Benchmarks of Samsung PM983 960GB SSD

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Samsung MZQLB960HAJR-00007 came up across the water. It is one of the PM983 series SSD for enterprise use that has U.2 connector and 960GB capacity. Now I haven't been satisfied with present SATA SSD on my server because I upgraded my LAN to 40GbE, so I couldn't help but get it.

Actually recent consumer M.2 SSDs are faster than the PM983 in term of simply comparison, but I wanted a reliability-oriented product to protect my data or avoid unreasonable troubles. Then, I had found seller tested used one approximate at 10000 yen on ebay, so I had to order it. I could also get a brand-new PM963 or PM953 series at the same price, but their performances are distinct different with PM983. I think it was pretty good deal. The specs is bellow:

Sequential access speed
- Read 3000MB/s
- Write 1050MB/s
Random access speed
- Read 400000 IOPS
- Write 40000 IOPS
1.3 DWPD (TBW=1366TB)
TLC (3bit MLC VNAND)

I'd ordered the SSDs on 2nd September, and received them on 14th. They looked good. Their written bytes were less than 1TB. I can say the overall quality is good.

1GB

CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3477.878 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1343.090 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :  1420.408 MB/s [ 346779.3 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :  1031.596 MB/s [ 251854.5 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   284.364 MB/s [  69424.8 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   249.212 MB/s [  60842.8 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    47.538 MB/s [  11606.0 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   144.743 MB/s [  35337.6 IOPS]

  Test : 1024 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.1/894.2 GiB)] (x5)  [Interval=0 sec]
  Date : 2019/09/15 22:02:39
    OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18362] (x64)
    SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007 (PCIe 3.0)

32GB

CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3474.642 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1156.368 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :  1423.327 MB/s [ 347491.9 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :   388.278 MB/s [  94794.4 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   291.644 MB/s [  71202.1 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   172.880 MB/s [  42207.0 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    47.276 MB/s [  11542.0 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   136.357 MB/s [  33290.3 IOPS]

  Test : 32768 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.1/894.2 GiB)] (x5)  [Interval=0 sec]
  Date : 2019/09/15 22:03:08
    OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18362] (x64)
    SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007 (PCIe 3.0)

1GB

AS SSD Benchmark 2.0.6485.19676
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007
Firmware: EDA5202Q
Controller: stornvme
Offset: 16384 K - OK
Size: 894.25 GB
Date: 2019/09/15 22:03:59
Note: MZQLB960HAJR-00007
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 2569.63 MB/s
Write: 1294.86 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 41.92 MB/s
Write: 113.66 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 1365.31 MB/s
Write: 1254.64 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.036 ms
Write: 0.034 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 1664
Write: 1498
Total: 3951
------------------------------

AS SSD Benchmark 2.0.6485.19676
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007
Firmware: EDA5202Q
Controller: stornvme
Offset: 16384 K - OK
Size: 894.25 GB
Date: 2019/09/15 22:04:22
Note: MZQLB960HAJR-00007
------------------------------
16MB
------------------------------
Read: 160.60 iops
Write: 80.93 iops
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 10731 iops
Write: 29098 iops
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 349520 iops
Write: 321189 iops
------------------------------
512B
------------------------------
Read: 27858 iops
Write: 29645 iops
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 1664
Write: 1498
Total: 3951
------------------------------

10GB

AS SSD Benchmark 2.0.6485.19676
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007
Firmware: EDA5202Q
Controller: stornvme
Offset: 16384 K - OK
Size: 894.25 GB
Date: 2019/09/15 22:04:08
Note: MZQLB960HAJR-00007
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 2857.39 MB/s
Write: 1275.96 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 41.43 MB/s
Write: 114.74 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 955.91 MB/s
Write: 687.14 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.038 ms
Write: 0.344 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 1283
Write: 929
Total: 2796
------------------------------

AS SSD Benchmark 2.0.6485.19676
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG MZQLB960HAJR-00007
Firmware: EDA5202Q
Controller: stornvme
Offset: 16384 K - OK
Size: 894.25 GB
Date: 2019/09/15 22:04:43
Note: MZQLB960HAJR-00007
------------------------------
16MB
------------------------------
Read: 178.59 iops
Write: 79.75 iops
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 10607 iops
Write: 29373 iops
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 244714 iops
Write: 175909 iops
------------------------------
512B
------------------------------
Read: 26622 iops
Write: 2910 iops
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 1283
Write: 929
Total: 2796
------------------------------

A cache capacity on the SSD is unknown.

Its speed was stable in 1GB test as far as I tested it several times with CrystalDiskMark. However, in 32GB test, there were variation result particularly on write speed. It was because of a cache overflow, I guess. It slowed down to 60MB/s in the worst case of a 4K1T writing test.

For your information, a result the SSD connected with PCIe 2.0x4 is below: