Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus

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Hi

Just built a new rig, is there any setting up i should be doing for the Evo plus apart from maybe changing it from x2 to x4 in the bios?

Thanks
S
 
Soldato
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nope. It's fairly reliable. You can consider limiting the volume size by 10% to aid overprovisioning but the performance tail-off is greatly reduced on these vs SSDs of old.

What size you go for?
 

mrk

mrk

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Yup the driver is here: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

I have the 1TB drive and have had it for 3 months now with no real world issues. One thing to note is if you install Samsung Magician (don't have it start up at logon as it's a bit bloaty) and run the benchmark, I noticed that write performance as the drive fills up has dropped or is up and down since the day I got it as I make use of the space on it with games and then uninstall stuff etc. Can anyone else confirm this on their 970 Evo Plus?

Interesting that the read and write IOPs tell a different story, so am wondering if this is just a statistical display error or something...

The read speed has remained more or less the same however.

Samsung_970_Evo_Plus_Magician.jpg


Great drive overall, runs a bit warm but this is fine/norm for these and generally better for it going by all the resources I read online when looking it all up.
 
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I've occasionally found Magician to return the odd low benchmark result with all kinds of drives.

I've only written 836GB to my 970 Evo Plus but so far all the benchmarks have been consistent.

EDIT: I did find performance would drop a little if it was running around IIRC 70C or so though - since putting a heatsink on it it runs more like <50C. Possible you are seeing some thermal throttling if benchmarking after sustained use of the drive though I'd have thought that would affect read speeds as well.
 
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mrk

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What heatsink did you get out of interest? I'd be inclined to put one on if that is certainly the case!

Edit* I recall back to my previous comment about them being designed to be run at warmer temps. The operating temp of these is 70 degrees but that figure is for the ambient environment not the ssd itself. I know for sure my case internals are not hitting anywhere near that kind of roast :p

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzSIfxHppPY&t=372s
 
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What heatsink did you get out of interest? I'd be inclined to put one on if that is certainly the case!

Was the one which came with the PCI-e adapter I used so nothing special. Some basic Akasa thing IIRC.

Downside is you have to remove the label to fit it as it isn't a thermal transfer sticker :s
 

mrk

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I think I'll skip based on the above update!

Also ran Crystal earlier and got this so looks like it is indeed Magician that's being a bit flaky :p

XASi3ZO.jpg
 
Soldato
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My 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus testing using the latest version of CrystalDiskMark and using the NVMe SSD setting chosen from the Settings menu:
Crystal-Disk-Mark-20210929162044.png


This drive has seen nearly a full year's worth on power on hours and ~66TB of writes, with 94% health remaining.
 

mrk

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I guess this thread is relevant for this update instead of a new thread... Samsung magician has had a major update today to v7. Now the temp "status" shows as good when the 970 idles at 50+ which is what is expected for this drive whereas it was showing "Too Hot" in the old version. New UI as well and stuff has moved around a bit with some new features like temp history logging.

vAdlTFz.jpg

My 970 Evo Plus 1TB reached 83 degrees during the built in benchmark tests. I may invest in just a small stick on heatsink for just the controller on this drive if this proves to be a problem although I am not doing sustained heavy data writes to the drive much at all. Always small files with the odd video transcode here and there but they are written much slower than what would heat the drive up.
 
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I've just noticed that the updated Samsung Magician has a service that runs at startup and tries to access the internet. I hope this isn't telemetry. :(

SamsungMagicianSVC: C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Samsung Magician\SamsungMagicianSVC.exe
 
Soldato
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Fortunately, it's a conventional service so it's easy enough to stop and disable in services.msc.
Magician itself is triggered at logon of any user in the task scheduler.
 
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I've just noticed that the updated Samsung Magician has a service that runs at startup and tries to access the internet. I hope this isn't telemetry. :(

SamsungMagicianSVC: C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Samsung Magician\SamsungMagicianSVC.exe

I have it disabled on start up personally - older versions did a check for updates and sent a small snapshot of generic drive details but apparently newer versions send more telemetry data.

It is getting quite annoying how many programs now implement useless notifications with no options to control and send telemetry data back.
 
Soldato
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Fortunately, it's a conventional service so it's easy enough to stop and disable in services.msc.
Magician itself is triggered at logon of any user in the task scheduler.
I have it disabled on start up personally - older versions did a check for updates and sent a small snapshot of generic drive details but apparently newer versions send more telemetry data.

It is getting quite annoying how many programs now implement useless notifications with no options to control and send telemetry data back.
I've changed the service's startup type to manual and it hasn't restarted itself so far.

But this is exactly why I use ESET's firewall in interactive mode. I get to see what's trying to access the internet and have the choice of blocking or allowing it.
 
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