Samsung officially announces 960 Pro and Evo

[nobelharvards]

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-accelerates-the-nvme-era-for-consumers-with-its-highest-performing-960-pro-and-evo-solid-state-drives

 

Quote

On top of being the world’s fastest M.2 NVMe- SSD, the 960 PRO will also offer 2 terabyte (TB) capacity, which is the highest capacity commercially available for M.2 NVMe SSDs, along with 512GB and 1TB versions. The 960 PRO’s high density was made possible by Samsung V-NAND technology and the uniquely restructured package design. As user capacity demand trends continue to rise, the high-density 960 PRO capacities are poised to conveniently meet the needs of personal data and information storage. The 960 PRO promises additional reliability and endurance with the five-year limited warranty and up to 1.2 petabytes written (PBW), whichever occurs first, for the 2TB capacity.

...

The 960 EVO is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities and provide users with next-generation personal computing performance. The new Samsung Intelligent TurboWrite technology makes its debut in the 960 EVO and accelerates sequential read and write speeds, that reach peaks of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s respectively. The 960 EVO’s random read speed reaches up to 380,000 IOPS and random write speed up to 360,000 IOPS. The 960 EVO comes with a three-year limited warranty and up to 400 terabytes written (TBW), whichever occurs first, for the 1TB capacity version.
 
In addition to the industry leading performance, capacity and the reliable warranty-backed experience the 960 SSDs offer, Samsung is also introducing the all-new and fully rebuilt Magician software with a new user interface with which users can control various SSD settings including firmware updates.
 
The 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs will be available worldwide starting October 2016, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $129.99 USD respectively.

I am personally a bit disappointed in the warranty. Would have liked to see something to succeed the 850 Evo with its 5 year warranty. Best balance of speed, cost and warranty.

[79wjd]

Okay, but do they explode? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Okay, but do they explode? 

Only if you download porn.

[Blucyrik]

I hope 950 prices will fall! NVME drives are still so expensive though...

[zMeul]

from what a read, still way too expensive for the home user

and besides, there's barely any perceivable difference between SATA SSDs and NVMe one - those amazeballs speeds advertised, won't ever be reached in day to day use

[patrickjp93]

So no drop in price for new NAND. Damnit Samsung...

[Dabombinable]

25 minutes ago, zMeul said:

from what a read, still way too expensive for the home user

and besides, there's barely any perceivable difference between SATA SSDs and NVMe one - those amazeballs speeds advertised, won't ever be reached in day to day use

Though even with SSD that have sub HDD sequential write speeds and low read speeds (eg. Sandisk U100), the IOPS make all the difference between a computer being slow and lightning fast. Even with older computers (which see significant improvements, even when web browsing on relatively slow internet)

[zMeul]

9 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Though even with SSD that have sub HDD sequential write speeds and low read speeds (eg. Sandisk U100), the IOPS make all the difference between a computer being slow and lightning fast. Even with older computers (which see significant improvements, even when web browsing on relatively slow internet)

meh .. I would not buy ultra cheap SSDs, I "burned" myself buying a A-Data SP550 - ended up RMAing 3 in row due to cell voltage drift and paying for  850EVO

[Dabombinable]

19 minutes ago, zMeul said:

meh .. I would not buy ultra cheap SSDs, I "burned" myself buying a A-Data SP550 - ended up RMAing 3 in row due to cell voltage drift and paying for  850EVO

I didn't buy it-it was included inside the $999 Asus U38N (with a cheap A8 4555M).

[TrigrH]

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

So no drop in price for new NAND. Damnit Samsung...

they have to compensate for recent explosive events

[Ronda]

These M.2 SSDs are really tempting me to upgrade to a laptop with an M.2 slot, but I'm determined to hold off until I can get an OLED display and passive cooling ( with decent performance and connectivity) as well.

[Doobeedoo]

Awesome drives. I'm looking forward to 960 Pro it's amazing. Sequential speeds are epic but so is that IOPS
Have 256GB 850 Pro as main drive and it's excellent, I love it. Wish to get 1TB one day once prices drop like 2-3 times as of now since I don't want to get the cheap one just to get high storage. Reason why I went with 850 Pro over Evo cause it's a bit more faster, better endurance, and that awesome 10 year warranty. Worth it for bit more price.

 

[Sakkura]

6 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

So no drop in price for new NAND. Damnit Samsung...

They are going below 50 cents per GB MSRP on a fast NVMe SSD, which is still pretty good.

 

I mean the 960 Evo's MSRP is lower than the 850 Evo's at launch. And undercuts the 950 Pro and Intel 750's current real-world prices.

 

(bear in mind real-world pricing usually drops well below launch MSRP)

[elfensky]

7 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

Okay, but do they explode? 

Tbh people are laying the blame on Samsung, but Louis Rossmans brought up a good point that got me thinking - what kind of charger were those people using? USB C & fast charge requires special cables that meet the standard, something most if not all bargain bin ones do not.

[79wjd]

10 minutes ago, ElfenSky said:

Tbh people are laying the blame on Samsung, but Louis Rossmans brought up a good point that got me thinking - what kind of charger were those people using? USB C & fast charge requires special cables that meet the standard, something most if not all bargain bin ones do not.

Has it been shown that the default charger doesn't also  cause problems? AFAIK that hasn't been posted, so I wouldn't make the assumption that it's because of cheap cables.

 

And it's still Samsung's fault for not expecting people to buy cheap replacement cables (if that is the cause).

[Mira Yurizaki]

15 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

And it's still Samsung's fault for not expecting people to buy cheap replacement cables (if that is the cause).

Yeah, but you can't go after every failure case, otherwise you'll be testing forever.

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Yeah, but you can't go after every failure case, otherwise you'll be testing forever.

True, but you should go after the common cases. And whatever is causing the Note 7 to explode is relatively common.

[Notional]

These drives looks really nice. For the Pro series to quadruple the capacity is really nice. However there are 2 caveats that ruins a lot for me:

 

1. The Pro drives have not gone down in price. And with 1TB and 2TB versions, the cost is through the roof. Bad Samsung, bad!
2. Although the EVO drive looks super sweet, with lower price and better performance than the 950 Pro, there is a problem with the stated 1900MBps write speed:

   Quote

   ⁵ Sequential Write performance measurements are based on Intelligent TurboWrite technology. The sequential write performances after Intelligent TurboWrite region are 300 MB/s(250GB),600 MB/s(500GB) and 1200 MB/s(1TB).

   So wtf is Intelligent TurboWrite region, and even more important, how big is it? 300 and 600MBps is pathetic, but 1200MBps is fine. But 1TB is still not going to be cheap. 

Generally the performance seems to be nice, but there is an issue with pricing. Damn we need some competition here. Toshiba has made a nice drive, but it's blue PCB and even more expensive (so what's the point?).

[VerticalDiscussions]

Zamzung Galax Nwme 960 Pruh. Thats how some of those guys spell it in Suth Kurea for sure. 

[Sauron]

Interesting, is samsung abandoning sata for good? What happened with sata express by the way?

[79wjd]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Interesting, is samsung abandoning sata for good? What happened with sata express by the way?

The same thing that happened to HD DVDs and Betamax.

 

There isn't really any reason to bother making new SATA SSDs when there is virtually no amount of improvement left to be made there (not without any drastic changes -- which would instead go towards PCIE/NVME drives).

[Sauron]

20 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The same thing that happened to HD DVDs and Betamax.

 

There isn't really any reason to bother making new SATA SSDs when there is virtually no amount of improvement left to be made there (not without any drastic changes -- which would instead go towards PCIE/NVME drives).

Still, sata has been the standard for a very long time, you'd think they'd still sell something for it for retrocompatibility. M.2 has only been common on motherboards for a couple of years. In a very concrete example, if I wanted an m.2 drive in my system I'd need an expansion card and all this while my cpu is still very capable, to the point where an upgrade makes little sense to me. I can always go for an older drive, but doesn't samsung lose a significant market portion by going full m.2?

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Still, sata has been the standard for a very long time, you'd think they'd still sell something for it for retrocompatibility. M.2 has only been common on motherboards for a couple of years. In a very concrete example, if I wanted an m.2 drive in my system I'd need an expansion card and all this while my cpu is still very capable, to the point where an upgrade makes little sense to me. I can always go for an older drive, but doesn't samsung lose a significant market portion by going full m.2?

They're still selling the older models. They're not stopping production of 850/750 series (AFAIK). And maybe....maybe not. The marketing costs/rebranding costs (and the potential negative feelings associated with buying a rebranded product) might not be worthwhile. Plus if Samsung released a 960 Pro, 960 Evo, and 960 Sata the 960 Sata would probably undercut the sales of the Evo/Pro enough that it would hurt their bottom line. 

 

I would assume Samsung would have done a decent bit of market research before deciding what products to launch/not launch.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

I would assume Samsung would have done a decent bit of market research before deciding what products to launch/not launch.

I don't know, sometimes Samsung gives me reason to doubt that... remember the samsung gear watch?

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I don't know, sometimes Samsung gives me reason to doubt that... remember the samsung gear watch?

Well, remember, Samsung has a tendency to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. They don't usually take things away unless they have a reason to think it doesn't matter.

 

But I think this is slightly different than that. My guess is that they assume it would just undercut sales of the Pro/Evo. A lot of people end up buying Samsung SSDs because they recognize the name -- but that doesn't mean they won't buy the cheapest option (new/recent) option they see.