Samsung's First 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD: SM961 Shipping Next Week

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It is sad that the prospect of having larger faster storage is the only thing tempting me to build a new PC these days. But this (or something similar to it) will absolutely be what I put in my next build!
 

uglyduckling81

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Man I was hoping that price for 1TB would be for 2TB by now.
I guess it's faster than previous gen SSD's so it attracts a premium.
Does that transfer speed make any difference at all besides transferring between two of these SSDs?
 

mavikt

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Hopefully the 950 pro will get a bit cheaper, or will we see a new 960 pro consumer variant?!
Ignorant about the fact, curiously looking it up, there still seem to be some bandwidth headroom with PCIe 3.0 x4 at 3.9GB/s, if Wikipedia is to be believed! Though, at this rate, interface bandwidth cap is soon upon us... but so is also PCI 4.0!
 

MRFS

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> interface bandwidth cap is soon upon us... but so is also PCI 4.0!

PCIe 3.0 uses a 128b/130b "jumbo frame": 130 bits / 16 bytes = 8.125 bits per byte

x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes @ 8 GHz / 8.125 bits per byte
= 3.94 GB/second

x4 PCIe 4.0 lanes @ 16 GHz / 8.125 bits per byte
= 7.88 GB/second

Intel should increase the number of lanes
in their DMI link. Right now, a single NVMe M.2 SSD
has exactly the same upstream bandwidth as the DMI 3.0 link.

And/or, an NVMe RAID controller with x16 edge connector
and 4 x U.2 ports would be excellent too, provided that
it supported all modern RAID modes.
 

Samer1970

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excuse me , please When you talk about SSD price do it in Ratio of TBW .. see how much TBW per Dollar ...

Intel P3700 SSD TBW is 7300 TB and double the price of the P750 but guess which is cheaper ?

The P3700 is Cheaper cos The P750 TBW is ONLY 219TB TBW !!!!

making the P3700 33 TIMES BETTER at double the price only ! 7300 TERA BYTE WRITES vs 219 !!!

33 times ENDURANCE !

yet you just mention the 750 in your Analysis.

you dont even bother to mention the TBW , which is the LIFE of the SSD ..

you CANT use SSD for movies and Huge Files and expect them to last much ! or heavy write / delete operations like Hard disks. here where the High TBW comes handy , I never Bought Low TBW SSD !!!

yes you pay Double , but you write 33 TIMES MORE ! in case of Intel 3700 vs 750

Samsung 950 pro is just 400 TBW by the way

that is , you fill it 400 times , ONLY.

The OEM 951 was ONY 75TB TBW !!!
 

CRamseyer

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I do not have TBW endurance ratings yet on these models. I've reached out to Samsung for clarification but they do not expect an answer from the South Korean engineers until tomorrow.
 

Samer1970

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Thanks !

Please include TBW Analysis in your SSD reviews as well , not only the Performance.

There is a Huge hidden cost people dont notice when They decide on which SSD drive is best to buy ..

TBW per dollar is very Important if you delete files often , or use it for Large files.

The Intel 3700 should be the popular one and not the 750 ... but most people dont notice !

For example (to explain for readers) ,

lets assume that you write 219 TB on intel 750 SSD in one year (all its TBW)

The 3700 will work 33 years more (or until the internals fail) !!! the same use ! (7300 TB) !!!

and just twice the price !!!

TBW is very Important in Choosing . should be 25% points in Reviews .
 

DrakeFS

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No, I have a 950 Pro NVME and the only time I notice a difference vs a 840 EVO is when I restart my PC. Games do not load faster and the OS does not feel any "snappier" (to be fair, I do not know how much "snappier" win 10 can feel considering, since my first SDD everything has been always been "snappy").

So, I would not recommend a NVME SSD over an AHCI SSD at this point. Maybe when the prices become more competitive (which looks like it is starting to happen) but right now you are looking at $600 per TB for NVME and $200 per TB for AHCI. The speed up is not worth the premium at this point. Optane may be better for normal computer use (its supposedly going to hit 70k IOps at low queue depths, which may be amazing for normal computer use) but until I can get my hands on an Optane drive I will continue recommending AHCI SDD.

 

kinney

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I've been waiting for this for a long time, Samsung "960 Pro" 1TB NVME M.2 SSD. Going to put this in a Skull Canyon NUC for my new system. Really wanted my next build to have a single drive 1TB SSD and nothing else but NVME and M.2.
 


Odd. From what I'd gathered, the 950 pro, via 3.0x4 connection, esp with Samsung's drivers + optimization via magician, should be significantly and noticeably faster than any AHCI ssd. Assuming no bottleneck exists, if the only noticeable difference in speed you're getting is OS boot time, then I guess maybe I'm not missing out as much as I thought I was by not using a decent M.2 or pcie drive, and would have to agree re waiting for better prices and/or optane. Though, if I may ask, you sure there's no sys bottleneck preventing the drive from utilizing its full potential?
 
Not sure where you got the information about the SM961 "shipping next week", but so far at Ramcity, all of the SM961 models have shown backordered until well into August, and have since this article went live. Any idea when these will be available to vendors other than RAMcity, or when actual fulfillment through RAmcity might be likely to start actually occuring. I've been seeing 15 on backorder for about a week now.
 

CRamseyer

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RamCity sold out within 12 hours of this news post through the preorder process. The 1TB drives arrived first and shipped to customers within 24 hours. A week or so later the 512GB and 256GB drives arrived and shipped to preorder customers.

Your best bet for getting one is to preorder and wait in line like others. RamCity has them on order. As they arrive they will ship out.

Other resellers may get products at some point. Newegg tries to carry the OEM drives but, in my experience, it takes Newegg 5 to 6 months to get them after RamCity starts selling.
 
That seems like a senseless process. Considering the ginormous cost of EVERYTHING hardware related in Australia, you'd think the sales divisions of these companies would understand that releasing them to the US or UK first would make more sense. Then again, I guess when you can't supply even 30 of them over the course of two weeks, the anger from a lack of supply would probably create an undesirable backlash anyhow.

No offense to you, I realize it's just your job, but I think we ought to stick to stories that cover the release of products people can actually obtain. I don't know about anybody else but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about paying extra shipping and any other duties they may tack on, for the privilidge of waiting what looks to be about a month out for delivery. TBH, I rather wish I'd not read the article now, so I wouldn't feel disenchanted by the fact that I'm probably unlikely to see one of these anytime soon.

At the very least it might be prudent to not headline a product review like this with "shipping next week", unless they are actually shipping the following week. I'm not having much faith in the "preorder and stand in line" aspect either, since as I said, the numbers on RAMcity have been unchanged, 15 on backorder, 30 expected mid August, since they day you released the article. Seems like if orders were being made and fullfilled, there would be some fluctuation in those numbers at some point. I've been checking multiple times daily for a week. No change, at all.

Props for the article, just wish it was something I could actually purchase, rather than pay for and then hope to see eventually. I really dislike these type of single vendor endeavors. Make your product, built some stock up, then release, when you can actually fulfill orders. Since RAMcity is the only vendor currently taking orders on these, it certainly can't be due to the fulfillment being spread around. If they can't fulfill 15 pieces over the course of two weeks, something's wrong. Even the GTX 1070 and 1080 supply issues were up and down, rather than just non-existent.

Ok, rant over. Thanks for the extra info anyhow.
 

CRamseyer

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Samsung didn't choose to launch these in Australia. RamCity is proactive in getting them rather than waiting for the parts to become widely available. We are not talking about a limited edition release or anything along those lines. If I was at a car magazine should I refuse to review the first Corvette off the line just because there is a 6 month wait at the dealership to take delivery?

As far as 'ships next week'. That was accurate. I had my SM961 1TB within a week from the news going up. We were the first to cover the story. Hopefully all of the initial supply went to Tom's Hardware readers. The 256GB and 512GB had an estimated deliver date of July 15th but they arrived early and drives were shipped the last few days of June.


The Australian Dollar works in our favor right now. I talked about pricing in the new review of the SM961 256GB and 512GB: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd-256gb-512gb,4621.html

The 1TB drive now costs right around $460 (USD) shipped to the US. The shipping costs and deliver times are very reasonable. When looking at the conversion you have to take 10% for AUS tax (called GST). I haven't been charged an import duty/tax on any of the products I've purchased from them but laws change country to country.

The SM961 is not a single vendor product, either. You can buy one from Lenovo in a new notebook if you want to spend 500+ for the upgrade. There is no guarantee it will be a SM961. Some users have reported getting PM961 drives, the slower TLC version. Other places will sell the SM961 in time but right now RamCity has a trickle of them coming for those willing to get in line. It's no different than any other product hampered with supply / demand issues. I still don't have a GTX 1080. I would like to buy one at MSRP or lower but every time I look at Newegg they are sold out. I know in time they will be in stock at all of the large reseller sites and can scoop one up below MSRP.





 

meatbag

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This is dated June 20th and stated as "shipping next week". So far I can only find these on Ebay. Not a single vendor has them available for purchase. What is the deal? It's late August at this point.... Samsung slipping up?
 

CRamseyer

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There is a NAND flash shortage happening right now. MLC was hit very hard.
 


Ram City has them, unless you're able to find them priced similarly on ebay as you would from Ram City (AUSD), you're probably better off getting them from RC.
 
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