NVME PM963 2.5" 960GB $300

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AJXCR

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I've purchased x8 of these from this Ebay seller in the past 24 hours. He's generally pretty quick to respond, provides pictures of the individual drives upon request, and ships within 4 hours of placing the order. Drives are listed in smaller quantities, but if you'll message him he'll do 4x for $1200. I believe he started with qty 30.

Samsung SSD PM963 960GB X4, U.2 Solid State Drive ( use 500 hours) | eBay

From Samsung's website, specs on the PM963 are:
Form factor: 2.5 inch
Capacity: 960 GB
Host interface: PCIe Gen3 x 4 Lanes
Spec compliance: NVMe spec rev. 1.2 (partial), PCI Express CEM spec rev. 3.0, PCI Express base specification rev. 3.0
NAND flash memory: Samsung V-NAND
Power consumption: Active read/write: Up to 7.5/7.5 W, Idle: 2.5 W (typical)
TBW (@4 KB random write): 1,366 TB
UBER: 1 sector per 10^17 bits read
MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
Endurance: 1.3 DWPD for 3 years
Sequential read: Up to 2,000 MB/s
Sequential write: Up to 1,200 MB/s
Random read: Up to 430K IOPS
Random write: Up to 40K IOPS

Same drives listed for sale here:
MZQLW9600 Samsung Solid State Drive
 

AJXCR

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Ohhh great price
I felt like it was the best deal I've seen on larger(ish) bulk enterprise NVME drives in a while.. Now I just need a way to add 8 more NVME devices to my box (I'm looking at you Broadcom!)

Too bad you can't cut these Intel combo backplanes in half and make 4x 4NVME back planes.. or can you?? :eek:


(That was a joke) ...Not that I wouldn't do it if I thought it might work :D
 
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AJXCR

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....btw, if they show to be sold out (currently the case) message him. There should be quite a few left.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Thought to buy...
Hmm not any feedback for seller and Taiwan, are they samples maybe ?
 

AJXCR

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Thought to buy...
Hmm not any feedback for seller and Taiwan, are they samples maybe ?
Seller does have feedback (positive), however, it would appear there is a 12 month+ gap in his selling history. Note that he's been a member since 2009.

I was initially hesitant to pull the trigger, but became significantly more comfortable after communicating with him a bit.

Looking up MZQLW960HMJP-000AZ on Samsung's website would suggest that production status is "Mass Produced"
 

Patrick

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AJXCR

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@Patriot sent me the link to these awhile back. At $275 I would be buying them. $300+ I am sticking with higher-end drives.

These are the Samsung U.2 NVMe SSDs you want Samsung MZWLK800HCHP-00003 PM1725 800GB NVMe PCIe3.0 VNAND 2.5" SSD (LOW HOURS) | eBay or Samsung MZWKI800HMHP-00003 MZ-WKI8000 SM1715 800GB NVMe PCIe3.0 VNAND 2.5" SSD | eBay

Large price gap but those are more like P3700's and sometimes you can get them for sub $400.
Patrick,

Agreed that the PM1725 is a much higher end drive, but at today's pricing where a PM863 or even an 840/850 Evo is going for over $300+, and a new 850 Evo 1TB is $450+, these are a pretty good deal.

If this was a drive I would be using either stand alone or in a group of two then I would agree that shooting for higher end drives might make sense. In my case where I'm attempting to put together a large NVME pool, I think these are tough to beat on a $/GB & performance basis.

Would I rather have 16/18/24x P3700/PM1725/P4800x level drives? Sure.

Is 8GB worth of P3700's for $8-10K preferable to buying 27-34GB of PM963's for the same price? Not to me. Particularly considering that using 2 drive mirrors means only 50% usable capacity.

I did, however, end up going with P3700's for SLOG
 
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Patrick

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I totally agree. The cost driver for me is that the NVMe drives cost me more to connect versus SATA/ SAS. My cost to connect a SATA/ SAS3 disk these days to add capacity is ~0. The cost to add NVMe is $100+ per drive. As the connection costs go up, spending another $100 per drive to get the monster version is not too bad.

Again, if those get listed with best offer, I will probably pick up a pair.
 

AJXCR

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It's similar to the group NVMe 960GB PM953's I bought.. no, they aren't the fastest drive around, but in bulk @$0.20/GB with PLP, they were significantly cheaper than consumer level sata drives....
 

AJXCR

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I totally agree. The cost driver for me is that the NVMe drives cost me more to connect versus SATA/ SAS. My cost to connect a SATA/ SAS3 disk these days to add capacity is ~0. The cost to add NVMe is $100+ per drive. As the connection costs go up, spending another $100 per drive to get the monster version is not too bad.

Again, if those get listed with best offer, I will probably pick up a pair.
Patrick,

Are you referring to the 963's or 1725's with the best offer comment? If the former, it's worth noting that even though it's not listed on the auction page, all you have to do is send the seller a message and he'll send you an official buy it now offer via message at your offer price.

Agree 100% on the cost to connect. I'm in the process of buying all of the components at once though.. if I get everything together and run into speed/longevity issues with the drives, I can swap them out with relative ease.

If I buy a non NVMe capable motherboard/cards/etc and decide I want to go NVMe, then I have to start over at square one.
 
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AJXCR

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Just an FYI- EBay estimated delivery date on the first group of 4 I ordered is still two weeks out.

The first group showed up yesterday but I missed the delivery guy. Just picked up. Will post tests later today.
 

nephri

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It's an interresting topic in order to have comparable performances models.

What i can see:
- Intel P3700 and Samsung PM1725 are comparables
- What is equivalent to the PM963 on the intel line up ? Intel 750 or Intel P3600 or P3500 ?
- How do you place Toshiba line up for ZD6300, PX04PMB models ?

Best regards,
Sébastien.
 
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T_Minus

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@nephri would be cool to see a comparison like that! @Patrick any chance homepage comparison of Enterprise NVME on the horizon? Something other than spec. sheet to spec. sheet I should say too :) :)
 

AJXCR

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Jan 20, 2017
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It's an interresting topic in order to have comparable performances models.

What i can see:
- Intel P3700 and Samsung PM1725 are comparables
- What is equivalent to the PM963 on the intel line up ? Intel 750 or Intel P3600 or P3500 ?
- How do you place Toshiba line up for ZD6300, PX04PMB models ?

Best regards,
Sébastien.
I happen to have the Intel P3700, Intel 750, Samsung PM953, and Samsung PM963 all right here in the same machine...
 
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AJXCR

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The PM963's are fast... See benchmark from only 4x drives (the other 4 should be arriving in the next day or two; no preconditioning, just plug and go):






 
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AJXCR

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What... no love? I thought those were pretty decent numbers for $0.31/GB
 

whitey

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Out of my league :-D

I have been a good boy recently on HW purchases (or lack thereof) woohoo!!!

My config/stack is overkill already, no need to get into any more trouble :-D
 
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AJXCR

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Out of my league :-D

I have been a good boy recently on HW purchases (or lack thereof) woohoo!!!

My config/stack is overkill already, no need to get into any more trouble :-D
....I have not :D