CDRLabs.com - Samsung 960 PRO 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive

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Model: Samsung 960 PRO 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Samsung Electronics
Provided By: Samsung America

Samsung Electronics has been a leader in the electronics industry for more than 30 years. Since the introduction of their first television in 1970, this Korean company has grown to become one of the world's leading electronics manufacturers, offering everything from tiny semiconductors to large home appliances. Samsung is no stranger to the storage industry either. Along with an assortment of DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives, the company offers both hard drive and flash based storage solutions for the portable and desktop computer markets.

With solid-state technology advancing at an ever increasing rate, Samsung has begun to look for ways to push performance beyond the limits of the current SATA specifications. In addition to technologies like RAPID (Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data), which uses free PC memory as a cache, the company offers a growing number of PCIe-based SSDs. One of the latest additions to this lineup is the 960 PRO. First unveiled at the 2016 Samsung SSD Global Summit in Seoul, this cutting-edge NVMe SSD is powered by the company's new 5-core Polaris controller and is available with up to 2TB of their 48-layer V-NAND flash. Thanks to its PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 lane interface, the 960 PRO also delivers higher bandwidth and lower latency than Samsung's previous-generation NVMe SSDs.

The 960 PRO is available in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. For this review, Samsung sent us the 512GB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 3,500 MB/s sequential read and 2,100 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 330,000 random read and write IOPS.

Samsung 960 PRO 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive

General Specifications

Model Number	MZ-V5P512BW
Capacity	512GB
Flash Type	Samsung 48-layer V-NAND
Controller	Samsung Polaris
DRAM Cache	512MB LP DDR3
Form Factor	M.2 (2280)
Interface	PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.2 (partial)

Performance

Sequential Read	3,500 MB/s Max
Sequential Write	2,100 MB/s Max
4K Random Read (QD1)	14,000 IOPS
4K Random Write (QD1)	50,000 IOPS
4K Random Read (QD32)	330,000 IOPS
4K Random Write (QD32)	330,000 IOPS

Reliability

MTBF	1.5 million hours
Endurance	400TBW

Power Consumption

Idle	40 mW
Active Read	5.1 Watt
Active Write	4.7 Watt
Device Sleep	5 mW

Environmental

Operating Temperature	0 ºC to 70 ºC
Non-Operating Temperature	-45 ºC to 85 ºC
Humidity	5% to 95%, non-condensing
Shock	1500G, duration: 0.5m sec, 3 axis
Vibration	20~2000Hz, 20G

Dimensions and Weight

Dimensions	80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38 mm
Weight	10g

Other Features

AES 256-bit for User Data Encryption
TCG/Opal compliant
Supports TRIM, SMART and Garbage Collection
DEVSLP power mode
5 year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the 960 PRO has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's new NVMe SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the 960 PRO have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Samsung? Keep reading as we find out.