Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13276/the-samsung-portable-ssd-x5-review-thunderbolt-3-and-nvme-



The rising popularity of Thunderbolt 3, coupled with the emergence of NVMe SSDs in the compact M.2 form-factor, has enabled a new class of portable bus-powered high-performance flash storage devices. Samsung is launching their first Thunderbolt 3 SSD, the Portable SSD X5, today. Unlike the recent crop of affordable TB3 SSDs that use a PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe SSD with a Phison controller, Samsung has gone in for a premium solution. The X5 places an OEM version of their 970 EVO NVMe SSD (3D TLC V-NAND and the Phoenix SSD controller) behind an Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe bridge. The X5 is available in three capacities - 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, at prices ranging from 70c/GB to 80c/GB. Samsung sampled us the 1TB version for evaluation.

Introduction

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 is a 119mm x 62mm x 19.7mm external SSD. It features a bright red underside and a dark grey chassis, and is fully made of magnesium. Coming in at 150g, it is considerably heavier than the Patriot Evlvr (88g) and the TEKQ Rapide (135g). The main contributor to this heft is the solid internal heat sink. The X5 sports a single Thunderbolt 3 interface for both power and data. The port is enabled by the Intel JHL6340 Thunderbolt 3 Controller - note that this belongs to the Alpine Ridge family, and hence, works only with Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports.

Samsung claims read and write speeds of up to 2800 / 2300 MBps. 256-bit AES encryption is also available with no performance penalty. This is enabled by the Security feature of the Samsung Portable SSD application (the same program that is being used with the T3 and T5 portable SSDs). Samsung also supplies a 0.5m Thunderbolt3 cable along with the X5.

Prior to looking at the internals, CrystalDiskInfo provides some insights.

We note that the drive supports NVMe 1.3, which is available only in the 970 EVO and not in the 960 EVO. Samsung also makes it clear in its launch material / press release that the X5 uses TLC V-NAND internally. Even though CrystalDiskInfo puts only SMART in the features section, we did see support for TRIM. The Thunderbolt link is essentially invisible to the tool, with NVM Express listed as the interface. For all practical purposes, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD in the system.

Teardown and Internals

The X5 proved to be a bit of a challenge to disassemble. While the screw behind the product sticker on the underside was easy to figure out, the removal of the strip around the Type-C port was anything but simple. There are two tabs on either side that attach the strip to the rest of the chassis, but, these tabs are hidden out of sight and are quite difficult to push in. There are two hidden screws behind the strip, but, beyond that, it was straightforward to take out all the different components.

The gallery below provides a closer look at some of the internal components. On the underside of the chassis, we find thermal pads for the Thunderbolt 3 controller and other components of the main board. On the other side, we have the heavy heat sink kept in place with appropriately positioned standoffs that are part of the top frame die-cast, along with a plastic frame that goes around the perimeter of the metal piece. There are thermal pads that take the heat away from the internal SSD and transfer it to the heat sink. The main board's PCIe 3.0 x4 connector is used to interface with the Samsung MZBLB1T0HALR, a minor variant of the Samsung 970 EVO. The controller on the SSD (Phoenix) is the same as the 970 EVO.

The X5 also employs a thermal management technology, 'Dynamic Thermal Guard', that throttles the performance of the internal SSD to keep the operating temperature around 45C. We will look into this in detail in a later section.

Usage Impressions

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 is plug-and-play except for the small matter of allowing Thunderbolt security to allow one's system to act as a host for the device. Once approved (needs to be done only once per system if the 'Always Connect' option is chosen), the device mounts as a exFAT volume. This allows for compatibility with both Mac and Windows devices. Since the X5 breezed through our benchmarks in very little time, we were able to evaluate the unit with the volume formatted in exFAT and NTFS.

The X5 ships with a copy of the Samsung Portable SSD software in the drive (both Windows and Mac versions). The gallery above shows the usage of the software to password-protect the drive. There is no performance penalty for enabling this security feature.



Synthetic Benchmarks

Various synthetic benchmarks are available to quickly evaluate the performance of direct-attached storage devices. Real-world performance testing often has to be a customized test. We present both varieties in this review, starting with the synthetic benchmarks in this section. Prior to covering those, we have a quick look at our testbed setup and testing methodology.

Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology

Evaluation of DAS units on Windows is done with the testbed outlined in the table below. For devices with a Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C interface) connections (such as the Samsung Portable SSD X5 1TB that we are considering today), we utilize the Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1 Type-C port enabled by the Intel Alpine Ridge controller. It connects to the Z170 PCH via a PCIe 3.0 x4 link..

AnandTech DAS Testbed Configuration
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z170X-UD5 TH ATX
CPU Intel Core i5-6600K
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2133C15-8GRR
32 GB ( 4x 8GB)
DDR4-2133 @ 15-15-15-35
OS Drive Samsung SM951 MZVPV256 NVMe 256 GB
SATA Devices Corsair Neutron XT SSD 480 GB
Intel SSD 730 Series 480 GB
Add-on Card None
Chassis Cooler Master HAF XB EVO
PSU Cooler Master V750 750 W
OS Windows 10 Pro x64
Thanks to Cooler Master, GIGABYTE, G.Skill and Intel for the build components

The full details of the reasoning behind choosing the above build components can be found here. The list of DAS units used for comparison purposes is provided below.

  • Samsung Portable SSD X5 1TB (NTFS)
  • DIY TEKQ Rapide - SanDisk Extreme Pro TB3 SSD 1TB
  • LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt 500GB
  • Patriot Evlvr TB3 SSD 1TB
  • Samsung Portable SSD X5 1TB (exFAT)
  • TEKQ Rapide TB3 SSD 240GB (NTFS)
  • TEKQ Rapide TB3 SSD 240GB (exFAT)
  • d2 TB2 - SSD

ATTO and Crystal DiskMark

Samsung claims read and write speeds of 2800 MBps and 2300 MBps respectively, and these are backed up by the ATTO benchmarks provided below. Unfortunately, these access traces are not very common in real-life scenarios.

Drive Performance Benchmarks - CrystalDiskMark


AnandTech DAS Suite and Performance Consistency

This section looks at how the Samsung Portable SSD X5 fares in real-life workloads.

Benchmarks - robocopy and PCMark 8 Storage Bench

Our testing methodology for DAS units also takes into consideration the usual use-case for such devices. The most common usage scenario is transfer of large amounts of photos and videos to and from the unit. The minor usage scenario is importing files directly off the DAS into a multimedia editing program such as Adobe Photoshop.

In order to tackle the first use-case, we created three test folders with the following characteristics:

  • Photos: 15.6 GB collection of 4320 photos (RAW as well as JPEGs) in 61 sub-folders
  • Videos: 16.1 GB collection of 244 videos (MP4 as well as MOVs) in 6 sub-folders
  • BR: 10.7 GB Blu-ray folder structure of the IDT Benchmark Blu-ray (the same that we use in our robocopy tests for NAS systems)

Performance Consistency and Thermal Characteristics

The temperature of the X5 does not cross 55C in our stress test. That said, we see some differences in the transfer rates from one run to the next for the same data set. It looks likely that the thermal management features are at play (given that Samsung wants to maintain the internal SSD around 45C), but, we also want to rule out the SLC cache running out. The test outlined in our next section clears up that aspect.



Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

The 'Dynamic Thermal Guard' technology adopted by Samsung appeared interesting from the marketing description (automatic throttling to keep the case temperature below 45C). In order to figure out the impacts, I deleted the volume on the X5, and set up a fio workload to write sequential data to the raw drive with a block size of 128K and iodepth of 32 to cover 90% of the drive capacity. The internal temperature, instantaneous write data rate, and total amount of data written in total till that point of time were recorded.

Drive Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark Workloads

We find that the power consumption stays mostly south of 7W, though we did notice spikes of up to 9W in our high-queue depth sequential write tests.

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 has no trouble supporting TRIM commands from the OS. The performance for most consumers is good enough - in fact, in our DAS suite, the X5 managed to lead the charts in almost all the tests. The issues start cropping up only under sustained loading in cases such as transferring 50+GB into the X5 without any break inbetween. I am still waiting to hear from Samsung on why they opted for a magnesium chassis compared to the aluminum used by most other competitive offerings. [Update (Samsung's response, paraphrased): Since the X5 is a portable product, it needs to be durable against external impact, light-weight, and dissipate heat well. Magnesium is much lighter than aluminum/steel and also durable, enabling use in products that require rigidity and lightness such as cell phones, cameras etc. Although aluminum has better thermal conductivity, we have found that magnesium is the optimal metal solution to meet all the three conditions - weight, durability, and heat dissipation.]

Moving on to the pricing aspect, we find that the X5 is not particularly cheap - we would have no trouble with that had the X5 not throttled significantly in our new extended sequential writes test.

Price per GB

Consumers would be prudent to treat the X5 as a premium product - it performs admirably for the vast majority. However, for power users who frequently transfer 100s of gigabytes in one go, a solution like our DIY Thunderbolt 3 SSD is a better choice. Our DIY device does not look as sleek as the X5, but, it is cheaper and has more consistent performance.

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