Samsung 860 QVO review: the first QLC SATA SSD, but it can’t topple TLC yet

Samsung may not be the first to release a QLC SSD, but the 860 QVO is the first mainstream SATA drive to try and deliver on the promise of high-capacity solid state drives at a price to rival large scale spinning platter storage. It was Intel who blinked first, releasing its 660p NVMe drive into the market, but this is the first standard QLC SSD we’ve plumbed into our test rig. What is this QLC stuff anyways? Well, if we actually start referring to it as Samsung does it becomes a little more obvious… 4-bit MLC is how the Korean SSD giant denotes the latest NAND technology. QLC, or 4-bit MLC, is essentially a method of increasing the capacity of a NAND chip in the same physical space. It does this by allowing the memory to store more bits in each cell. Being able to store four bits per cell, as opposed to three bits in TLC; two bits in traditional MLC; and just a single bit in SLC, does boost the available storage, but it also comes with its own share of downsides.

from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2PZP9ZH