Last year"s Intel Haswell refresh wasn"t particularly exciting because of the CPU improvements but because of the new Z97 chipset which brought SATA Express and the M.2 interface to mainstream computing. That"s a big deal in the storage world.
It wasn"t long until Samsung moved to capitalize on the new chipset"s M.2 support by announcing the XP941, a PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD with top speeds of 1170MB/s reads and 930MB/s writes. To date, no other M.2 device has challenged the XP941, however as attractive as the Samsung XP941 may be, it was meant as an OEM-only product.
Nonetheless, the drive has been popular among enthusiasts -- popular enough for Samsung to announce a successor last January -- though again as an OEM product. The new SM951 PCIe SSD is currently available through Australian company RamCity, and although the drive is listed in Australian dollars on the company"s website, it"s selling to US customers via Amazon for $460. That seems reasonable for such a fast M.2 device.
Read: Samsung SM951 PCIe SSD Review
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