Model: Samsung SSD 830 Series 128GB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Samsung Electronics
Provided By: Samsung America

Samsung Electronics has been a leader in the electronics industry for more than 30 years. Since the introduction of their first television in 1970, this Korean company has grown to become one of the world's leading electronics manufacturers, offering everything from tiny semiconductors to large home appliances. Samsung is no stranger to the storage industry either. Along with an assortment of DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives, the company offers both hard drive and flash based storage solutions for the portable and desktop computer markets

Like many other manufacturers, Samsung has set its sights on the growing solid-state drive (SSD) market. This past fall, the company launched its SSD 830 Series. Designed and built completely in-house, the SSD 830 is powered by Samsung's own triple-core MCX controller and features a SATA 6GB/s interface as well as wear-leveling and garbage collection algorithms for sustained performance and reliability. The 830 Series also packs 256MB of on-board cache and uses Samsung's 20nm-class Toggle DDR NAND flash memory to deliver up to 520MB/s read and 400MB/s write speeds.

The 830 Series is available by itself or as part of a user-friendly installation kit. For this review, Samsung sent us the 128GB desktop installation kit (MZ-7PC128D/AM). The 128GB version of the SSD 830 is capable of delivering up to 520 MB/s sequential read and 320 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 30,000 random read and 80,000 random write IOPS.

   Samsung SSD 830 Series 128GB Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Model Numbers MZ-7PC128B (Basic Kit)
MZ-7PC128N (Notebook Kit)
MZ-7PC128D (Desktop Kit)
Capacity 128GB
Flash Type 2xnm Toggle DDR MLC NAND
Controller Samsung S4LJ204X01-Y040
Cache 256MB DDR2
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Interface SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance
Sequential Read 520 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 320 MB/s Max
Random Read (IOPS 4K) 80,000 Max
Random Write (IOPS 4K) 30,000 Max

Reliability
MTBF 1.5 million hours

Power Consumption
Active 0.15W
Idle 0.08W

Environmental
Temperature (Operating) 0 ºC to 60 ºC
Temperature (Non-operating) -55 ºC to 95 ºC)
Shock 1500G/0.5 ms
Vibration (Operating) 2.17G rms (7~800Hz)

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 100 x 69.85 x 7 mm
Weight 61g

Other Features
Ultra-slim 7mm form mactor
Brushed metal design
Wear-Leveling and Garbage Collection Algorithms
Supports TRIM, SMART and NCQ
Includes SSD Magician software and Norton Ghost 15.0
Downloadable copy of Batman: Arkham City
Three year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the 830 Series has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's latest 128GB SSD and then see how well it performs.  Does the SSD 830 have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Samsung? Keep reading as we find out.


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