SFF.Network [SFF Network] Samsung announces the 950 Pro

Samsung’s SSD Global Summit is currently happening in Seoul, Korea and the big announcement is the upcoming release of the Samsung 950 Pro SSD. AnandTech has a great overview of the new features. It is the first consumer SSD in the M.2 form factor to feature the NVMe interface combined with 3D NAND. It will initially release in 256GB and 512GB models, with a 1TB model coming early 2016.

Read more here

 

[Phuncz]

Anandtech review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb
I've seen a few more locally (Dutch). It's all very clear: top performance and worries about temperature and compatibility. The temperature is not a problem in normal use-cases and thermal throttling doesn't bother me. The compatibility is something I'm not afraid of as a avid user.

I'm basically checking four times a day to see the shipping times on the local web shops to order it as soon as it becomes available. It's almost as painful as waiting on the Nova *hint hint*

 

[EdZ]

For some bizarre reason, the 950 Pro is sitting at £90 more than the SM951 in the UK (at equivalent capacity), which seems to be the reverse of the case in the US.

 

[Phuncz]

Today the 950 Pro seems to trickle into Europe, I have mine on order in a webshop at The Netherlands with "2-3 business day delivery". EDIT: changed to next week Exciting times ! I also ordered some stuff to tinker and play, like a new mITX case and components to make another PC.

 

[Phuncz]

So the delivery that was going to happen early November got moved to early December.

 

[Vittra]

At this rate, the 1TB will be out by the time you get yours.

 

[Phuncz]

I'm seeying 380-400€ asking price for the few sources that claim they have stock soon, for the 512GB version. I've bought mine at 325€ from a trusted webstore though.

Personally I don't need the 1TB, I'm doing fine with a 250GB but I'm running out of storage with just a few games installed at 30-50GB a piece.

 

[Vittra]

I have a 512GB SSD, so I am waiting for the increased capacity / 3rd gen 256Gbit VNAND to compare against other things in 2016.

I tried to run my older 256GB drive in the new machine for a time but had to swap drives between my machines for the same reason you are upgrading now - just too many large games these days.

 

[Phuncz]

Two days ago I received my 950 Pro and today I got to install it in my Ncase M1:

That's the Asus Maximus VII Impact ComboCard thingie that combines WiFi and M.2. It fits, but the SSD isn't bolted down. It does sit snugly into the socket, I'm not worried it will fall out. And the bracket has some foam tabs that keep it even more snuggly.

But it doesn't sit perfectly straight. I don't care. But there is a potential problem I see when I removed my GPU since mine has 4 extended screws around the core.

But luckily it still fits. Yes it rests on the screw. Is it a problem ? I don't see a problem: the back of the PCB of the 950 Pro doesn't have any electrical components and it's covered in a black coating that seems to be for isolating purposes. My PC boots up and it works.

EDIT: I used Macrium Reflect Free to clone my old SATA AHCI SSD to this new PCIe NVMe SSD, with the Samsung NVMe driver already loaded beforehand into my Windows 10 install, it just worked. Fastest single SSD, two less cables, happy camper.

 

[iFreilicht]

Maybe you could actually use that standoff to your advantage and really secure the SSD by somehow mounting them together? Would be a nice little hack

 

[Phuncz]

Oh no I wouldn't advise it. The GPU can shift a couple of mm and so can the SSD. It would worry me more than the SSD free-floating with the PCB weighing only a few grams.

 

[Vittra]

Yeah, they are better left off as is. Pretty humorous it just barely fits though. I think Asus' implementation of that riser was pretty well done, I wouldn't be worried about it falling out either. I'm curious if Asus will back off the crazy ITX audio solution of the VIII Impact for the Union Point (Series 200) chipset and go back to M.2, or if they will double down on U.2 / Audio for Kaby Lake. With the rumours of support for Intel Optane coming in for that release, I don't see SODIMMS coming to ITX boards so there's no space savings to be had there.

When you used Macrium Reflect Free, did you do it from a bootable cd/USB, or from Windows?

When I used Macrium Reflect Free to clone an SSD I did it through Windows, so it didn't port over the boot information. It wasn't a big deal, just booted into recovery and re-did the boot tables and it was good to go. I had decided I wanted to try an alternative to Clonezilla, but I just went back to it for my latest clone. I ended up having to use Gparted to correct the order of partitions though, the large partition for C was sitting in between the 100mb and 450mb partitions Windows 10 created, preventing free space being allocated to C.

 

[Phuncz]

When you used Macrium Reflect Free, did you do it from a bootable cd/USB, or from Windows?

Straight from within Windows, with both drives installed. I installed the latest Free version, didn't even reboot. The Samsung 830 was my boot drive and the 950 Pro wasn't innitialized (given a partition table) yet, but the Samsung NVMe driver was present.

It does sit idle at 52°C, so I'm suspecting the power management isn't enabled yet. Have to look around what that would be.

I think the U.2 choice on the M8I wasn't necessarily a bad one, since I see a future with both M.2 and U.2, I don't see why these can't co-exist, especially when we'll be having fast, small SSDs and slow, large SSDs in a possible future. Because M.2 has the advantage of not needing to transport the signal over a cable and (hot swap) connectors, allowing it to use the highest possible speeds. With the 200-series they should have 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes if I remember it correct, meaning M.2 and U.2 can live together without interfering with any other components and have their maximum current potential.

But at the moment U.2 is more relateable to SATA 2,5" which people know. How many times uninformed people have thought that smaller is slower ? If they see the Samsung 950 Pro and the Intel SSD 750 next to eachother, most people would expect the Samsung to be much slower, because it looks so dinky. I like dinky though.

 

[iFreilicht]

I believe the move to U.2 was maybe a bit early, but it's an awesome tool for enthusiasts that want to be on the edge.

BTW (sorry a bit OT), do we know whether 7mm (or 9.5mm) U.2 SSDs will be a thing in the future? Right now all the U.2 SSDs are 15mm thick, which seems a bit excessive.

 

[Phuncz]

Enterprise uses those kind of 2,5" thick drives a lot and since most U.2 drives at the moment are more targeted at enterprise use, it's not all that strange. But Samsung, Intel and Crucial should start focusing more on M.2 and U.2, 2015 should have been the year of PCIe NVMe storage but it only barely succeeded into getting a drive or two on the consumer market.