The Samsung Portable SSD X5 Review - Thunderbolt 3 and NVMe in a Premium Enclosure
by Ganesh T S on August 28, 2018 10:00 AM ESTSynthetic 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 - ATTO |
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CrystalDiskMark, despite being a canned benchmark, provides a better estimate of the performance range with a selected set of numbers. As evident from the screenshot below, the performance can dip to as low as 46 MBps for 4K random reads at low queue depths.
| Drive Performance Benchmarks - CrystalDiskMark |
/CDM.png) |
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melgross - Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - link
I just don’t get the case design and material. No matter what Samsung says, this is a bad case. I wonder how it would perform outside of the case? Unless Samsung is expecting people to constantly drop this on concrete, the increase in protection isn’t worth the additional throttling. No one is going to buy this because the case is, supposedly, more durable, if it results in a $700 1TB drive performing badly for one of the most important aspects of its purchase.60Mb/s is just not excusable, no matter what. A 10 year old HDD is better than that.
SwissDataHoarder - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Thunderbolt is an Apple - Intel Technology and you tested the X5 without "MacOS journaled", only NTFS exFAT...Arsix - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
I just got one today (1tb), and trying to pop in a 960pro 2tb I had laying around. Will this enclosure support it ? And how exactly did you take it apart ? You mentioned ‘there are two tabs that push in and attach to the rest of the chassis’ can you please elaborate a bit on that part ? Love your review !