Samsung 850 Pro SSD review - Product showcase

The SSD can be opened up and shows a full-sized PCB. This 6Gbps storage unit makes use of Samsung's own MLC 3D-V-NAND. 

A total of eight NAND flash memory ICs can be spotted on the PCB for the entire 1TB (!). The NAND FLASH partitions are assigned directly to the controller. All the way to the upper left you can see two ICs, these are in fact a RAM cache IC and the controller.

Here we can see the triple core MEX controller. This is an eight-channel controller with the ability of a possible 175~200MB/s per channel throughput, which is a really high value yet becoming the norm for enthusiast class SSDs anno 2014. 

In the photo above we zoom in a little on the DDR3 memory cache chip from Samsung. This functions as cache chip / buffer.

As stated, the NAND used is the new 3D V-NAND in architecture where memory celles are stacked and this way they can put more of them in a chip. An interesting fact is that the power consumption of the Samsung SSD is extraordinary low with an IDLE rating of two Milli Watts and 3 watts when active, regular SSD drives use roughly 2 to 4 watts of power when active. We can see why these SSDs end up in notebooks, as that is a much preferred power consumption.