It is nice to see someone truly fall in love with computer hardware. I thought I was the only one. I take my SSD out on nightly strolls and kiss it when no one is looking. Technophilia is a right.
You can get the 240GB ADATA SSD for $61 on Amazon. Or the 480GB Kingston one for $108. It's really not that expensive anymore. Even the 2TB ones start at $480 (Crucial MX300).
olegkikin. You do realize they might be M2's but they are not the same as the Samsung M2's. I wouldn't even bother with a M2 at that point and just go with a regular ssd.
Great review/overview as always Tom. On my next build I'm looking at the 512GB version as a boot drive. Amazon has the 512GB for $329.99 and the 1 TB for $629.99. The 2 TB isn't listed yet.
can't wait until these things become affordable, i already think the 1TB 850 EVO that i got was unreasonably big and expensive but this takes the cake.
Excellent video. Thank-you for taking the time to test everything properly, much appreciated. Ordering the 2TB 960 Pro, looking forward to increasing my workflow productivity.
it only gets me annoyed when people do it to expensive new products, but i never had any problems with touching contact points, so far but it can after a while like u said
Heh yea it's just a pet peeve of mine, if these things were cheap like dime store candy... handle then man handle those dirty lil contacts! :D Course considering I struggle just to get by even a needed ram upgrade. It triggers that very specific ocd seeing it happen.
I found the mishandling of the drive totally cringe worthy too. This sets a very bad example to all those starting out in PC building. Static discharge and skin oils have the potential to kill a component or reduce its lifespan. An excellent point well made.
nvme and m.2 are different things, this is an nvme drive. it will work as a drive in all m.2 slots but the nvme performance quotient will only currently be matched on intel based chipsets. awesome little piece of tech, still pretty limited because most powerhouse home computers don't even have an m.2 slot and among those that do nvme is still somewhat uncommon compatibility wise (most m.2 cannot take advantage of nvme speeds, and most stuff advertised as nvme might be compatible but is still too slow for it to make a real difference over sata3)
PATS TIM ON THE BACK!!! Thank you for review M8! I'll be buying the 960 1TB Evo version to replace my 950 512GB as my OS drive and use my old drive for another lossless recording drive.
500 GB for around 250, i dont really need an SSD this fast but why not wait and get a super fast one instead of buying an 850 now which is almost the same price
Don't forget that Samsung is also releasing the 960 EVO drives in 250GB, 500GB en 1TB size. Based on current prices, you can buy 2 960 EVO 250GB drives for about the same money as one 960 pro 512GB drive. Sequantial read and write is something you hardly get in your system anyway, as the files are scattered all over your SSD drive, so random read is why more important and 2 960 drives in RAID0 will instantly beat a single 960 pro SSD.. For most people the 960 EVO drives will provide the best performance/money ratio..
Why there new CPUs could be good ( I don't really think so) and as for GPUs they're are really good for the money Pitty they don't have the high end but using HBM memory and the furryX2 is good but costs to much
I couldn't get the 2Tb one. It's over $2000 Canadian Dollars over here across the pond. So I decided to settle for 2 sticks of the 512 gb 960 Pro's that I'm running in Raid 0 for my "C" drive. Are you ready for my Samsung performance benchmark app results??. . . . 4127 mb reads, and 3024 writes. I've NEVER had a rig capable of these speeds. I'm about as giggly as a little school girl :D And as someone said earlier. . . I consider myself as a hard core Technoporn fiend ;) Great video my friend, lots of valuable info on this badboy. But BOYYYY would I love to get my grubby mitts on 2 sticks of that "TECH-PORN" !!!!
All the numbers are great but the real world performance improvement over a normal 500+MB/s SATA SSD is basically null. I cancelled my 512gb preorder after looking at benchmarks.
I built a PC for myself two years ago and I noticed it has a dedicated M.2 connector but it's gonna be a while before I switch to using a M.2 drive. The price is gonna have to come down before I even consider buying one. I'm more than happy to make due with a traditional 3.5" SATA drive (WD black). They'll come down in price eventually and then I'll be able to enjoy one.
To be honest, even swapping to a 2.5" SATA SSD will be a HUGE performance bump if you're still using old mechanical drives for the OS/programs. Even a smaller one, say 250GB, for the OS and frequently used programs/data is well worth it, with the slower larger mechanical drive used for archiving.
This is not directed directly toward you man. Why do reviewers keep reviewing things that we know? We KNOW it's blazing fast for files transfers! It says so on the box, we already know the speed it can reach!... That is good for content creators... Can we have some benchmarks for gamers please? Will it load faster, are we going to see any real world difference if for us, transferring a 25GB file is not what we do every day? I would really like to know because I've got the money in my hand but the only review that I saw about my concern showed no difference in gaming loading time VS a Standard SSD! :-( TELL ME!!! lol Please BTW, I love your reviews! Keep up the good work Bro ! ;-)
nice review tom, it is hands down the fastest consumer drive out there, whether it worth the money or not it up to the buyer, but still 1299$ isn't something that goes that easily for a drive, i wish you could do the review when you can on the 960 evo versions they don't get 2tb option nor as they that blazing fast but the price is much more reasonable, that why i think it would be more of interest for the consumers and viewers who are watching your videos.
I just bought an Asus ROG Crossblade Ranger FM2+ AMD A88X (Bolton D4) Motherboard, and I want to use the 960 EVO with the Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to get the M.2 to work. I found out the A88X doesn't support NVMe. I sent an email to Asus asking if there is a way to get M.2 bootable, and they replied with some settings to change in bios, that should make it bootable. Here are the steps: 1. BIOS->Boot->CSM (Compatibility Support Module)->Disable 2. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->OS Type->Other OS 3. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->Key Management->Clear Secure Key 4. F10 (save and exit) 5. Install OS only with bootable UEFI media. 6. Re-enter BIOS after first restart during the OS installation, it will be shown within the BIOS 7. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->OS Type->Windows UEFI mode 8. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->Key Management->Install Default Secure Boot Keys 9. F10 (save and exit) 10 It should resume the installation, if not, completely power down the system and turn it back on after 10 seconds. 11. Note: do not connect any external devices to the computer during the installation and best if only the M.2 SSD is installed won the system. Does anyone know if these steps would work?
Nice job, especially with the extra info on the OC3D website, very informative. I expect that these cards will be packaged with cooling fans in the near future. Oh and stop touching the pins, it makes me cringe. 8:)
They need to do one of those with a tiny processor in it. If they can do two of those stuck together side by side, it would be even faster and with more memory, because it would had more pins to send Data and receive it.
Tom, Why is the 950 Pro not included in the graphs? Did Samsung require it be left out because of how closely it performed to the 960 or some other reason. Seem a bit wonky to leave out the current fastest performing drive in the comparo? DaZ
Thanks for your reviews TTL. I guess your'e one of those reviewers/techies that I have subscribed and then unsubed more often than a trip to the white throne till of late... :D That said, just a thought, maybe a PCIe card with a nice heat spreader or with 2 or more slots to give RAID options, OR JUST SOMETHING EXTRA THAT QUALIFIES THE PRICE? Let's not hope you're not like NITWIT & kicked SIDESTAND that no matter what, they will give thumbs up to MSI as an example. Some, not all or most, you have given a fair open tech point of view if the product is good or no good or if there are problems, you'd open your trap about it not worried what the big boys down at Intel or AMD or SAMS?U??NG?(cough cough) would do to you ro rather not give you. Good for you. Even at my age, I enjoy the younger gen ACTUALLY KNOWING WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, not just listening to the manufactures telling you what to say or not to. 25 years worth of thumbs up from the middle of nowhere in South Africa
Crazy expensive right now but I can remember buying a WD HD which was 1.4 GB in size and paying nearly 300.00 for it back in the late 90's. Now look at the price on a 1 or 2 TB HD! These drives like the Samsung are the future of computing drives but I'm wondering if they aren't going to move to a pci slot as a card instead of these M.2 ports. Time will tell.
Samsung 960 evo is the one to consider if you want to be somewhat resonable. Its still got overkill speeds, great reliability, decent looks but for a price that most high-end users can swallow!
Drives like this are used in the real world for cache for databases. You're using it for capacity read/write. I can understand consumer interest, but for that price it is not worth buying, unless you want to be 'flash'.
It's an awful amount of money but it's high time people started to care about storage. Sure, it's a month's salary for some folks, but spread on 5-7 years of use, this is nothing. Nowadays, everybody throws their money at GPU and CPU leaving behind what could make all the difference. This will be my first buy as soon as I'll want to upgrade my current build.
there's like 3-4 other nvme M.2 brands that were out between the 950 and the 960, not quite as fast but I would really like to see a review of them as well..
Don't buy this if you can wait a few months more. Toshiba is releasing a much faster and reliable SSD in the next 2-3 months that breaks 4GB/s reads and uses 64 layer NAND vs 960 Pro's 48 layer NAND and it will cost a lot less.
TruthSeeker Not at present but there are sources saying Toshiba is mass producing a SONOS 64-layer NAND chip right now due in early 2017. Increasing the layers increases capacity and speed. Toshiba is stealing Samsung's NAND market share at a rapid pace, and they just recently surpassed Samsung in NAND technology. They started mass production of 64-layer NAND already and that's almost 4-5 months before Samsung will start mass producing it. When the OCZ Revodrive 400 came out about 4 months after the 950 Pro, but it blew the Samsung 950 Pro out of the water. The SONOS technology Toshiba uses improves latency, speed, and endurance significantly over Samsung's TANOS tech. english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2016/11/10/0502000000AEN20161110007500320.html www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/15296-toshiba%E2%80%99s-declaration-toshiba-aiming-produce-world%E2%80%99s-first-64-layer-3d-nand
Liangshi Xu Yes, I would advise if you could wait a few months because prices will go down further and technology will get even better. Toshiba's 4GB/s SSDs will have the best value and will ship with a PCIE adapter.
Shamoy Rahman hmmm there has to bit a limit.. before the lanes are saturated.. i think we are already at the point or diminishing returns...so people... just get whatever you want now.. no need to wait.
The only caveat about this drive is that you can't use it to load a fresh install of Windows 7 on because Win 7 doesn't have the drivers for this drive. It appears to work only on Windows 10 for a fresh install.
I got the 1TB and ran into thermal throttling issues. After any heavy load or uptime over 24 hours I was getting short freezes and stuttering. CrystalDiskInfo was returning controller temp as 60C. Stuck a small heatsink I had lying around on just the polaris controller... Temps under load dropped to 26C. No further issues. Think m.2 REALLY needs heatsink these days.
Tom, why do you always test drives against synthetic benchmarks but never test real world situation? 99% of us know that synthetic benchmarks are pretty much irrelevant. We are all interested in how quickly it boots windows, games, programs etc.
This is extremely promising for the future. I see today phones becoming tomorrow's personal computers. I think Apple sees it the same way, we will be pretty much be buying phones that wireless connect to monitors and keyboards
Looking at the CDM5 values, I get the feeling that my 512GB 950 Pro is slower in writing than it should be, compared to the 960. Do you think the new driver will also boost speeds on the 950 Pro? Btw, which test size do you use? 1GiB?
Got my Samsung 960 EVO 500GB yesterday, last drive I'll probly need as a boot drive(1-3 game man), anything quicker the difference will not be able to differentiate. i7-7700K, Micro-ATX Z270, GTX 1070, Be Quiet Dark Pro 550 Platinum, Cryorig H7 BOOM
BTW, I was aboe to install a Samsung NVMe M.2 via a Startech PCIe adapter card into my MSI Z77a-GD80 motherboard and have it *bootable*. I had to copy the 3 NVMe support modules and patch the latest Z77A BIOS v1.7 from a Z97 AMI BIOS to get the drive to boot. It DOES WORK. See: www.overclock.net/t/1571271/tutorial-how-to-add-nvme-support-on-any-ami-uefi-bios-with-an-intel-chipset I also have an nVidia 980 TI card and haven't noticed any graphics slowdown. In fact, my PCMark and 3DMark 8 and 11 benchmark scores are higher. Soon I sill replace the Z77A MB with an X99 (I do a lot of VM work so I want the extra options going with X99 vs Z170).
Oh and tom, xr2 video? we're all nerds like yourself and much like yourself we have lives too (well...) so lets see some behind the scenes stuff, what are you watching these days, get a go pro for your bike or something :D cheers Guvna.
1200? Thats quite steep for an ordinary consumer, good to know that gear this expensive is mostly directed towards profesional artists and video editors that needs the incredible high IOPS and the amazing size in one package.
So basically this is a video of a guy, holding a 1250$ piece of ESD sensitive electronics without any form of ESD protection. If i had paid that much money for an ESD sensitive device, i would treat it with a LOT more respect.
I own one of these 2TB 960 Pros. They are legitimately bonkers in a laptop, and I'm getting about 3400 / 2150. They're quick to the point that my i7-7700hq gets bottlenecked sometimes by it.
Hey. Great video. Quick question. Do these have an available PCI Express card to mount this SSD into if one is running short on m.2 connectivity real estate?
This is ridiculous, I remember as a child my mother (a teacher) used to bring home catalogues of pc stuff for school when she went back from refresher courses and fair and I was amazed by the 1 TB RACK that costed something like 1500 euros... now for that price you can buy something that is double the capacity and probably 10 time the speed in... 1/200th of the size or something, not even mentioning power consumption.
I have the 500 gb version of this card and first thing I did was take off the top sticker with the model and serial numbers only to realize most people leave it on! The box image has it without the sticker so i just took it off, was that a bad move? Should I have left that sticker on? Not sure how it affects the SSD.
as i have one i suppose i am a little biased, but compare 512gb 960 for £334 (scan) with 3500/2100 or 512gb 950 pro with 2500/1500 for £290 or so (amazon) and theres little in it really. for me i'll stay as is but for the extra depending on local prices you may want to go for the 960
If you have the right use case you will benefit and love it. Most of us really won't see much of a benefit on more general use. Doesn't stop me from wanting one though. In this instance I will probably show restraint, for once, and opt for a 1TB or 2 TB 850 Pro.
Hey Tom i'm planning on buying the 512GB model for my PC running the Asus Maxiumus 8 Formula MOBO (full specs below) are the temps fine if i have the cover for day to day use and are there any other major issues setting it up? Case: Phanteks Enthoo Elvolv Atx Tempered Glass Moto: Asus Maximus 8 Formula Cpu: Intel 6700k Gpu: Evga Gtx 1080 Ftw Hybrid Ram: Corsair Vengeance Led Red 32Gb 3200mhz Sad: Samsung 850 Pro ssd 256Gb ( for the time being) Psu: Corsair Ax860i Cpu Cooler: Corsair H100i V2 Case Fan: Corsair Ml 120mm Monitor: Asus Pg348Q 34'' IPS curved 100hz Keyboard: Corsair K70 lux rgb cherry mx red Mice: Logitech G502 Prometheus RGB
Why do you have a bunch of powerful graphics cards that you're not doing anything with? You could have a high end gaming rig in every room of your house.
If one layer can hold 32 mb, and the maximum number of layers is 16, there are 4 chips, and the total amount is 2tb, then the question 'are all possible 16 layers used' is easy to answer: Yes: 32mb x 16 x 4 = 512mb x 4 = 2tb
3.5GB/s is fucking insane. Only a bunch of SSD's in a RAID 0 setup can match its speed. Otherwise, transferring files from one SATA III drive to the 960 Pro on a daily basis would be a waste of money.
If I used a Thunderbolt cable from my computer (Alienware17 R4) to an external spinning HDD with a USB 3.0 connector to it, will I experience any change in speed?
I'm upgrading my PC tomorrow but if I install this drive or the 1TB one and a new driver comes out the next day, will I have to recopy all the files onto the drive after the firmware update?
Here's a tip - rather than a flat long-winded and boring shot of you talking at us throughout the entire length of the video I suggest you make it a lot more visually interesting fir us by cutting the video to show viewers screenshots of the benchmarks that you are talking about (or whatever else might be useful for us to see). Otherwise it's visually about as exciting as watching paint dry. It's the drive and what it can do that we've come to see and that should be the focus of the clip - not you stuck in behind your little counter like a bartender rabbiting on about about how you mix your cocktails.....
from what I've read, that's getting close to the limit of PCI express 4x, did u see any differences in motherboards from where the m.2 is off the chipset instead of the cpu? or any difference where the m.2 might be constrained for bandwidth by mobo design?
Chris Rowlison he said it was actually faster on the z170 which i believe uses the chipset lanes whereas the x99 platform uses the cpu's lanes and it was slightly slower
***** I just wonder, cause if you just use the wrong slot it can go from being on the CPU to Chipset, and different mobos, even z170s handle M.2 differently
yeah I recently built a z170 pc for a family member and was interested in how running of chipset pci-e lanes would effect speed as I think the z170 has 20 lanes on the chipset for sata, usb and m.2 and 16 on the cpu for gpu and add in cards surprisingly the m.2 on the z170 didn't effect the speed of my sm951 m.2 drive compared to my x99 platform going through the cpu, it's made me want z170 more than my x99 just for the pure extra single core performance z170 packs whilst still getting good m.2 support xD
***** I worry cause for instance Dimitri from hardware canucks has run into throughput problems with tooo many hard drives on the chipset and from the specs I've seen if the M.2 goes through it that one device takes up 3/4ths of the total bandwidth it has goin to the CPU, the 950 series isn't half as close to the limit of the pci-express 4x connection as the 960 series soo I wouldn't worry too much... but its definately a thing where you wanna see how an M.2 slot is wired on a mobo before you get it, I know alan malvantano? from PCper is pretty good about this stuff as well, he might have some ideas
The CPU has 20 lanes Total, 16 of those go to the PCIE slots, and the other 4 goes to the Chipset that splits and shares those 4 lanes for everything else that's attached to the chipset.
What about the ocz productline? Their M.2 makes up to 2,600/1,600 MB/s reading/writing. I would say that this is a serious competitor against Intel and Samsung and it cost a bit less!
Does it need Bios support? Could I use it on a Z97 (Asus sabertooth mkII) with an NVMe to PCIE adaptor? This drive doesn't seem to have been topped in a year.
If the drive is performing simultaneous reads and writes, with multi gigabyte amounts of data, will the numbers quoted in this review take much of a hit? Presumably any storage device will see lower numbers. I am interested in knowing approximately what percentage will performance be reduced? Thank you.
I have the 240GB Kingston Predator so I'm hoping to compare. the Predator kicks ass btw. and for only $140 new (I got one used for $100), its worth every penny.
Wow... did not realize the difference and at first didn't see anything about that on Kingstons website. but I finally found good info. Damn I might sell this thing now.
I was going to get a 950 pro 512 but see the 960 Evo will be faster from the numbers they put out and I can get a 1TB for a bit more then the 512 950. Then there's the DMI 3.0 limit on the z170 to CPU so I went from adding a bunch of stuff to just using the on board m.2 slot on the z170 Sabertooth. Are you going to test the evo 960 and can you talk about the DMI 3.0 limits and if they aren't that bad?
It is nice to see someone truly fall in love with computer hardware. I thought I was the only one. I take my SSD out on nightly strolls and kiss it when no one is looking. Technophilia is a right.
Brian Smith lol
Bose dee kay
Be not ashamed of your hearts desires!
I miss it when Tom used to cuss freely instead of censoring himself :'(
kevinsdb1: yeah it was more fun watching him
youtube policy and shit
I find it upsetting I barely found this channel, been missing out on such good content.
i cant afford 250gb let aloone 2Tb(1500$)
HELL NO!
aint nobody got time for that!!!
MMMMMHummmm! while chicken necking
You can get the 240GB ADATA SSD for $61 on Amazon. Or the 480GB Kingston one for $108. It's really not that expensive anymore. Even the 2TB ones start at $480 (Crucial MX300).
olegkikin. You do realize they might be M2's but they are not the same as the Samsung M2's. I wouldn't even bother with a M2 at that point and just go with a regular ssd.
250GB is around 60$, if you cannot afford that then you hella broke..
250GB M.2 is around 60$?
are u serious? I yes please send a link! And i can afford one but im only 15 so yeah its not that easy for me ;)
I really love these long in depth reviews. Keep it up man.
Great review/overview as always Tom. On my next build I'm looking at the 512GB version as a boot drive.
Amazon has the 512GB for $329.99 and the 1 TB for $629.99. The 2 TB isn't listed yet.
can't wait until these things become affordable, i already think the 1TB 850 EVO that i got was unreasonably big and expensive but this takes the cake.
I am totally envious of your office dude. The plane models, the gtx 1080s, and the Titan XP's. I was drooling the whole video.
Excellent video. Thank-you for taking the time to test everything properly, much appreciated. Ordering the 2TB 960 Pro, looking forward to increasing my workflow productivity.
**Twitching** Why oh why are you touching the contacts with your bare hands!?
i have touched contact points loads of times and its not affected the compontent at all
EDG Human fingers have tones of grease/oil upon them. It may not immediately affect components but can affect long term life.
it only gets me annoyed when people do it to expensive new products, but i never had any problems with touching contact points, so far but it can after a while like u said
Heh yea it's just a pet peeve of mine, if these things were cheap like dime store candy... handle then man handle those dirty lil contacts! :D
Course considering I struggle just to get by even a needed ram upgrade. It triggers that very specific ocd seeing it happen.
I found the mishandling of the drive totally cringe worthy too. This sets a very bad example to all those starting out in PC building. Static discharge and skin oils have the potential to kill a component or reduce its lifespan. An excellent point well made.
nvme and m.2 are different things, this is an nvme drive. it will work as a drive in all m.2 slots but the nvme performance quotient will only currently be matched on intel based chipsets. awesome little piece of tech, still pretty limited because most powerhouse home computers don't even have an m.2 slot and among those that do nvme is still somewhat uncommon compatibility wise (most m.2 cannot take advantage of nvme speeds, and most stuff advertised as nvme might be compatible but is still too slow for it to make a real difference over sata3)
"It didn't melt the skin off my fingers, it didn't explode, there is no plane warning for it either." --> OC3D Enthusiast Award.
Best. Review. Ever.
This gentleman's video needs to have at least 100k likes. I've liked and subscribed immediately after watching.
Stop.
Touching.
The damn.
PINS.
PATS TIM ON THE BACK!!! Thank you for review M8! I'll be buying the 960 1TB Evo version to replace my 950 512GB as my OS drive and use my old drive for another lossless recording drive.
500 GB for around 250, i dont really need an SSD this fast but why not wait and get a super fast one instead of buying an 850 now which is almost the same price
I spent most of the time staring & salivating at the Lancaster and the Vulcan, is it?
Indeed they are. - I need an SR-71
yup
Yup, exactly what I was going to comment! The Vulcan has timeless lines!
Don't forget that Samsung is also releasing the 960 EVO drives in 250GB, 500GB en 1TB size. Based on current prices, you can buy 2 960 EVO 250GB drives for about the same money as one 960 pro 512GB drive. Sequantial read and write is something you hardly get in your system anyway, as the files are scattered all over your SSD drive, so random read is why more important and 2 960 drives in RAID0 will instantly beat a single 960 pro SSD..
For most people the 960 EVO drives will provide the best performance/money ratio..
I'm so waiting for samsung to decide start making PC CPUs and GPUs.
i wouldn't buy an UPS from them though.
f4z0 they should buy amd
Why there new CPUs could be good ( I don't really think so) and as for GPUs they're are really good for the money Pitty they don't have the high end but using HBM memory and the furryX2 is good but costs to much
why not a UPs from them ?
Jed M. "a 700$ gpu is better than a 200$ gpu". No shit, Watson?
It's still way more expensive, you fucking idiot.
I just ordered a couple 512GB 960 NVME ssds for my system. I will feel the difference. I work in visual effects. I need monster bandwidth!
I couldn't get the 2Tb one. It's over $2000 Canadian Dollars over here across the pond. So I decided to settle for 2 sticks of the 512 gb 960 Pro's that I'm running in Raid 0 for my "C" drive. Are you ready for my Samsung performance benchmark app results??. . . . 4127 mb reads, and 3024 writes. I've NEVER had a rig capable of these speeds. I'm about as giggly as a little school girl :D And as someone said earlier. . . I consider myself as a hard core Technoporn fiend ;)
Great video my friend, lots of valuable info on this badboy. But BOYYYY would I love to get my grubby mitts on 2 sticks of that "TECH-PORN" !!!!
All the numbers are great but the real world performance improvement over a normal 500+MB/s SATA SSD is basically null. I cancelled my 512gb preorder after looking at benchmarks.
glad to see PC users have access to fast storage
i prefer ramdisk due to performance but its nice to see that consumer are slowly catching up
I built a PC for myself two years ago and I noticed it has a dedicated M.2 connector but it's gonna be a while before I switch to using a M.2 drive. The price is gonna have to come down before I even consider buying one. I'm more than happy to make due with a traditional 3.5" SATA drive (WD black). They'll come down in price eventually and then I'll be able to enjoy one.
To be honest, even swapping to a 2.5" SATA SSD will be a HUGE performance bump if you're still using old mechanical drives for the OS/programs. Even a smaller one, say 250GB, for the OS and frequently used programs/data is well worth it, with the slower larger mechanical drive used for archiving.
Guess you can't PCI Express your excitement enough. Same here since the 960 Pro looks slick, just wish I could afford it!
This is not directed directly toward you man. Why do reviewers keep reviewing things that we know? We KNOW it's blazing fast for files transfers! It says so on the box, we already know the speed it can reach!... That is good for content creators... Can we have some benchmarks for gamers please? Will it load faster, are we going to see any real world difference if for us, transferring a 25GB file is not what we do every day? I would really like to know because I've got the money in my hand but the only review that I saw about my concern showed no difference in gaming loading time VS a Standard SSD! :-(
TELL ME!!! lol
Please
BTW, I love your reviews! Keep up the good work Bro ! ;-)
nice review tom, it is hands down the fastest consumer drive out there, whether it worth the money or not it up to the buyer, but still 1299$ isn't something that goes that easily for a drive, i wish you could do the review when you can on the 960 evo versions they don't get 2tb option nor as they that blazing fast but the price is much more reasonable, that why i think it would be more of interest for the consumers and viewers who are watching your videos.
I just bought an Asus ROG Crossblade Ranger FM2+ AMD A88X (Bolton D4) Motherboard, and I want to use the 960 EVO with the Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to get the M.2 to work.
I found out the A88X doesn't support NVMe. I sent an email to Asus asking if there is a way to get M.2 bootable, and they replied with some settings to change in bios, that should make it bootable.
Here are the steps:
1. BIOS->Boot->CSM (Compatibility Support Module)->Disable
2. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->OS Type->Other OS
3. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->Key Management->Clear Secure Key
4. F10 (save and exit)
5. Install OS only with bootable UEFI media.
6. Re-enter BIOS after first restart during the OS installation, it will be shown within the BIOS
7. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->OS Type->Windows UEFI mode
8. BIOS->Boot->Secure Boot->Key Management->Install Default Secure Boot Keys
9. F10 (save and exit)
10 It should resume the installation, if not, completely power down the system and turn it back on after 10 seconds.
11. Note: do not connect any external devices to the computer during the installation and best if only the M.2 SSD is installed won the system.
Does anyone know if these steps would work?
PLZ ... Make A test on the the 961 Version to. Which they say is close to be the Enterprise one..... But yes LOVE it :)
Nice job, especially with the extra info on the OC3D website, very informative.
I expect that these cards will be packaged with cooling fans in the near future.
Oh and stop touching the pins, it makes me cringe. 8:)
They need to do one of those with a tiny processor in it.
If they can do two of those stuck together side by side, it would be even faster and with more memory, because it would had more pins to send Data and receive it.
Tom, Why is the 950 Pro not included in the graphs? Did Samsung require it be left out because of how closely it performed to the 960 or some other reason. Seem a bit wonky to leave out the current fastest performing drive in the comparo? DaZ
Thanks for your reviews TTL. I guess your'e one of those reviewers/techies that I have subscribed and then unsubed more often than a trip to the white throne till of late... :D
That said, just a thought, maybe a PCIe card with a nice heat spreader or with 2 or more slots to give RAID options, OR JUST SOMETHING EXTRA THAT QUALIFIES THE PRICE?
Let's not hope you're not like NITWIT & kicked SIDESTAND that no matter what, they will give thumbs up to MSI as an example. Some, not all or most, you have given a fair open tech point of view if the product is good or no good or if there are problems, you'd open your trap about it not worried what the big boys down at Intel or AMD or SAMS?U??NG?(cough cough) would do to you ro rather not give you.
Good for you. Even at my age, I enjoy the younger gen ACTUALLY KNOWING WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, not just listening to the manufactures telling you what to say or not to.
25 years worth of thumbs up from the middle of nowhere in South Africa
Crazy expensive right now but I can remember buying a WD HD which was 1.4 GB in size and paying nearly 300.00 for it back in the late 90's. Now look at the price on a 1 or 2 TB HD! These drives like the Samsung are the future of computing drives but I'm wondering if they aren't going to move to a pci slot as a card instead of these M.2 ports. Time will tell.
i wish more people did videos like this good job keep it up
The Asus cover over the M.2 is a heatsink, not an insulator. Did you see the compound strip under the heatsink?
Samsung 960 evo is the one to consider if you want to be somewhat resonable. Its still got overkill speeds, great reliability, decent looks but for a price that most high-end users can swallow!
256GB for $130.
Bought for my Ryzen X370 motherboard. :-)
Great vid.
Drives like this are used in the real world for cache for databases. You're using it for capacity read/write. I can understand consumer interest, but for that price it is not worth buying, unless you want to be 'flash'.
I am so wanting the 960 PRO 2TB, might wait till if cost a bit less!! - Thank you
It's an awful amount of money but it's high time people started to care about storage. Sure, it's a month's salary for some folks, but spread on 5-7 years of use, this is nothing. Nowadays, everybody throws their money at GPU and CPU leaving behind what could make all the difference. This will be my first buy as soon as I'll want to upgrade my current build.
there's like 3-4 other nvme M.2 brands that were out between the 950 and the 960, not quite as fast but I would really like to see a review of them as well..
OCZ RD400
Patriot Hellfire M2
Plextor M8Pe
Apacer Z280
are the ones I can find in Japan
Tom, Love your videos but there's a lot of bounce off your walls ever think about a Lav mic?
Gary Albin I'm wearing one
Samsung 960 Pro on the Polaris controller is 48-layer, TLC, 256-bit V-NAND.
Don't buy this if you can wait a few months more. Toshiba is releasing a much faster and reliable SSD in the next 2-3 months that breaks 4GB/s reads and uses 64 layer NAND vs 960 Pro's 48 layer NAND and it will cost a lot less.
Any source for that?
TruthSeeker Not at present but there are sources saying Toshiba is mass producing a SONOS 64-layer NAND chip right now due in early 2017. Increasing the layers increases capacity and speed. Toshiba is stealing Samsung's NAND market share at a rapid pace, and they just recently surpassed Samsung in NAND technology. They started mass production of 64-layer NAND already and that's almost 4-5 months before Samsung will start mass producing it. When the OCZ Revodrive 400 came out about 4 months after the 950 Pro, but it blew the Samsung 950 Pro out of the water. The SONOS technology Toshiba uses improves latency, speed, and endurance significantly over Samsung's TANOS tech.
english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2016/11/10/0502000000AEN20161110007500320.html
www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/15296-toshiba%E2%80%99s-declaration-toshiba-aiming-produce-world%E2%80%99s-first-64-layer-3d-nand
cool cant wait to upgarde my SSD which is from 4 years old. but i think i need new mobo go alone with it.
Liangshi Xu Yes, I would advise if you could wait a few months because prices will go down further and technology will get even better. Toshiba's 4GB/s SSDs will have the best value and will ship with a PCIE adapter.
Shamoy Rahman hmmm there has to bit a limit.. before the lanes are saturated.. i think we are already at the point or diminishing returns...so people... just get whatever you want now.. no need to wait.
The only caveat about this drive is that you can't use it to load a fresh install of Windows 7 on because Win 7 doesn't have the drivers for this drive. It appears to work only on Windows 10 for a fresh install.
I got the 1TB and ran into thermal throttling issues. After any heavy load or uptime over 24 hours I was getting short freezes and stuttering. CrystalDiskInfo was returning controller temp as 60C. Stuck a small heatsink I had lying around on just the polaris controller... Temps under load dropped to 26C. No further issues. Think m.2 REALLY needs heatsink these days.
We also like to just hear you talk and let your emotions flow :)
btw: planing on buying a 1 or 0.5 TB version of it.
now that's hot, can't wait for the price to drop, currently running raid 0 256gb m.2
Tom, why do you always test drives against synthetic benchmarks but never test real world situation?
99% of us know that synthetic benchmarks are pretty much irrelevant. We are all interested in how quickly it boots windows, games, programs etc.
I'm looking forward for a 45min video explaining why a triangle has THREE angles
This is extremely promising for the future. I see today phones becoming tomorrow's personal computers. I think Apple sees it the same way, we will be pretty much be buying phones that wireless connect to monitors and keyboards
Looking at the CDM5 values, I get the feeling that my 512GB 950 Pro is slower in writing than it should be, compared to the 960.
Do you think the new driver will also boost speeds on the 950 Pro?
Btw, which test size do you use? 1GiB?
Got my Samsung 960 EVO 500GB yesterday, last drive I'll probly need as a boot drive(1-3 game man), anything quicker the difference will not be able to differentiate.
i7-7700K, Micro-ATX Z270, GTX 1070, Be Quiet Dark Pro 550 Platinum, Cryorig H7
BOOM
BTW, I was aboe to install a Samsung NVMe M.2 via a Startech PCIe adapter card into my MSI Z77a-GD80 motherboard and have it *bootable*.
I had to copy the 3 NVMe support modules and patch the latest Z77A BIOS v1.7 from a Z97 AMI BIOS to get the drive to boot. It DOES WORK. See: www.overclock.net/t/1571271/tutorial-how-to-add-nvme-support-on-any-ami-uefi-bios-with-an-intel-chipset
I also have an nVidia 980 TI card and haven't noticed any graphics slowdown. In fact, my PCMark and 3DMark 8 and 11 benchmark scores are higher.
Soon I sill replace the Z77A MB with an X99 (I do a lot of VM work so I want the extra options going with X99 vs Z170).
I've been seeing a lot of reported benchmarks of the new mac having a seriously fast SSD, do you have any intentions of benching it?
I am expecting there to be a 4 Tb version sometime Hopefully. Imagine how insane that one would be.
Oh and tom, xr2 video?
we're all nerds like yourself and much like yourself we have lives too (well...) so lets see some behind the scenes stuff, what are you watching these days, get a go pro for your bike or something :D cheers Guvna.
Its been said a few times lately actually.....
$1799 here in Australia... *Cries*
The 1TB is $879 though.
Just 1357 USD for you guys. The Brits are paying 1575 USD for the same thing!
it would be cheaper to ship it 2 times back and forth from usa to aust lmao
1200? Thats quite steep for an ordinary consumer, good to know that gear this expensive is mostly directed towards profesional artists and video editors that needs the incredible high IOPS and the amazing size in one package.
So basically this is a video of a guy, holding a 1250$ piece of ESD sensitive electronics without any form of ESD protection.
If i had paid that much money for an ESD sensitive device, i would treat it with a LOT more respect.
hey it's good to see you've finally brushed your teeth congratulations.
Great vid Tom! I have the Samsung 950 pro 512 gig and I love it. But now with the 960 pro coming out... Do I get it or just be happy with my 950?
@OC3D TV If you're curious, each chip has 48 layers. www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960.html
I own one of these 2TB 960 Pros. They are legitimately bonkers in a laptop, and I'm getting about 3400 / 2150. They're quick to the point that my i7-7700hq gets bottlenecked sometimes by it.
That is a fraking amazing SSD. It is the Tardis of drives. Tiny yet bigger on the inside.
Hey. Great video. Quick question. Do these have an available PCI Express card to mount this SSD into if one is running short on m.2 connectivity real estate?
I've got the SM961 and hoping to get that new NVMe Driver extracted in order to install it to my drive too. If you get a link we'll be waiting!
This is ridiculous, I remember as a child my mother (a teacher) used to bring home catalogues of pc stuff for school when she went back from refresher courses and fair and I was amazed by the 1 TB RACK that costed something like 1500 euros... now for that price you can buy something that is double the capacity and probably 10 time the speed in... 1/200th of the size or something, not even mentioning power consumption.
Btw happy that my 840 Pro still holds up so well after 4 years, was definitely a good buy
Sure was, even the normal samsung 840 does great after all these years.
William skagen +1 can confirm this, 5.5 tb written blazing fast still...
Aaah, been waiting for this :)
It is SOOO beautiful because how simple it is. I am having palpitations watching this.
I actually thought for quite some time that he is Australian. Can sound pretty similar, depending on from where in the UK you are from.
I have the 500 gb version of this card and first thing I did was take off the top sticker with the model and serial numbers only to realize most people leave it on! The box image has it without the sticker so i just took it off, was that a bad move? Should I have left that sticker on? Not sure how it affects the SSD.
God won’t let u into heaven now sorry bud 😞
"Throttling, for lack of a better term"
Thermal-limiting. Big difference between the two.
You should not touch copper connectors on the edge of the drive, it could cause connectivity problems potentially.
this was an enjoyable video about this super fast state of the art m.2 drive
Tom, I don't think that Samsung is going to believe it has gone missing when you just said it went in your pocket. :P
Is there a big diff between this and the 950 ? the 950 is faster than 951...ordered the 950 yestrday should i cancel and go for the 960 ?
i ran crystal on my 950 512gb a few mins ago and had 2497/1505 if of any use
argie barge So should i stick with the 950 ?
as i have one i suppose i am a little biased, but compare 512gb 960 for £334 (scan) with 3500/2100 or 512gb 950 pro with 2500/1500 for £290 or so (amazon) and theres little in it really. for me i'll stay as is but for the extra depending on local prices you may want to go for the 960
argie barge Allright bro thanks alot i will change my order!
I think these 960 have better IOPS if not for the drivers.
Very nice work Tom!
I am almost tempted to upgrade from my 951Pro as the 960 would effectively give a 50% increase in W/R
lol the question of course is... do you need that much R/W? I have a 951 and I never use all that speed.
Comes in useful when editing and transcoding video :)
If you have the right use case you will benefit and love it. Most of us really won't see much of a benefit on more general use. Doesn't stop me from wanting one though. In this instance I will probably show restraint, for once, and opt for a 1TB or 2 TB 850 Pro.
Hey Tom i'm planning on buying the 512GB model for my PC running the Asus Maxiumus 8 Formula MOBO (full specs below) are the temps fine if i have the cover for day to day use and are there any other major issues setting it up?
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Elvolv Atx Tempered Glass
Moto: Asus Maximus 8 Formula
Cpu: Intel 6700k
Gpu: Evga Gtx 1080 Ftw Hybrid
Ram: Corsair Vengeance Led Red 32Gb 3200mhz
Sad: Samsung 850 Pro ssd 256Gb ( for the time being)
Psu: Corsair Ax860i
Cpu Cooler: Corsair H100i V2
Case Fan: Corsair Ml 120mm
Monitor: Asus Pg348Q 34'' IPS curved 100hz
Keyboard: Corsair K70 lux rgb cherry mx red
Mice: Logitech G502 Prometheus RGB
Why do you have a bunch of powerful graphics cards that you're not doing anything with? You could have a high end gaming rig in every room of your house.
It's 16nov2016 and the NVMe driver is still the v1.1 from Dec2015. Where's the new driver location?
Hey Tom, what about the Sm961? It has slightly different specs which means it's not exactly the same.
If one layer can hold 32 mb, and the maximum number of layers is 16, there are 4 chips, and the total amount is 2tb, then the question 'are all possible 16 layers used' is easy to answer:
Yes: 32mb x 16 x 4 = 512mb x 4 = 2tb
Is the angelbird wings px1 add in card worth using for cooling? Looks like it's built to act as a heatsink on m.2 drives.
3.5GB/s is fucking insane. Only a bunch of SSD's in a RAID 0 setup can match its speed. Otherwise, transferring files from one SATA III drive to the 960 Pro on a daily basis would be a waste of money.
by any chance some other manufacturer comes and competes with samsung in a real way ?
we need lower prices, over 1000 quid for the 960 2tb is insane.
If I used a Thunderbolt cable from my computer (Alienware17 R4) to an external spinning HDD with a USB 3.0 connector to it, will I experience any change in speed?
I'm upgrading my PC tomorrow but if I install this drive or the 1TB one and a new driver comes out the next day, will I have to recopy all the files onto the drive after the firmware update?
i enjoyed your ratio of 500:1 talking to benchmark graph ratio
Here's a tip - rather than a flat long-winded and boring shot of you talking at us throughout the entire length of the video I suggest you make it a lot more visually interesting fir us by cutting the video to show viewers screenshots of the benchmarks that you are talking about (or whatever else might be useful for us to see). Otherwise it's visually about as exciting as watching paint dry. It's the drive and what it can do that we've come to see and that should be the focus of the clip - not you stuck in behind your little counter like a bartender rabbiting on about about how you mix your cocktails.....
from what I've read, that's getting close to the limit of PCI express 4x, did u see any differences in motherboards from where the m.2 is off the chipset instead of the cpu? or any difference where the m.2 might be constrained for bandwidth by mobo design?
Chris Rowlison he said it was actually faster on the z170 which i believe uses the chipset lanes whereas the x99 platform uses the cpu's lanes and it was slightly slower
***** I just wonder, cause if you just use the wrong slot it can go from being on the CPU to Chipset, and different mobos, even z170s handle M.2 differently
yeah I recently built a z170 pc for a family member and was interested in how running of chipset pci-e lanes would effect speed as I think the z170 has 20 lanes on the chipset for sata, usb and m.2 and 16 on the cpu for gpu and add in cards surprisingly the m.2 on the z170 didn't effect the speed of my sm951 m.2 drive compared to my x99 platform going through the cpu, it's made me want z170 more than my x99 just for the pure extra single core performance z170 packs whilst still getting good m.2 support xD
***** I worry cause for instance Dimitri from hardware canucks has run into throughput problems with tooo many hard drives on the chipset and from the specs I've seen if the M.2 goes through it that one device takes up 3/4ths of the total bandwidth it has goin to the CPU, the 950 series isn't half as close to the limit of the pci-express 4x connection as the 960 series soo I wouldn't worry too much... but its definately a thing where you wanna see how an M.2 slot is wired on a mobo before you get it, I know alan malvantano? from PCper is pretty good about this stuff as well, he might have some ideas
The CPU has 20 lanes Total, 16 of those go to the PCIE slots, and the other 4 goes to the Chipset that splits and shares those 4 lanes for everything else that's attached to the chipset.
What about the ocz productline? Their M.2 makes up to 2,600/1,600 MB/s reading/writing. I would say that this is a serious competitor against Intel and Samsung and it cost a bit less!
Does it need Bios support? Could I use it on a Z97 (Asus sabertooth mkII) with an NVMe to PCIE adaptor? This drive doesn't seem to have been topped in a year.
hahahahahaa THANK you Tom for the Samsung jokes around 17:25!!! :D
If the drive is performing simultaneous reads and writes, with multi gigabyte amounts of data, will the numbers quoted in this review take much of a hit?
Presumably any storage device will see lower numbers. I am interested in knowing approximately what percentage will performance be reduced?
Thank you.
Any chance of a 960 Evo review?
I'd like to see that too. Specifically the 250 and 500 Gb versions which I may actually be able to afford.
I have the 240GB Kingston Predator so I'm hoping to compare. the Predator kicks ass btw. and for only $140 new (I got one used for $100), its worth every penny.
Kingston Predator are AHCI not NVMe....
Wow... did not realize the difference and at first didn't see anything about that on Kingstons website. but I finally found good info. Damn I might sell this thing now.
I was going to get a 950 pro 512 but see the 960 Evo will be faster from the numbers they put out and I can get a 1TB for a bit more then the 512 950. Then there's the DMI 3.0 limit on the z170 to CPU so I went from adding a bunch of stuff to just using the on board m.2 slot on the z170 Sabertooth. Are you going to test the evo 960 and can you talk about the DMI 3.0 limits and if they aren't that bad?