Samsung PM953 M.2 960GB $69.70 / $65 BO

[hmartin]

A bit old, and not with the performance of modern NVMe drives, but they're data center quality and at a good price point (IMHO).

960GB M.2 SSD Samsung PM953 PCIe 3.0 x4 MZ1LV960HCJH MZ-1LV9600 DWPD 1.3 | eBay

Used less than 500 hours, no information on remaining endurance (though at 1.3 DWPD and 500 hours, I'm not super concerned).

The seller also has units available with less than 100 hours on them for $5 more:
960GB 110mm M.2 DWPD 1.3 SSD Samsung PM953 PCIe 3.0 x4 MZ-1LV9600 100 Hour Use | eBay

The seller has a sale of 7% off for Labor Day, bringing the price of the 500 hour units to $69.70 each and $74.35 for the 100 hour units.

Edit: They accept BO for the 100 hour units and according to the item description, you should try BO of $65:

Try 65 in offer ​

I've bought some motherboards (1155, 1150) from this seller before, they arrived very well packed and worked perfectly.

Note that these are M.2 22110!

 

[Jannis Jacobsen]

I got auto-accept for $70 on the 100 hour one.
EDIT: I just saw they said in the description to try 65 for best offer ...
Seems they sell for less than $70

-Jannis

 

[hmartin]

I got auto-accept for $70 on the 100 hour one.
EDIT: I just saw they said in the description to try 65 for best offer ...
Seems they sell for less than $70

Clearly I need to get my eyes checked, I totally missed that... Gah.

 

[Jannis Jacobsen]

Clearly I need to get my eyes checked, I totally missed that... Gah.

I did not notice it myself until after buying it for $70
Luckily it was only $5 over

-j

 

[GaveUp]

Auto-accepted $62 for quantity 4 for the 100 hour drives.

 

[vudu]

Auto accepted $65 for 1 x 100 hour.

 

[Propaganda]

How are people using with these physically? My motherboard doesn't support a drive this long.

 

[Marsh]

use a cheap m2 to pcie adapter if your MB does not have a 22100 m2 slot.

 

[Aluminum]

Nice find and going by the picture they have PLP Caps.

All of my nicer boards with multiple m.2 at least one slot has 110 holes. Ditto for all my different 4x4x16 cards, they have both 80 and 110 holes.

 

[Propaganda]

Got him down to $62 for 4x drives (less than 100hours). 8% bucks just activated for me before checkout! Going to use these on an ASUS hyper 16x V2 card I just got from BH. Should be compatible with my x399 taichi board according to a similar card from asrock and its compatibility list.

 

[GaveUp]

Got him down to $62 for 4x drives (less than 100hours). 8% bucks just activated for me before checkout! Going to use these on an ASUS hyper 16x V2 card I just got from BH. Should be compatible with my x399 taichi board according to a similar card from asrock and its compatibility list.

Yeah, that setup does work. I’ve done the same but with a V1 card. The only real requirement I’m aware of is PCIe bifurcation support.

 

[RTM]

Got him down to $62 for 4x drives (less than 100hours). 8% bucks just activated for me before checkout! Going to use these on an ASUS hyper 16x V2 card I just got from BH. Should be compatible with my x399 taichi board according to a similar card from asrock and its compatibility list.

Yep, that should work (assuming your motherboard supports it), I use 4x pm953 disks in a v2 card.

Note that I don't think the heatsink is of much use, it does not appear to be able to touch the controller, due to the height of the capacitors, which appears to be all it touches. Another thing to be mindful of is that the PCB will bend if the screws are fully fastened (so you may want to avoid that).

 

[lhibou]

Nice. Thanks for share. Snagged one. Missed the OBO note, too

I've bought from this seller a bit too and they run a good show!

Drive was dispatched next day after labour day.

 

[Propaganda]

One of the 4 I got appears to be broken with a smart error "critical warning "16 and very slow write speeds.

 

[lhibou]

One of the 4 I got appears to be broken with a smart error "critical warning "16 and very slow write speeds.

Dang. Thanks for sharing. Looks like the power on hours are as described in the eBay listing (quite low). Wonder if it was DoA, or if something dubious is going on with the SMART readings? Did you contact the seller?

 

[Propaganda]

Dang. Thanks for sharing. Looks like the power on hours are as described in the eBay listing (quite low). Wonder if it was DoA, or if something dubious is going on with the SMART readings? Did you contact the seller?

If it was just the smart showing random issues I might be able to live with it; but whatever is going on is degrading the performance greatly. I contacted him with the pictures I posted here and asked for a replacement part. Probably need to wait on them to wake up on the left coast to get a response...

 

[lhibou]

If it was just the smart showing random issues I might be able to live with it; but whatever is going on is degrading the performance greatly. I contacted him with the pictures I posted here and asked for a replacement part. Probably need to wait on them to wake up on the left coast to get a response...

Oh totally, I'd be wary of that as well! The reported attributes look like a bundle of red flags. Though I'm no expert at reading SMART attributes.
Let us know how it works out when they reply. I'll check my drive when it gets here, too - though it will be a little while longer to get to the land of maple syrup.

 

[wquade]

I bought two of the 100 hour ones and they both are fine (they've been in my server for 16 hours so there was a little less usage on them when I first installed them).

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        51 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    6,516,329 [3.33 TB]
Data Units Written:                 459,915 [235 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 22,651,219
Host Write Commands:                15,459,694
Controller Busy Time:               27
Power Cycles:                       4
Power On Hours:                     36
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   2
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      8
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    86
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    66

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        49 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    12,309,433 [6.30 TB]
Data Units Written:                 714,413 [365 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 58,769,364
Host Write Commands:                28,604,215
Controller Busy Time:               54
Power Cycles:                       10
Power On Hours:                     92
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   8
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      9
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    89
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    70

 

[RTM]

If it was just the smart showing random issues I might be able to live with it; but whatever is going on is degrading the performance greatly. I contacted him with the pictures I posted here and asked for a replacement part. Probably need to wait on them to wake up on the left coast to get a response...

You may be experiencing throttling due to overheating, PM953 is one of the older nvme models from Samsung and I seem to recall having heard stories about the older Samsungs having throttling issues.

Can you improve the cooling around the disk somehow?

Another thing that might help with the slow writes, would be to do a secure erase.
Of course there are other means to deal with this, manually TRIMing the disk might do the same), though I don't know how you would do that in Windows.

 

[Propaganda]

You may be experiencing throttling due to overheating, PM953 is one of the older nvme models from Samsung and I seem to recall having heard stories about the older Samsungs having throttling issues.

Can you improve the cooling around the disk somehow?

Another thing that might help with the slow writes, would be to do a secure erase.
Of course there are other means to deal with this, manually TRIMing the disk might do the same), though I don't know how you would do that in Windows.

The only drive of the 4 I got that has slow writes is also the one reporting a smart failure, I'm going to guess they are related. The seller said he will send me a replacement and it sounds like he wants me to return the failed one.