Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB NVME SSD
1. Introduction / Retail Package
Samsung has many different lines of NAND storage, the recent drops in prices, gave the previous 970 EVO Plus series an interesting look, since the 2TB version costs now ~90 to 100 Euro, making it a good proposal for users who wish to further extend their storage capacities with NVME fast storage.
The 970 EVO Plus series are based on PCI Gen3 and can reach sequential read/write speeds up to 3,500/3,300 MB/s with optimized firmware, a proven in-house controller, and an intelligent turbo write boost. There is a 5-year warranty and 1200 TBW promise for lasting performance.
The retail package is well-designed and on par with most other Samsung NVME storage solutions.
Everything is well packaged and you won't find much inside, just a basic printed manual and the drive itself.
The product complies with the NVME 1.3 standard for M2280 dimensions
- Features Comparison
Below we gathered a comparison table according to what Samsung lists for both devices on their official website
Model Code (Capacity) |
Samsung 970 2TB Evo Plus MZ-V7S2T0 |
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| APPLICATION |
Client PCs, Game Consoles |
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| FORM FACTOR | M.2 (2280) |
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| INTERFACE |
PCIe® Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe™ 1.3 |
PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c |
PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 |
| DIMENSION (WxHxD) | 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38 (mm) |
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| WEIGHT | Max 8.0 g |
Max 9.0 g |
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| STORAGE MEMORY | Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC |
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| CONTROLLER | Samsung in-house Controller | Samsung Elpis Controller |
Samsung in-house Controller |
| CACHE MEMORY |
HMB (Host Memory Buffer)
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Samsung 2GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM (2TB) |
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| TRIM SUPPORT | Supported |
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| S.M.A.R.T SUPPORT | Supported |
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| GC (GARBAGE COLLECTION) | Auto Garbage Collection Algorithm |
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| ENCRYPTION SUPPORT | AES 256-bit Encryption (Class 0) TCG/Opal IEEE1667 (Encrypted drive) |
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| WWN SUPPORT | Not Supported |
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| DEVICE SLEEP MODE SUPPORT | Yes |
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| SEQUENTIAL READ | Up to 3,500 MB/s | Up to 7,000 MB/s |
Up to 7,450 MB/s |
| SEQUENTIAL WRITE | Up to 3,300 MB/s | Up to 5,100 MB/s |
Up to 6,900 MB/s |
| RANDOM READ (4KB, QD32) | Up to 620,000 IOPS | Up to 1,000,000 IOPS |
Up to 1,400,000 IOPS |
| RANDOM WRITE (4KB, QD32) | Up to 560,000 IOPS | Up to 1,000,000 IOPS |
Up to 1,550,000 IOPS |
| RANDOM READ (4KB, QD1) | Up to 19,000 IOPS | Up to 22,000 IOPS |
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| RANDOM WRITE (4KB, QD1) | Up to 62,000 IOPS | Up to 60,000 IOPS |
Up to 80,000 IOPS |
| AVERAGE POWER CONSUMPTION (SYSTEM LEVEL) |
Average 6.0 W | Average 6.1 W Maximum 7.2 W (Burst mode) |
Average 5.5 W Maximum 8.5 W (Burst mode) |
| POWER CONSUMPTION (IDLE) | Max. 30 mW | Max. 35 mW |
Max. 50 mW |
| POWER CONSUMPTION (DEVICE SLEEP) | Max. 5 mW |
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| ALLOWABLE VOLTAGE | 3.3 V ± 5 % Allowable voltage |
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| RELIABILITY (MTBF) | 1.5 Million Hours Reliability |
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| OPERATING TEMPERATURE | 0 - 70 ℃ |
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| SHOCK |
1,500 G & 0.5 ms (Half sine) |
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| Warranty |
5 Years or 1,200 TBW |
5 Years or 1200 TBW | |
| Retail price | $129.99 | $139.99 |
$189.99 |
As we can see the 970 Evo Plus is the "lowest" and cheapest 2TB solution from Samsung with lower reading/writing speeds, at least compared with the top 980 Pro and 990 Pro series. All products have 5 years of warranty or 1200 TBW which should be enough for most users.
- Installation
Not much to be said here, just get the drive and install it at an empty NVMe slot. In some boards you have to change Bios settings to Storage: PCIe in order to get the drive recognized. Samsung offers an NVME driver for Windows, however, we didn't install it to have the same comparison with other drives.
The test PC system was based on AMD format, with a Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB DDR4 RAM (G.Skill CL14), and an Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming Motherboard with the latest bios and AMD motherboard drivers/Windows 10 x64 drivers installed. No antivirus was running in the background and with the Samsung Magician, we set the drive format at its best possible mode.
Running the Samsung Magician gave us some information about the drive and it had pre-installed the latest firmware update.
The drive runs at PCIe Gen3 and the used NVME drive comes from Microsoft.
The CrystalDiskInfo software gives us some details about the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB, it runs at PCIe 3.0 x4 and supports NVM Express 1.3 protocol with the Asus 570-E Gaming motherboard :
