Samsung's First 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD: SM961 Shipping Next Week
Rod Bland, CEO and Upgrade Evangelist of RamCity, revealed that a shipment of Samsung SM961 1TB SSDs are en route to his company. The SM961 is faster than the previous generation SM951 and retail 950 Pro. The new OEM-targeted NVMe SSD uses a new controller that should produce less heat, a move aimed at reducing thermal throttle conditions. The Polaris controller boosts V-NAND performance up to 3,200 MB/s (sequential read) and up to 450,000 random read IOPS at queue depth 32.
| Product | SM961 128GB | SM961 256GB | SM961 512GB | SM961 1TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | NA | $159 | $280 | $512 |
| Controller | Samsung Polaris | Samsung Polaris | Samsung Polaris | Samsung Polaris |
| DRAM | Samsung LPDDR3 | Samsung LPDDR3 | Samsung LPDDR3 | Samsung LPDDR3 |
| Flash | Samsung MLC V-NAND | Samsung MLC V-NAND | Samsung MLC V-NAND | Samsung MLC V-NAND |
| Sequential Read | 3100 MB/s | 3100 MB/s | 3200 MB/s | 3200 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 700 MB/s | 1400 MB/s | 1700 MB/s | 1800 MB/s |
| Random Read | 330,000 IOPS | 330,000 IOPS | 330,000 IOPS | 450,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | 170,000 IOPS | 280,000 IOPS | 300,000 IOPS | 320,000 IOPS |
| Warranty | Varies By Reseller | Varies By Reseller 3-Years From RamCity | Varies By Reseller 3-Years From RamCity | Varies By Reseller 3-Years From RamCity |
The SM961 will ship in four capacity sizes, but we don't expect to see the small 128GB used outside of the OEM and system integrator market. RamCity plans to carry the 256GB, 512GB and 1TB drives. We learned the initial pricing details and found a presale page for the SM961 1TB.
The first thing that stands out to us is the pricing. The SM961 costs less than the Samsung 950 Pro 256GB and 512GB. The large 1TB model is unrivaled in the NVMe M.2 form factor. The drive sells for half of the price of Intel's SSD 750 1.2TB. The pricing listed above comes from RamCity and was listed in USD.
Samsung hasn't replied to our questions about the new Polaris controller nor the flash. We suspect the controller uses an 8-channel design and a new process node to reduce heat output to combat thermal throttling. We also expect the SM961 1TB to use 3rd generation V-NAND technology like the Samsung Portable SSD T3. Samsung's third-gen V-NAND stacks 48 layers high and doubles the density of previous 32-layer (Gen2) V-NAND flash.
We obtained the performance specifications for all four capacity sizes (see above). The SM961 is easily the fastest consumer SSD to ship, ever.
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Very good for consumers...
Is Optane even available to the public yet?
I guess it's faster than previous gen SSD's so it attracts a premium.
Does that transfer speed make any difference at all besides transferring between two of these SSDs?
Ignorant about the fact, curiously looking it up, there still seem to be some bandwidth headroom with PCIe 3.0 x4 at 3.9GB/s, if Wikipedia is to be believed! Though, at this rate, interface bandwidth cap is soon upon us... but so is also PCI 4.0!
PCIe 3.0 uses a 128b/130b "jumbo frame": 130 bits / 16 bytes = 8.125 bits per byte
x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes @ 8 GHz / 8.125 bits per byte
= 3.94 GB/second
x4 PCIe 4.0 lanes @ 16 GHz / 8.125 bits per byte
= 7.88 GB/second
Intel should increase the number of lanes
in their DMI link. Right now, a single NVMe M.2 SSD
has exactly the same upstream bandwidth as the DMI 3.0 link.
And/or, an NVMe RAID controller with x16 edge connector
and 4 x U.2 ports would be excellent too, provided that
it supported all modern RAID modes.
Intel P3700 SSD TBW is 7300 TB and double the price of the P750 but guess which is cheaper ?
The P3700 is Cheaper cos The P750 TBW is ONLY 219TB TBW !!!!
making the P3700 33 TIMES BETTER at double the price only ! 7300 TERA BYTE WRITES vs 219 !!!
33 times ENDURANCE !
yet you just mention the 750 in your Analysis.
you dont even bother to mention the TBW , which is the LIFE of the SSD ..
you CANT use SSD for movies and Huge Files and expect them to last much ! or heavy write / delete operations like Hard disks. here where the High TBW comes handy , I never Bought Low TBW SSD !!!
yes you pay Double , but you write 33 TIMES MORE ! in case of Intel 3700 vs 750
Samsung 950 pro is just 400 TBW by the way
that is , you fill it 400 times , ONLY.
The OEM 951 was ONY 75TB TBW !!!
Thanks !
Please include TBW Analysis in your SSD reviews as well , not only the Performance.
There is a Huge hidden cost people dont notice when They decide on which SSD drive is best to buy ..
TBW per dollar is very Important if you delete files often , or use it for Large files.
The Intel 3700 should be the popular one and not the 750 ... but most people dont notice !
For example (to explain for readers) ,
lets assume that you write 219 TB on intel 750 SSD in one year (all its TBW)
The 3700 will work 33 years more (or until the internals fail) !!! the same use ! (7300 TB) !!!
and just twice the price !!!
TBW is very Important in Choosing . should be 25% points in Reviews .
No, I have a 950 Pro NVME and the only time I notice a difference vs a 840 EVO is when I restart my PC. Games do not load faster and the OS does not feel any "snappier" (to be fair, I do not know how much "snappier" win 10 can feel considering, since my first SDD everything has been always been "snappy").
So, I would not recommend a NVME SSD over an AHCI SSD at this point. Maybe when the prices become more competitive (which looks like it is starting to happen) but right now you are looking at $600 per TB for NVME and $200 per TB for AHCI. The speed up is not worth the premium at this point. Optane may be better for normal computer use (its supposedly going to hit 70k IOps at low queue depths, which may be amazing for normal computer use) but until I can get my hands on an Optane drive I will continue recommending AHCI SDD.
Odd. From what I'd gathered, the 950 pro, via 3.0x4 connection, esp with Samsung's drivers + optimization via magician, should be significantly and noticeably faster than any AHCI ssd. Assuming no bottleneck exists, if the only noticeable difference in speed you're getting is OS boot time, then I guess maybe I'm not missing out as much as I thought I was by not using a decent M.2 or pcie drive, and would have to agree re waiting for better prices and/or optane. Though, if I may ask, you sure there's no sys bottleneck preventing the drive from utilizing its full potential?
Your best bet for getting one is to preorder and wait in line like others. RamCity has them on order. As they arrive they will ship out.
Other resellers may get products at some point. Newegg tries to carry the OEM drives but, in my experience, it takes Newegg 5 to 6 months to get them after RamCity starts selling.
No offense to you, I realize it's just your job, but I think we ought to stick to stories that cover the release of products people can actually obtain. I don't know about anybody else but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about paying extra shipping and any other duties they may tack on, for the privilidge of waiting what looks to be about a month out for delivery. TBH, I rather wish I'd not read the article now, so I wouldn't feel disenchanted by the fact that I'm probably unlikely to see one of these anytime soon.
At the very least it might be prudent to not headline a product review like this with "shipping next week", unless they are actually shipping the following week. I'm not having much faith in the "preorder and stand in line" aspect either, since as I said, the numbers on RAMcity have been unchanged, 15 on backorder, 30 expected mid August, since they day you released the article. Seems like if orders were being made and fullfilled, there would be some fluctuation in those numbers at some point. I've been checking multiple times daily for a week. No change, at all.
Props for the article, just wish it was something I could actually purchase, rather than pay for and then hope to see eventually. I really dislike these type of single vendor endeavors. Make your product, built some stock up, then release, when you can actually fulfill orders. Since RAMcity is the only vendor currently taking orders on these, it certainly can't be due to the fulfillment being spread around. If they can't fulfill 15 pieces over the course of two weeks, something's wrong. Even the GTX 1070 and 1080 supply issues were up and down, rather than just non-existent.
Ok, rant over. Thanks for the extra info anyhow.
As far as 'ships next week'. That was accurate. I had my SM961 1TB within a week from the news going up. We were the first to cover the story. Hopefully all of the initial supply went to Tom's Hardware readers. The 256GB and 512GB had an estimated deliver date of July 15th but they arrived early and drives were shipped the last few days of June.
The Australian Dollar works in our favor right now. I talked about pricing in the new review of the SM961 256GB and 512GB: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd-256gb-512gb,4621.html
The 1TB drive now costs right around $460 (USD) shipped to the US. The shipping costs and deliver times are very reasonable. When looking at the conversion you have to take 10% for AUS tax (called GST). I haven't been charged an import duty/tax on any of the products I've purchased from them but laws change country to country.
The SM961 is not a single vendor product, either. You can buy one from Lenovo in a new notebook if you want to spend 500+ for the upgrade. There is no guarantee it will be a SM961. Some users have reported getting PM961 drives, the slower TLC version. Other places will sell the SM961 in time but right now RamCity has a trickle of them coming for those willing to get in line. It's no different than any other product hampered with supply / demand issues. I still don't have a GTX 1080. I would like to buy one at MSRP or lower but every time I look at Newegg they are sold out. I know in time they will be in stock at all of the large reseller sites and can scoop one up below MSRP.