Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSDs Up for Pre-order

[btarunr]

Cashing in on the popularity of its "EVO" brand extension in the client SSD space, Samsung this September announced the 960 EVO family of PCI-Express SSDs in the M.2 form-factor, supporting the NVMe protocol. The drives are up for pre-order on the company's US online store. The series is topped with the 1 TB variant, priced at USD $479.99, followed by the 500 GB variant priced at $249.99, and the 250 GB variant priced at $129.99.

All three variants target a price-per-GB value around the $0.50/GB mark, however, one has to note that these are PCI-Express drives. The cheapest 250 GB variant serves up sequential transfer speeds of up to 3200 MB/s reads, with up to 1500 MB/s writes; the 500 GB variant up to 1800 MB/s writes; and the 1 TB variant up to 1900 MB/s writes. All three drives feature 3D V-NAND flash memory by Samsung, while the controller takes advantage of PCI-Express gen 3.0 x4 interface over the M.2-2280 form-factor, taking advantage of the NVMe protocol.



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[P4-630]

I could use one of these to install my games on, 500GB would be nice...But $250..
In Europe even more expensive, have to wait for availability and price drops..

 

[hojnikb]

or you can get a pm961 which is already available and costs less.

 

[bogami]

For some time track the sale , at least 10 days ago, I noticed 960 models. http://geizhals.eu/?cat=hdssd&xf=1035_Samsung~4832_3#xf_top

 

[bug]

All three variants target a price-per-GB value around the $0.50/GB mark, however, one has to note that these are PCI-Express drives.

They're also NVMe drives. You mention it at the end, but this is where the info should be.
Hopefully these won't need additional cooling to maintain peak performance. But I don't plan on upgrading my storage anytime soon, so I don't care even if these suck (which they probably don't)

 

[Xajel]

It has been in pre order in samsung.com for few days.. and in newegg.com in coming soon status...

waiting for amazon.com then I might decided from amazon or samsung as I can't buy from newegg

 

[dj-electric]

Steep steep prices.
This is going to take some time to reach the point of affordability. Waiting to see a fast 3GB\1$ NVMe drive.
So far the 512GB intel 600P is the only one on my radar.

 

[BlueFalcon]

Steep steep prices.
This is going to take some time to reach the point of affordability. Waiting to see a fast 3GB\1$ NVMe drive.
So far the 512GB intel 600P is the only one on my radar.

At least it's a price reduction for more performance. In October 2015, the 950 Pro 256GB and 512GB were selling for $199.99 and $349.99, respectively. The same cannot be said of graphics cards, prices of which have nearly doubled across every single tier since pre-2012 eras. When Intel replaces i5-6600K and i7-6700K shortly, the Kaby Lake successors won't cost any less either. Only 4.5 years ago, WD VelociRaptor 250GB and 500GB debuted for $159.99 and $209.99, respectively. That's very good progress for storage performance if you ask me. By 2020, PCIe SSD should start to become mainstream for $1000+ PC gaming rigs.

 

[brandonwh64]

I have two of the 950 evo m.2's in raid 0 on my z170x-ud5 and I love it. VERY fast

 

[xvi]

I really want to trade in my two 950 Pros for two 960 Pros, but I don't think we'd see much of any difference on a Z170 chipset.

 

[RejZoR]

Steep steep prices.
This is going to take some time to reach the point of affordability. Waiting to see a fast 3GB\1$ NVMe drive.
So far the 512GB intel 600P is the only one on my radar.

You can afford that if you have the most advanced SSD controllers, most advanced and reliable 3D NAND and speeds that are hard to match. It's strange people don't understand this yet...

If space is not your concern and you're not in need for crazy sequential speeds, 850 Pro drives are still an option. Proven durability and speeds.
If xyou want good NVMe drive, there is not much choice.

 

[thesmokingman]

Steep steep prices.
This is going to take some time to reach the point of affordability. Waiting to see a fast 3GB\1$ NVMe drive.
So far the 512GB intel 600P is the only one on my radar.

Eh? This is cheaper than the outgoing 950 m2 pricing.

 

[romeg]

I really want to trade in my two 950 Pros for two 960 Pros, but I don't think we'd see much of any difference on a Z170 chipset.

I have two 950 pros @ 512GB that I'm very happy with. But I'm so curious about why you would consider swapping for 960 pros. Am I missing something?

 

[$ReaPeR$]

You can afford that if you have the most advanced SSD controllers, most advanced and reliable 3D NAND and speeds that are hard to match. It's strange people don't understand this yet...

If space is not your concern and you're not in need for crazy sequential speeds, 850 Pro drives are still an option. Proven durability and speeds.
If xyou want good NVMe drive, there is not much choice.

people expect HDD prices, and its not yet that time, but we are almost there. in one to two years i think the prices will be near the 70$ mark for the 250GB one.

 

[thesmokingman]

people expect HDD prices, and its not yet that time, but we are almost there. in one to two years i think the prices will be near the 70$ mark for the 250GB one.

You can walk into a microcenter and get a m600 256gb m2 for 55 bucks. At the same time the 950 m2 256gb is 150 bucks. The difference between the two is the speed and the cost that comes with that speed.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

that delicious speed. Cant wait to put one of these into my desktop when it gets rebuilt this year/early next year. And love the prices are coming down.

 

[dj-electric]

Eh? This is cheaper than the outgoing 950 m2 pricing.

One lambo is cheaper than the other. I need something people can afford in 800-1200$ computer builds.

people expect HDD prices, and its not yet that time, but we are almost there. in one to two years i think the prices will be near the 70$ mark for the 250GB one.

Why is intel's 600P NVMe SSDs are about 4 times capacity to dollar? They are not made out of sand, and are not 1/4 the speed.

 

[alucasa]

Does anyone here actually need this kind of speed?

Other than showing off on benchmarks?

 

[thesmokingman]

One lambo is cheaper than the other. I need something people can afford in 800-1200$ computer builds.

It's hard to be a player? Do you have to have a 960?

 

[$ReaPeR$]

One lambo is cheaper than the other. I need something people can afford in 800-1200$ computer builds.



Why is intel's 600P NVMe SSDs are about 4 times capacity to dollar? They are not made out of sand, and are not 1/4 the speed.

well, yes, i didn't say that there aren't any "cheap" SSDs out there, but we were talking about "high performance" ones, or higher performance if you like. honestly i think that the prices of SSDs are quite good, all things considered.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

One lambo is cheaper than the other. I need something people can afford in 800-1200$ computer builds.



Why is intel's 600P NVMe SSDs are about 4 times capacity to dollar? They are not made out of sand, and are not 1/4 the speed.

For $800 builds, sata SSDs are going nowhere.

As for the 600p, it is fast, but not significantly more so then SATA drives. It's IOPS rating is only about ~10k higher then high end sata models.

Compare this to the 960 evo, which has 3x the IOPS rating and double the read speed, and 3x the write speed of the intel drive. that is where the price comes from.

 

[acperience7]

Does anyone here actually need this kind of speed?

Other than showing off on benchmarks?

TPU isn't really representative of typical consumers. I am very happy with my SSD on SATA 3. All I do is game, maybe upload a video evey now and then, or help a friend convert some video. More speed is always great, but until they phase out HDD or get just as cheap at every capacity (or nearly so) I have very little interest in switching all my drives to SSD.

 

[RejZoR]

People expect HDD prices. Has anyone asked themselves when HDD prices started dropping? I mean, really dropping? It took like what, 30 year? And people expect SSD's to have same price per GB ratio just after 10 years. Oooook...

 

[JJJJJamesSZH]

What's the difference between 960pro and 960evo?
I really need to replace the 840pro from my current system.

 

[Harbear]

People expect HDD prices. Has anyone asked themselves when HDD prices started dropping? I mean, really dropping? It took like what, 30 year? And people expect SSD's to have same price per GB ratio just after 10 years. Oooook...

Problem with HDD price is that, no matter how efficient you can make the HDD, the core cost is much higher than the cost for SSD. The disk, spinner, and etc. are much more costly than producing SSD.