I noticed something curious about my new Samsung 860 EVOs.

I noticed something curious about my new Samsung 860 EVOs. I spent today transferring the data on my old 4TB Samsung 850 EVOs to my new 4TB 860 Pros. When I touched both drives while and after transferring, the 860 Pros were noticeably cooler than the 850 EVOs. I don't know if the difference is better design of the 860s over the 850s or better design of the Pros than the EVOs (or both). Also, the case design is a bit different. Still, seeing lower temperatures is welcome.

Hi Lady Fitzgerald,

It could be by design or the fact that the operation of transferring data is making the HDD work extra hard for a longer period of time than normally!

I hope this helps!

Paul Black said:

Hi Lady Fitzgerald,

It could be by design or the fact that the operation of transferring data is making the HDD work extra hard for a longer period of time than normally!

I hope this helps!

HDD? What HDD? I don't see an HDD. Do you see an HDD? (If you recognize the commercial that came from, you're giving your age away.)

I had someone point out that the controller and DRAM chips in the 860s are a new design which may explain it. I looked at the specs onlne and the 850s used a Samsung MHX cintoller and the 860s use a Samsung MJX controller. One other difference between the 4TB 850 EVOs and the 4TB 860 Pros is the EVOs are rated at 1.95A and the Pros, 1.4A.

True, I was doing massive data transfers but keep in mind only the 860s were being written to during the transfers. The EVOS were only being read. When I rechecked the transfers a day or two after doing the transfers using FreeFileSync to compare the drives (but before reformatting the old 850s to repurpose them for backing up one of the new 860s), which was a read operation only of both the 860s and the 850s, the cases of the 860s were still noticeably cooler than the 850s.

I didn't check drive temperatures in S.M.A.R.T. because I found out, the hard way) that running Speccy to check Temperattures while running Macrium Reflect would cause a program crash. Even though I was using FreeFileSync for the data transfers (FFS has more visible verification than MR's cloning and will report any errors at the end of an operation opposed to MR just saying the clone failed without saying why and wiping out the drive being transferred to, requiring a reformat and wasting write life), I didn't want to chance it. It never dawned on me to check the temps via Speccy after the trasnfers were competed (doh!).

mrjimphelps said:

...Lower operating temperature for an SSD would be a big reason to change to that drive.

Yes and no. I certainly won't replace all my 850s with 860s just because the 860s run cooler. Considering how much these little jewels cost, that would be insane, especially since the 850s don't run all that hot to begin with. I'll run my 850s until they curl up and die, then replace them with an 860 or whatever the current, equivalent drive is at that time.

On a similar note, has anyone been watching the Samsung 860 QVO--QLC or quad level cell--that's supposed to be released on 12/06 (note I said supposed to be; Samsung is notorious for releasing products late or not at all)? Samsung is doing a big push on these, pormoting them as the SSD that will sound the death knell to HDDs. The reviewers that actually got their hot, little hands have been giving mixed reviews on them. They simply do not compare to Samsung's TLC and MLC in speed and write life and the 4TB version has had some failure issues while undergoing testing but they supposedly will shine over similarly priced, low end DRAMless TLC drives (all the Sammys have DRAM, btw, including the new QVO). Time will tell.

Considering how inferior to SLC the early MLC drives were and how inferior the early TLC drives were to MLC drives, it's just a matter of time before QLC will become as mainstream as the current TLC has. Sata has become saturated speed wise and the current Samsung 850 and 860 Pros and EVOs run at pretty much the same speeds. The only real differences, other than price, are the Pros have more write life than the EVOs and the 860s run cooler than the 850s (the 860s are also less expensive than the equivalent 850s). The only real gains left for SATA SSDs are in write life, power consumption, capacity (over m.2 drives so far), and price.

I just read today that the MXJ controller that all the Sammy 860s use (including the QVO) is capable of supporting up to 8TB so maybe larger than 4TB consumer SSDs are on the horizon. My guess the first larger than 4TB Sammy SSDs would be QVOs, assuming they catch on like Samsung is counting on. After all, the first 4TB consumer SSDs were the 850 EVOs (Samsung never even got around to making a 4TB 850 Pro; they held up deploying it because of the NAND "shortage" at the time, then never released one until the 860s came out earlier this year).