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 1TB 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.
Josh Raye (Research and Development SME) Says:
A worthy improvement over the previous generation. This M.2 drive does still throttle under extended stress, but it takes twice as long to hit that point, and the speed that it throttles to exceeds the last generation's non-throttled speed.
A worthy improvement over the previous generation. This M.2 drive does still throttle under extended stress, but it takes twice as long to hit that point, and the speed that it throttles to exceeds the last generation's non-throttled speed.
Model: Samsung MZ-V6P1T0BW
Specifications
| Capacity | 1024 GB |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 |
| Cache Size | 1024 MB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
| Idle Noise | 0 dB |
| Seek Noise | 0 dB |
| Endurance (TBW) | 800 TBW |
| Peak Power Draw | 5.3 Watts |
Performance | |
| Sequential Read (Peak) | Up to 3,500 MB/s |
| Sequential Write (Peak) | Up to 2,100 MB/s |
| Random 4KB Read | 440,000 IOPS |
| Random 4KB Write | 360,000 IOPS |