Samsung SSD SM825 400GB Enterprise SSD Review – 3Gbps eMLC Data Center Edition

PERFORMANCE AND HEAT DISSIPATION

The Samsung SSD SM825 speaks of ‘sustained performance’ at 260MB/s read and 235MB/s write with 35,000 IOPS read and 10,000 IOPS write.  The key to this statement is ‘sustained performance’ where these values may be lower than we might see in a consumer drive but firmware is set so this same performance will be seen on the last day of service just as it was on its introduction and through any number of conditions. This type of reliability just isn’t possible in most drives today.

Power consumption for the SM825 is listed at 1.3W idle and 1.8W active and there are thermal pads on either side of the PCB that allow for the heat to be channeled to the exterior metal case where it dissipates through data center cooling.  Last but not least, the SM825 has full AES-256 bit encryption and an amazing 2 million hours MTBF.

BENCHMARK PROTOCOL AND THE TEST BENCH

blank This is The SSD Review Test Bench Number One. A quick click on the photo will give you a better look.

In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide. Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 safe mode to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.

In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.

blankWe would like to thank Gigabyte, Corsair, MSI, OCZ, and Fractal-Design, for sponsoring components of our Test Bench.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

Software used for testing by The SSD Review consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, and Anvil Storage Utilities. We would normally use PCMark Vantage HDD Suite testing in our benchmark comparisons as it is based on eight typical user scenarios, however, the fact that it was based on this gave us just reason to exclude it in this review.

Benchmark software used by The SSD Review can be obtained by clicking on the title of each application as all may be downloaded without cost to the consumer.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO V. 4.14

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12 comments

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    The word coming from Digitimes is that Samsung is not about to see its NAND lead eroded, and their new fab, dubbed Line-16 should give Samsung a leg up.

    Located in the Nano City Complex in Hwaseong in South Korea, the fab will be capable of producing 200,000 12-inch wafers every month.

    Samsung began work on the site back in May 2010, and it is now expected that the site will be up and running in two months.

    According to chip expert at Future Horizons, Malcolm Penn, the opening is indicative of how important the NAND sector is.

    “It used to be DRAM, DRAM, DRAM ;now NAND is growing around 50 percent faster.”

    “They are pretty much neck and neck now with Toshiba so it is very important for Samsung to get more capacity online.

    “Capacity equals market share, so if you have a bigger fab then you are going to get ahead, and the Samsung fab is a monster.”

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    This Fab is open an operating.

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    Toshiba has as much as admitted that they will have a tough time competing with Samsung’s new fab. Toshiba wants to expand also; but their costs to expand will be far greater than Samsungs. Advantage – Samsung

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    You might want to look into the life span on the SuperCaps used. There is a reason why everyone else is going to digital caps, something to do with the SuperCaps only lasting two years 🙂

    Chris Ram

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    Where can you buy this?

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    Agreed asw. This would be a great product if you could actually find somewhere to give you pricing on it, let alone actually buy one.

    Even several months after this review, no one seems to know anything about buying one.

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      It is an enterprise product and available with contact through Samsung Business.

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        Thanks. I’ve got a request in to Samsung Business. We’ll see how long they take to get back to me.

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        HOLY COW buying these things is VERY different than just going to newegg and putting in your credit card and then they ship them to you. I had to dig up memories from days gone by and put on my old reseller hat…

        For posterity’s sake, here’s what I’ve gone through:

        In a nutshell, it’s taken a week, and I FINALLY have an MSRP on these things. I was wondering if they were in the realm of the Hitachi eMLC (SSD400M) drives or more along the lines of the OCZ Deneva’s. (Hint, they are pretty much right in the middle.)

        Anyway, Samsung has a few distributors in the USA – many of which won’t deal with “small” purchases (we’re looking at 44 of these things, and they consider that quite small). I ended up at Arrow, but Avnet would have worked too. (I think there are 3 in the US. Crestone is the company that supplies the other 3).

        If you don’t know how the channel works, prepare to be mired in red tape.

        I also finally got a call back from Samsung itself. I basically had to sell what we were doing with the product to them. Don’t get me wrong, the guy was very nice and quite helpful, but we’re not usually the kind of place they would sell to. If you’re not a NetApp, EMC, HP, Dell, Oracle, Cisco, etc, well, they’re not quite sure what to do with you. The guy explained that they couldn’t be expected to send an engineer from Korea to diagnose problems and then produce custom firmware for with such small quantities ordered. I told him I just want a bunch of fast reliable enterprise drives… Custom firmware not required…

        IMHO, you’re probably better off waiting for these drives to come to your preferred storage vendor. Enterprise just moves more slowly than consumer. In other words, although this drive was released in late 2011, it’s still considered a new product, and the channel is still trying to figure out how to handle/sell it. But, if you’ve got a definite need for a bunch of these, it is perhaps possible to acquire them. Just be prepared to exercise extreme patience.

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        I always suggest buyers to contact us with such purchases as our contacts can usually help significantly, however, yes…this is not a NewEgg purchase.

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    still cant found it stock… only reviews is it real device or not?

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