Samsung's 960 Pro line of solid-state drives is their second generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 512GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.5GB/s with write speeds up to 2.1GB/s.
Please note that some M.2 slots on motherboards only run at PCI-E x2 speed, rather than the x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot. These drives can also get hot during extended read / write operations - moving data in the hundreds of gigabytes range. That is an extreme scenario, and most users will never run into it, but if the drive does get too hot it will throttle down to prevent overheating. That will reduce performance by as much as 50% until it cools off, but even then performance is still well above what SATA-based SSDs offer.
Please note that some M.2 slots on motherboards only run at PCI-E x2 speed, rather than the x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot. These drives can also get hot during extended read / write operations - moving data in the hundreds of gigabytes range. That is an extreme scenario, and most users will never run into it, but if the drive does get too hot it will throttle down to prevent overheating. That will reduce performance by as much as 50% until it cools off, but even then performance is still well above what SATA-based SSDs offer.
William George (Marketing Project Manager) Says:
These SSDs are absurdly fast, and between the speed and the improved (but not perfect) thermal situation I no longer have reservations about recommending them. However, I should note that the speed doesn't help in all situations. Once you reach the speed of normal, SATA-based SSDs the improvement from an even faster drive only comes into play if your workload is actually doing a lot of reading or writing *and* isn't bottle necking somewhere else.
These SSDs are absurdly fast, and between the speed and the improved (but not perfect) thermal situation I no longer have reservations about recommending them. However, I should note that the speed doesn't help in all situations. Once you reach the speed of normal, SATA-based SSDs the improvement from an even faster drive only comes into play if your workload is actually doing a lot of reading or writing *and* isn't bottle necking somewhere else.
Oscar Tirado (Marketing Coordinator) Says:
Samsung has done it again... I'm slowly becoming Fanboy. It's hard not to, when Samsung releases is amazing. When comparing it to a 950 Pro, this drive outperforms it by a large margin. It takes twice as long to throttle, meaning it can write ~336GB of data--as opposed to ~72GB--before slightly dropping performance, & in most cases, this drive will never throttle. I don't see this SSD becoming the bottleneck in your system for a longgggggg time.
Samsung has done it again... I'm slowly becoming Fanboy. It's hard not to, when Samsung releases is amazing. When comparing it to a 950 Pro, this drive outperforms it by a large margin. It takes twice as long to throttle, meaning it can write ~336GB of data--as opposed to ~72GB--before slightly dropping performance, & in most cases, this drive will never throttle. I don't see this SSD becoming the bottleneck in your system for a longgggggg time.
Nick Krader (Inventory Technician) Says:
This drive is amazingly fast and runs way cooler than the 950 Pro it replaced. I upgraded to this for fun but the ability of this drive to run under normal conditions at quite cool temperatures really made me feel better about the long term viability of this drive. I have about 6TB worth of writes on this drive and it is still going strong. With the way these drives last and have VERY low failure rates I expect that this drive will be going strong for many years to come.
This drive is amazingly fast and runs way cooler than the 950 Pro it replaced. I upgraded to this for fun but the ability of this drive to run under normal conditions at quite cool temperatures really made me feel better about the long term viability of this drive. I have about 6TB worth of writes on this drive and it is still going strong. With the way these drives last and have VERY low failure rates I expect that this drive will be going strong for many years to come.
Gabe Martinez (Production Technician) Says:
Blazing fast storage in a cool, noiseless and compact form factor, the Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 SSD is an easy first designation for your new PC. If you don't require a ton of storage space or are looking to run your OS on the M.2 specification, then this SSD will get the job done. If you want rock solid reliability and performance that will last for years to come, you can't go wrong here.
Blazing fast storage in a cool, noiseless and compact form factor, the Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 SSD is an easy first designation for your new PC. If you don't require a ton of storage space or are looking to run your OS on the M.2 specification, then this SSD will get the job done. If you want rock solid reliability and performance that will last for years to come, you can't go wrong here.
Model: Samsung MZ-V6P512BW
Specifications
| Capacity | 512 GB |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 |
| Cache Size | 512 MB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
| Idle Noise | 0 dB |
| Seek Noise | 0 dB |
| Endurance (TBW) | 400 TBW |
| Peak Power Draw | 5.1 Watts |
Performance | |
| Sequential Read (Peak) | Up to 3,500 MB/s |
| Sequential Write (Peak) | Up to 2,100 MB/s |
| Random 4KB Read | 330,000 IOPS |
| Random 4KB Write | 330,000 IOPS |
