The Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB
Contents
Figure 1 shows the box of the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB.
Figure 1: the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB package
On Figure 2, we see the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB. It comes as a single M.2 drive, with no adapter for a PCI Express slot.
Figure 2: the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB
On the bottom of the PCB (solder side,) there is no chip, seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3: bottom side
Removing the sticker, we see the component side of the PCB. There are two flash memory chips, one DDR3 buffer chip, and the controller chip.
Figure 4: component side of the PCB
The controller chip used by the 960 EVO is the Samsung Polaris, seen in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Polaris controller chip
The Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB uses a LPDDR3 512 MiB chip, presented in Figure 6, as a data buffer.
Figure 6: buffer memory chip
The Samsung V-NAND TCL flash memory chips are marked K90MGY8S7M. This “V” stands for vertical manufacturing, called “3D” for other manufacturers, where the semiconductor layers are stacked, unlike 2D (“planar”) chips.
Figure 7: flash memory chip
