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Samsung Launches SSD 960 EVO NVMe Drive At 3GB/Sec and Under .50 Per Gigabyte (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: When Samsung announced the SSD 960 PRO and SSD 960 EVO NVMe drives a few months back, their specifications, which included transfer speeds in excess of 3.2GB/s, were among the fastest for consumer-class M.2-based Solid State Drives currently. Testing proved the SSD 960 Pro to be one of the fastest NVMe drives on the market, and like that drive, Samsung's just-launched SSD 960 EVO is packing the company's latest 5-core Polaris controller -- but it features lower cost 3rd-generation 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash memory and a newly revamped version of Samsung TurboWrite technology. Though the SSD 960 EVO family's pricing places it firmly in the mainstream segment for NVMe-based solid state drives, its performance still targets enthusiasts but with lower endurance ranging from 100-400 TBW (Terabytes Written), depending on capacity. The new Samsung SSD 960 EVO comes in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities and is still able to hit 3GB/sec in testing. Though it does trail the SSD 960 Pro in spots, it also drops in at a 15-20 percent lower price point.
.50 what? Dollars? If so, why not say so?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Why not use a real PCIE slot?
It's smaller. And probably lighter.
Remember the new motto in mobile devices is shove 10 pounds of shit features in a 5-ounce magnesium-infused-carbon-amazamantium case and make it thin enough to bend with a hard fart, in order to maximize revenue by minimizing longevity. Oh, and in Apples case, remove every useful external connection, because Fuck You, that's why.
I call it reverse marketing. You know, when manufacturers tell you what you need, and don't give a shit what you want.
Must be pretty small Servers then. Multiple terabytes in SSD are still way too expensive for something that is essentially a datadump. Meaning media library and the like.
If you want a real pcie slot they sell cards that put two nvme drives on them for absout 20 bucks.
Not all servers require large hard drives.
"I was kind of hoping the MLC endurance had kind of passed some threshold where endurance wasn't really a factor anymore for all but the most intensive write applications"
Here's a hint: "features lower cost 3rd-generation 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash memory"
3-bit is TLC not MLC so that may explain the poor endurance
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Sure it is. It's a social media site that brings together potato enthusiasts around the world. Youtuber features recipes for French fries and stuffed skins, Irish history, and commentary detail on "The Martian."
This.
Your PCs nonvolatile storage is one of the last things you can upgrade these days and notice a big difference in performance (the other being the GPU.)
I personally am still running an old sandy bridge i7 2600k CPU, and just hacked my UEFI to support booting to NVMe in order to use this ssd because it makes no sense to replace the motherboard/CPU/ram when they work perfectly fine.
Another fun thing about these is that there's no further use for drive bays, so you can totally gut them out and install two slow turning 240mm fans in the front of your case to make your PC silent.
Because full-speed M2 -> PCI-e cards are literally in the bargain bin price range as they pretty much just join the pins to the bus.
M2 works in laptops, other devices, and as a PCI-e with a cheap $10 adaptor. Hell, I've even seen some short M2 cards that fit inside a 2.5" drive adaptor to connect to SATA.
That's why.
George.
Why not use a real PCIE slot?
4-lane NVMe is faster than SATA, and eliminates the SATA cable and the drive power cable. It's a no-brainer for SFF systems and it's not unappealing for bigger ones, either. Taking SATA out of the equation reduces latency. I am currently using a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SATA drive, but my mainboard has an NVMe slot and I'll be popping a 1TB NVMe in there just as soon as I see a price I like. It's just less wires to hang out in the case airflow collecting dust.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's nice to finally start seeing more motherboards with M.2/NGFF slots on the motherboard. So far most of the offerings have only one slot, and still sport way more SATA connectors than anyone needs. But I expect the offerings to get better through 2017.
Another thing to note is that there is a new 2.5" drive form factor... same dimensions as a 2.5" SATA drive, but with a different connector, which allows more substantial 2.5" form factor SSDs to use NVMe. There is also a new on-motherboard connector standard for the new 2.5" drive interfacing that makes use of a blocky SAS connector (but is not SAS... is PCIe for NVMe interconnect), and there are motherboards available now with one of these on them. And, again, in 2017 I fully expect motherboards to start coming out with more of these connectors.
In the mean time you can get standard PCIe cards that farm-out the correct connector for what you need (either the NGFF connector or the SAS connector). Please note that BIOSes for motherboards without native connectors probably do NOT support booting from NVMe, and if they do it will be UEFI booting only (no legacy booting from NVMe).
Just by way of information: M.2/NGFF is basically just a PCIe bus in a different format. It's a compact 4-lane PCIe bus format. However, there are *FOUR* different connector styles for M.2-style connectors, called by various names (M.2, NGFF, mSATA, mWIFI, and other crap). Be very careful to buy stuff that matches up. You want the NGFF connector (also known as M.2, but NGFF is the modern term for it and will be less confusing). This connector has one notch to one side and one hold-down screw at the end of the board along the center-line.
Another thing to be careful of is that a bunch of vendors have NGFF boards that are *NOT* NVMe. The boards actually have a SATA controller on-board and will attach via AHCI. Examples include Kingston HyperX and Plextor. All the Samsung products are NVMe.
For low-cost NVMe, another alternative to the 950 Pro is the somewhat older Samsung NVME SM951.
Most of these NGFF NVMe boards are capable of doing 3 GBytes/sec reading (deep queue). Writing will be a lot slower, even slower than a typical SATA SSD due to having fewer flash chips. Also, 3 GBytes/sec is if you plug it into a PCIe-v3 slot. Most machines out there today will have PCIe-v2 slots and performance will be more in the 1.5 GBytes/sec range. It is still fast as hell reading.
-Matt