Samsung 960 EVO, 960 Pro SSDs: The Full Product Details

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Game256

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Nice. Samsung as always the best.

960 EVO is even better than SM961 on paper. But I doubt it will be in real life. PM961 was also close to SM961 on paper, but in the real tests it was significantly worse.

However, compared to SM961 for the same price, 960 EVO gets lots of additional pros: full warranty (the same 3 years that many retailers propose for SM961, but I think it will be much easier to get a replace from Samsung than from retailer), several thermal protection features (the most important thing, considering problems with overheating in SM961) and ready for consumer market, fully tested and balanced drive as a whole.

Don't look at endurance. This is marketing bullshit. There are endurance tests of 850 EVO 250 Gb with 75 TB specified endurance. It easily passed more than 1200 Tb without any problems. And this is for TLC 3D V-NAND, not even MLC.

It will be interesting to see the real tests of these drives. Did Samsung said when in October they're going to release them? Samsung 950 Pro was also announced on September 21 and was released on October 22 2016.
 

CRamseyer

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I guess I'll have to write an article on endurance and what it actually means for end users. There are several tests where people wrote data to the drive for a very long time but that is not what endurance is about. For consumer SSDs, you have to be able to write the data and then power the device down for a year without losing your data. There is a specific JEDEC test for it. Due to time limitations, we do not test endurance.

This is a good place to start and then if you want the JEDEC test and details are online. http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2012/20120821_S102C_Cox.pdf
 

CRamseyer

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I will let you know when I know. I still need to test the 600p for you as well.

Sadly I couldn't ask all of the questions I wanted to at the event. There are around 100 members of the media there and eventually they take the mic away.
 

nycalex

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finally an affordable 500gb nvme ssd that doesn't completelly suck.

i was about to pull the trigger on intel 600, but now i'm going to wait for the 960 evo.

i have used all pro drives thus far, 840 pro, 850 pro. Compared to a lowly budget crucial mx200 256gb ssd that costs way less, the real world speed differential WAS MINIMAL.

now i only play games with my system, but so far i find all SSDs being almost similar in speed in real world applications such as games.
 

argus2000

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Sep 21, 2016
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I have read that these new SSDs are using 21 nanometers 3D V-Nand (48 layers). Is this true? Remember that previously Samsung was using 40nm 3D V-NAND (48 layers). This is a very important point. If true, this would mean that Samsung is now able to double capacity of the drives (or quadruplicate?) without increasing layer count (now 48). Please, ask Samsung about this important matter.
 

argus2000

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Sep 21, 2016
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I have read that these new SSDs are using 21 nanometers 3D V-Nand (48 layers). Is this true? Remember that previously Samsung was using 40nm 3D V-NAND (48 layers). This is a very important point. If true, this would mean that Samsung is now able to double capacity of the drives (or quadruplicate?) without increasing layer count (now 48). Please, ask Samsung about this important matter.
 

Zaxx420

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Unless it's in a laptop...there is a simple fix for the heat/throttling problem for desktop users. I have a handful of little aluminum stick-on heatsinks left over from an aftermarket gfx card cooler I bought years ago...tho I'm sure u can buy 'em separately. They were meant to stick on the vram chips but if you used some good quality heat transfer type adhesive would probably do wonders dissipating heat from an m.2 ssd. A lot of m.2 sockets on desktop mobos are in between pcie slots meaning a side door mounted case fan would/could blow fresh air right at the sinks. Won't be long and I'd bet there will be m.2 specific sink kits...maybe just one large m.2 sized sink to cover everything.
 
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I'm impressed. I knew the 960 Pro would be faster than my 950 Pro but I didn't expect the 960 Evo to be both faster and cheaper.
 

Zaxx420

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Me too. Being on a tight budget for all things PC, I always shoot for the BBB...best bang for the buck. This usually lands me at the 'lower high-end' of the parts spectrum. When I saw there was no 256GB 960 Pro, I was ready to start pitchin' a bitch but the new Evo numbers blew me away! I'm struggling as is to sock back the $$ for my '5 year refresh' and $330 for a 512GB 960 Pro boot drive woulda hurt...but $130 for the 250GB 960 Evo; absolutely perfect! Never thought I'd go with a TLC drive but with numbers like that...I'm game. Also NEVER thought I'd say this...my 850 Pros will make great scratch drives...lol

Sammy does it yet again...all hail the king!
 

argus2000

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Sep 21, 2016
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here is where I read about the 21 nm lithography:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/21/sammys_nvme_m2_speedsters/
Samsung has introduced 960 EVO and 960 PRO M.2-format consumer SSDs with an NVMe interface and a promised 2TB capacity.
Sammy says these are the fastest M.2 flash drives ever. They come with up to 1TB capacity, for now, and are built with its 48-layer, 256Gbit, 21nm V-NAND technology. We expect that 64-layer V-NAND will be needed to reach the coming 2TB capacity.

MY COMMENT: So far Samsung was employing gross 40nm layers in order to be able to assemble them together. But I think it is natural to expect this to be refined to lower nanometers.
 

argus2000

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Sep 21, 2016
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Of course they were wrong when they speculated that Samsung would need 64 layers to reach 2TB on the 960 Pro.. Samsung simply packed the controller and the DRAM inside one of the VNAND packages.
 

dkeats99

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Sep 2, 2016
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I have the SM961 512GB. My passmark bench gets up to 19900. It's pretty ridiculous. However, none of the major benching sites will upload my scores. Go figure. Either way, it is FAR superior to the Pro 950
 
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