Samsung Announces Its Fastest, Largest PCIe 960 Series SSDs

Since Samsung released its first NVMe PCIe solid-state drive last year, the 950 Pro, it's arguably had the best consumer SSD on the market. Not wanting to rest on its laurels, the company has unveiled its new 960 Series drives, which aim to be even faster and larger.

Samsung's new 960 Pro will still be based on the company's V-NAND technology and uses the Non-Volatile Memory Express interface. NVMe offers much faster performance compared to standard 2.5-inch SSDs, which generally use the SATA III interface that top out at 600 MB/s. In comparison, Samsung asserts that its 960 Pro can reach peak read and writes speeds of 3,500 MB/s and 2,100 MB/s, respectively. The drive will also offer random read and write input/output operations per second (IOPS) of up to 440,000 and 360,000, respectively. The company is marketing the drive towards gamers and those who handle intensive workloads like 4K rendering.

Whereas the company's older 950 Pro tops off at 512 GB, the 960 Pro scales up to two terabytes of storage, though it will also be available in 250 GB and 500 GB sizes as well.

It is worth mentioning that the 960 Series SSDs will use the M.2 form factor, so your motherboard will need an M.2 slot or you'll need to get a PCIe M.2 adapter to get it working in desktops. One benefit of it using the M.2 standard is that its small form factor will allow it to fit inside ultra-thin form factors like laptops and NUC PCs.

Samsung also unveiled its slightly more affordable line of 960 Evo drives, which Samsung asserts will offer peak read and writes speeds of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s, respectively. The company also says that the Evo drives will offer random read and write IOPS that reach 380,000 and 360,000.

Both Samsung's 960 Pro and 960 Evo will be available worldwide starting October 2016, with suggested retail prices starting at $330 and $130, respectively.