Samsung has begun mass-producing 2.5-inch SATA 3.0 (6 Gbps) SSD for consumers, the new SSDs are based on QLC V-NAND flash, a technology that can store 4-bit data in one cell. The product launch is sc... Samsung Announces QLC SSDs up-to 4 TB
Will they phase out TLC and replace it entirely with QLC? Samsung has increased the number of production lines, but they might think it's all the same if it's TLC or QLC, since they are nonetheless viewed as less reliable than SLC or MLC (2-bit). Thus customers requiring reliability foremost wouldn't care as they would stick to the enterprise SLC or MLC nonetheless. Those who only want max bang for the buck wouldn't even look at the tech used. Then there are those who'd hesitate, such as myself. I experienced the Samsung 840 EVO TLC disaster personally, after all. I'm not going to jump into QLC head first, that's for sure. However, I'm not sure Samsung cares about this last category.
Personally, having MLC and knowing how it's working, I'll keep away from QLC. I might get a TLC drive in the future, but I'm not giving up that much life on the SSD for more space.
What difference does QLC make? Performance wise of course? And i am not asking for specs, just what exactly should be different in a day to day use scenario.
Slower perfomance about what you would expect jumpibg fron mlc(2bit) to tlc(3bit) cells...thats ok the new controlers can handle that especially on sata interface , and most importantly from tlc to qlc the endurance of write cycles drops from 3000 to 1000... that said any endurance test done on mlc ant tlc drives far exceed their rated endurance multiple times. Now my stance on qlc drives ...if the 2tb model comes out @200 euros or even better the 4 or 3 tb one i might snatch one to use only as a steam library installing 10-50gb games and leting em sit there till you are in the right mood to play seems almost like their endurance will be just fine
I mean, most the endurance tests ive seen run the lifetime of SSD's to be 20 years plus (depending on how much you read and write), so even halfing that and them only lasting 10 years is a crazy long time... One test i found said TLC drives in theory could last up to 100 years as long as no defect or something else happened but most of that would be picked up on arrival. Though most of this depends on how much data you write on it... many tests showing around 1000TB to be a dying point on many drives, Don't know about you but i don't install 10TB worth of stuff a day to worry about such things https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/2 Samsung 840pro lasted till 2400 TB of data was installed, thats pretty insane if you ask me
tell me when I can get atlest 1 tb ssd for 69.99, which is about the price of 1tb HDD likes the wd blacks, till such time happen I will replace my 7+ year old barracuda with a 1 or 2 tb hdd like the toshiba P300
almost there, I see sketchy brands on amazon selling 480gb for 74$, so far they work just fine and saturate the sata ports & keep up with my 850 evo just fine, some say they are just like "white label" hdds but since SSDs are more akin to cpu dies than fans, like harddrives are, it might actually be a good deal overall
My SSD is rated for 72TB At 12/13Gb a day usage, that's around 15/16 years. TLC is 1/3 of MLC and QLC is 1/3 of TLC (or exactly 1/10 of MLC). So the same SSD would die on me before 2 years...no thanks!
@Silva Ok am i missing something? A 4tb qlc drive in ideal conditions should last fo 4000tb writes right?
I'm still waiting for an affordable 1TB M.2 drive to be released. I'm thinking $99 would be the sweet spot, but I'm willing to give $149 just to get it a bit sooner.
My math does not add up because I'm talking about a 256Gb SSD. I couldn't afford a 4Tb SSD and I'd buy a 512Gb one for example. So if mine is rated for 72Tb the 512 would be double (because of size) then divided by 10 (because of the cell rating). So the right math for a QLC SSD of 512Gb would be just over 3 years life.
Just looked at my drives, did some maths on them my 960 pro 512gb should die in about 320 years with me using around 7.5 terabytes a year... i'm rather terrified about this https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/e...o-comes-to-an-end-after-9100tb-of-writes.html Should of got this i'd last me 1000 years then, i wouldn't have to worry evere But in all seriousness as long as the drives i use last 10-15 years, i'm fine with that chances are with how space of games and windows works stuff like 512Gb just won't be enough by then... mind you it isn't enough now for more than a boot drive, got my 4TB 850 evo for that which should last me the 1tb has a 2000Gb usage, i'm guessing the 4tb has at least double that... so i guess in maybe 600+ years i might need a new one https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/e...o-comes-to-an-end-after-9100tb-of-writes.html Mind you stories like this give me hope... like honestly i think you over think this, if its a boot drive then year its going to be using more than you might need, but as a game drive where files are accessed every second of the day, you might only use the drive a little meaning it will last you more than long enough.... it's a matter of do you want to pay less now for the good size, or splash out a little and it can last longer....tbh MLC might even be total overkill for us average users, i mean anything rated for 2PB is insane unless for some odd reason you're using 200Gbs a day?
Why /10 and not /3? From tlc to qlc the drop is to 1000 cycles from 3000 , and to be clear i would not be comfortable to use a qlc drive as a heavy duty drive .but if they are a lot cheaper than the other drives they can be great steam libraries you write games ones and then mostly read kind of making the endurance to not matter and you get the benefits of an ssd ! That said if they cost about the same then this is a nope from me also
Well, I have almost 4TB total of SSD space in my primary home PC. I am set for a while and that does not even count the 2 x 1TB Hard drives I have installed or the 2TB HD I have sitting in front of me, unused.
My drive is MLC so 10000 cycles. If QLC is 1000, I think 1/10 is correct. I agree QLC should be great for libraries, but I bought an SSD for the access time and read/write speed, not to be idle all the time. For high density I can't afford SSD, so I use them for performance. I'm sure TLC is enough for me in the future, I'm still not sure about QLC.
A QLC NAND drive would make a lot of sense if combined with some sort of persistent cache (like Optane) onboard. The QLC part could keep the price down and keep the performance reasonable for infrequently accessed data while the persistent cache could handle the heavy lifting. Having the cache onboard also simplifies things and allows the drive to work on any platform and on any NVMe OS.
