Samsung 850 PRO vs. 860 PRO

[timw128]

Hi-

Getting ready to clean install Windows 10 from my Windows 7 Professional machine.

Currently have a Samsung 850 PRO 256 GB SSD running the OS and progs. It's been

a very good drive for me and thought I would buy another one for the 10 install.

Until I looked at the pricing. The price of the 850 has went up significantly compared to

when I bought my 3-4 yrs. ago.

After looking at some reviews, the 860 is supposed to be somewhat faster and a significant

improvement in overall endurance, and it's the same price as what I paid for my 850 back when.

I want to stay with SATA III interface, rather than PCIe-x4.

So, I am just curious to what others think about this...it seems the architecture's the same between

the 850 and 860, just a better controller in the MJX with the latter.

Please don't bring up other OEM SSD's... we're set on Samsung.

Thanks!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The Samsung 860 Pro has only a five year warranty compared to the 850's ten year warranty but the write life increased considerably. performance hasn't increased very much. I wouldn't recommend replacing an existing 850 Pro with an 860 Pro unless it has been acting up or you somehow managed to seriously deplete its write life.

Now, if you were building a new computer or you needed more capacity, then I would recommend the 860 Pro.

 

[fireberd]

As I read forums, the 960 Pro is the "high end" model.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

As I read forums, the 960 Pro is the "high end" model.

The 960 Pro, however, is an NVMe M.2 SSD instead of AHCI SATA III like the 850 and 860 Pros. The OP stated he wanted to stay with SATA. His motherboard may not even be compatible with NVMe.

 

[timw128]

The Samsung 860 Pro has only a five year warranty compared to the 850's ten year warranty but the write life increased considerably. performance hasn't increased very much. I wouldn't recommend replacing an existing 850 Pro with an 860 Pro unless it has been acting up or you somehow managed to seriously deplete its write life.

Now, if you were building a new computer or you needed more capacity, then I would recommend the 860 Pro.

Understood, however, the overall benchmarks are improved with the 860, as well...not me saying so,

but rather independent testing agencies saying so.

We've no desire to 'replace' the 850, as it's been faultless thus far, and according to SSDLife should last

until 12/23/2025... so, that seems to concur with the 10 yr. warranty.

I guess what baffled me was the fact that the 850 PRO price increased substantially over the last 3-4 yrs.,

even considering that older controller. Oh, and we have no need for anything beyond 256 GB volume, nor

ever will. For storage we use a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda... Plenty!... should we need to go beyond that we

have cloud storage and optical drive choices for archival purposes. It works for us.

One other thing, we don't care for Samsung Magician, and we're far from alone on that thought... I don't

remember the specifics, but it did cause some issues... we may have done 1 firmware update through

Magician, and then got rid of it...seems the Rapid Mode was the issue, after a moment of thought. We saw

no performance after engaging it via benchmarking, yet drive life was predicted as being shorter.

I don't want to mess with this 850... Windows 7 will stay intact on this drive, we'll install a new SSD and

clean install Windows 10 to the new drive and license with the Windows 7 key.

Thanks for the reply... have a Happy Easter!

 

[timw128]

As I read forums, the 960 Pro is the "high end" model.

Yes, that is a PCIe-x4 throughput piece, so it's not choked by SATA interface.

 

[timw128]

The 960 Pro, however, is an NVMe M.2 SSD instead of AHCI SATA III like the 850 and 860 Pros. The OP stated he wanted to stay with SATA. His motherboard may not even be compatible with NVMe.

Correct... the mobo is what actually drove my decision... the machine is an HP Envy 700-515xt CTO

and the OEM mobo is an MSI Kaili 2 piece... SATA III throughput is the best she has... of note, it's been one

of the best OEM boards I've seen- far better than Asus OEM boards we've used in the past.

This Envy machine is still on its original Chinese OEM 350w PSU... and we upgraded the i7 chip to the

Devil's Canyon variant a while ago, simply because we got a good deal on it... the only complaint we have

regarding the Haswell family chips are the integrated HD 4600 graphics. We bought a really nice MSI

GTX 960 4GB Gaming GPU but haven't installed it yet... it's tight in that uATX case!...also have a Corsair

RM750i PSU- more real estate consumed! :shock:

 

[dsperber]

Correct... the mobo is what actually drove my decision... the machine is an HP Envy 700-515xt CTO

and the OEM mobo is an MSI Kaili 2 piece... SATA III throughput is the best she has... of note, it's been one

of the best OEM boards I've seen- far better than Asus OEM boards we've used in the past.

Just in passing, you probably still do also have an M.2 NVMe option (PCIe x4, which would provide significant measured performance gains over SATA3), if your motherboard had a second "negotiable" PCIe x16/x8/x4/x1 slot.

If so, then you could use an add-on PCIe->NVMe adapter for using an M.2 card in a PCIe expansion slot, like this one from StarTech. I use an ASUS version of that same type of adapter on my own ASUS Z170-Deluxe motherboard, as it came with the motherboard (which did not contain an onboard M.2 connector) as their particular "solution" to that type of user build.

So yes, you could actually have a Samsung 960 Pro PCIe NVMe option available to you while still keeping your MSI motherboard.

 

[timw128]

Just in passing, you probably still do also have an M.2 NVMe option (PCIe x4, which would provide significant measured performance gains over SATA3), if your motherboard had a second "negotiable" PCIe x16/x8/x4/x1 slot.

If so, then you could use an add-on PCIe->NVMe adapter for using an M.2 card in a PCIe expansion slot, like this one from StarTech. I use an ASUS version of that same type of adapter on my own ASUS Z170-Deluxe motherboard, as it came with the motherboard (which did not contain an onboard M.2 connector) as their particular "solution" to that type of user build.

So yes, you could actually have a Samsung 960 Pro PCIe NVMe option available to you while still keeping your MSI motherboard.

Thanks for the info!... specifically, this mobo is a Kaili2 LGA1150 MS-7826 V2...

Expansion slots are (1) One PCI Express x16 (Gen 3.0), (3) PCI Express x1 (Gen 2.0), and

(1) PCI Express half-length mini card socket. I don't think the StarTech adapter will work, for a couple of

reasons- 1) don't have the lane for it, and 2) it would further aggravate an already overly congested area.

The x16 lane is going to be used by the MSI GPU we mentioned above, and the Corsair RM750i is

considerably larger than the OEM PSU... in fact, that alone, presents yet another challenge- the harnessing

and plug-ins don't appear to correspond to the OEM installation. I've had the GPU and CPU for 3 yrs. and

still haven't installed them... I'm working with mATX real estate here. I suppose an option would be to go

with an ATX case, transferring everything over, perhaps. I think before I went to all of that, we'd simply do

a completely new build from the ground up, using the latest Intel architecture.

I don't game, but do use intense graphics programs-ie- Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and

AutoCAD programs.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Megahertz07]

I have a SM951 – 128GB M.2 AHCI PCIe SSD drive and moved back to the 850 pro.
With the SM951 I only see better speed on the benchmark (it's almost 4 times faster). Boot times and normal use is the same.
The SM951 gave me some problems so I went back to the 850 Pro.

 

[timw128]

I have a SM951 – 128GB M.2 AHCI PCIe SSD drive and moved back to the 850 pro.
With the SM951 I only see better speed on the benchmark (it's almost 4 times faster). Boot times and normal use is the same.
The SM951 gave me some problems so I went back to the 850 Pro.

Good to know... yeah, I can't fathom speed beyond what I'm getting from my 256 GB

850 PRO... so, the 860 PRO will suit me fine. As far as the 5 yr. vs. 10 yr. warranty goes,

there's something a bit weird there. Samsung did have warranty issues with the earlier runs

of the 850 PRO, and perhaps this current price hike has something to do with a recoup, and they

went into safe mode with the 860 PRO... the only difference between the 850 and 860, from what

I can tell, is the controller.

Thanks.