Samsung's New SM951 M.2 SSD Can Read At 2150 MB/s, But You Can't Buy It
Heya, that's one helluva fast SSD you've got there, Samsung. Too bad we can't buy it...
If you thought Kingston's new HyperX Predator SSD is fast, wait until you see what Samsung has in store for you. During CES 2015, a heap of new specifications for the SM951 became available, and we'd like to tell you about it because Samsung has started mass producing this baby.
The SSD will come in capacities ranging from 128 GB through 512 GB, and it measures 80 x 22 mm (this is the M.2 2280 form factor). Compared to its predecessor, the XP941, the SM951 now communicates into a 4x PCI-Express 3.0 signal. It still drops into the M.2 socket. Among its new features is also an L1.2 low-power mode, which brings the standby consumption of the unit down to a negligible 2 mW. Samsung also boasts that the SSD only needs about one watt to transfer 450 MB/s when reading, or 250 MB/s when writing.
Samsung said that over PCI-Express 2.0, the drive will manage to read at up to 1600 MB/s and write at up to 1350 MB/s. Over PCI-Express 3.0 it goes a step further, though, bringing those numbers up to 2150 MB/s and 1550 MB/s for sequential reading and writing, respectively. Random read IOPS sit at 130,000 and random write IOPS at 85,000. This is some seriously fast performance.
When we said that you should wait to see what Samsung has in store for you, though, we lied. The SSDs won't be coming to shops, but will only be available to OEMs. We therefore can't quote pricing or availability either, but we can tell you to sit back and await some very high-end storage performance from various upcoming notebooks. Given this level of performance, though, we are definitely a little sad that it won't be available through ordinary retail channels.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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TechyInAZ What's the point of a SSD if you can't buy it. If you want one for a diy build or even worse if one goes out then you can never get another one again.Reply -
CaedenV ReplyWhat's the point of a SSD if you can't buy it. If you want one for a diy build or even worse if one goes out then you can never get another one again.
Don't worry, this is probably a mass production issue that will be taken care of in time. For now charge an arm and a leg for it to high-end OEMs, and then when mass production really takes off they will offer a similar (or even a more refined) product for mass markets. I would just give it 6-8 months, surely by the end of the year everyone will have similarly speced devices available for purchase. -
ibmpc since Asus or MSI or (othere companies) gonna buy this for their laptops they should also bundle this drive with their flagship motherboards it will make a great selling pointReply -
Christopher1 Reply
Yeah, that situation sounds about right. I was worried as well when they said "This will only be sold to OEM's!" I was going "Oh great... have one go out in a PC or laptop and you cannot replace it with something equally fast!"What's the point of a SSD if you can't buy it. If you want one for a diy build or even worse if one goes out then you can never get another one again.
Don't worry, this is probably a mass production issue that will be taken care of in time. For now charge an arm and a leg for it to high-end OEMs, and then when mass production really takes off they will offer a similar (or even a more refined) product for mass markets. I would just give it 6-8 months, surely by the end of the year everyone will have similarly speced devices available for purchase. -
IQ11110002 What do they mean compared to its predecessor xp941, I have a xp941 here in x99 build and it is also pci-e 3.0 4x speed, Which is why it gets over 1000 read speeds.Reply
The new one is not using a new bus speed it's using the same m.2 x4 running off pci-e 3.0, Just that the drive itself is way better tech.
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universal remonster Reply15070180 said:The XP941 had 4x pci-e 2.0, not 3.0.
Yep, it's X4 but not pcie3.0 and that's the difference. And also that the 951 is an NVME drive where as the 941 was still using AHCI. (Win 8 required for NVME mode btw..) I wouldn't say that you can't buy these, just that you can't buy it in retail packaging. Places like RamCIty and Avnet have confirmed that they will have them available. I got my 941 for right at $1/GB, so I'm sure that the 951 will be a bit higher at first release and come down to about the same eventually. -
therealduckofdeath @Brian_R170 I'm pretty sure Apple don't use replaceable SSD's, ruling them out. I'm guessing these will go to high-end gamer and workstation laptops, as it'll probably be pretty expensive the first few months.Reply