxes out its pcie 3 lanes, and that sequential write seems consistent with my same 2 & 1 TB drives of the same model. Same with the random throughput.