Thermal Throttling, Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts

Thermal Throttling

When Samsung announced the 950 PRO, several of you commented on potential thermal throttling due to heat generated in such a small package during heavy use. The following image represents a worst case scenario, with the 950 PRO being sequentially written with zero airflow across it:

As you can see, you would have to write nearly 150GB at over 1.5GB/sec to get a 950 PRO to warm up enough to throttle, and when it does, the throttling is very minor, dropping to only 1.2GB/sec intermittently. The slightest airflow prevents this from happening at all, and even if there was zero airflow, the chances of maxing a 950 PRO out on writes for that long of a burst is extremely unlikely in even the most demanding consumer usage scenario.

Conclusion

PROS

  • Best performing M.2 SSD Tested
  • Best performing SSD Tested (period)
  • Power Consumption is half that of the closest competing NVMe SSD
  • M.2 form factor fits in more places (with adapter)

CONS

  • Cost/GB higher than competing (slower) SSDs
  • M.2 to PCIe adapter card needed for those without M.2

Pricing and Warranty

These are excellent MSRPs given that these are the fastest consumer SSDs we have ever tested. Warranty period is 5 years rated at 200 terabytes written for the 256GB model and 400 TBW for the 512GB.

Final Thoughts

We knew that any VNAND-equipped successor to the Samsung SM951 would be a great product, and Samsung certainly did not disappoint. While not leaps and bounds ahead of the prior generation SSD, the 950 PRO was faster, and more importantly will be available for sale in retail channels starting today! New Latency Percentile testing was able to pinpoint some slight differences between the two available capacities of the 950 PRO, but these are minor and should not sway potential users from the smaller capacity if that is all their budget can support. The Samsung 950 PRO is an outstanding performer that can fit almost anywhere. Highly recommended for anyone with an M.2 equipped system!

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