Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

HP offers a compelling product with the EX950, it is fast, not as fast as the new PCIe Gen 4.0 units), and in peak performance, Samsung still wins but it is close though, very close. The overall throughput of the NVMe SSD is terrific, it will not hit that TLC write hole and thus overall is a strong contender offering all the perf you need really. The pricing of these units have gone down already, currently, this 1TB model that we have tested can be spotted for roughly 145 USD. And while that is not yet that 12 Cents per GB market, it's pretty close whilst being a very high-end product. NVMe based M.2. have been growing and advancing in performance really fast with 64-layer NAND, combine it with a proper controller, and you can get enthusiast-class performance, and that at ~14 cents per GB. So yes, the HP EX950 1TB managed to impress, especially when looking at overall performance averaged out over all types of workloads, this SSD averages out incredibly well. The 64-layer Vertically stacked TLC written NAND in combination with the HP H8088 controller, a rebranded Silicon Motion SM2262 controller and a proper DRAM cache reveal close to 3GB/s reads in specific workloads with close to 2 running to 3 GB/s in writes. The development rate and curve of current NVMe and regular NAND flash-based storage technologies are simply breathtaking.

Performance

Technologies like TLC and QLC face some challenges writing more bits per cell of NAND, we noticed a dropoff in performance with mixed heavy workloads that exceed writing ~25 Gigabyte continuously. After you pass that value of writes (and I do mean continuous sustained/linear writes minute after minute), then the SSD buffer is full and starts to write directly to TLC NAND. This, in a nutshell, is what you need to be aware of with TLC and QLC SSDs. IOPS performance is good on this unit, really good. The overall workload traces also indicate this SSD to be extremely capable and fast. Out of the dozens of SSDs we have tested, this one makes the top 10 (until you run out of that buffer). This SSD will write as fast as it can through a cache, once that cache runs dry you drop in write performance. Before you run into that 'issue' you need to realize the complexity of workload. We have written many GBs continuously at max speed before the SSD dropped to 1.5~2 GB/sec (which is till hugely fast for something priced 14 cents per GB). TBW values are okay as well, 650 TBW for the 1 TB model. Albeit how companies calculate or test these values these days, is a bit of a mystery. A listed TBW value, however, is something you can pin them on warranty wise.

• 320 TBW for 512 GB model
• 650 TBW for 1 TB model
• 1,400 TBW for 2 TB model

  

Concluding

The 950EX might not peak at the fastest Samsung drives or PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe SSDs, but overall it's an extremely strong contender as the TLC write whole barely kicks in bringing you massive amounts of write/copy throughput and thus it is capable of very high workloads. The TBW value is 650 Terabyte written for this SSD, that's alongside a 5-year warranty. Pricing is a bit trivial, the 1TB SSD as tested sits at roughly 14 cents per GB written, that is only slightly on the high side as launch prices were quite a notch higher actually. Prices currently on the big etailers:

• 89 USD for the 512 GB model
• 145 USD for 1 the TB model
• 279 USD for 2 the TB model

Prices vary per week though, two weeks ago the SSD was even 15 bucks cheaper. The latest 64-layer Vertically stacked NAND works its miracles, and the add-in partners benefit from that. The HP EX950  series will offer heaps of performance at a very acceptable price level. HP will give you a 5-year warranty on the EX950 product series, and that in technology land is the proper warranty to have. That said and done, the HP EX950 1TB is impressive overall, but not at peak sustained performance. Regardless you will easily quadruple your read performance over a regular SATA3 SSD. It's quite funny to see where we are in the year 2020 with prices at these levels. A year or two ago we were above the 50 Cents per GB marker. So yes, a very decent product backed by a big name and a proper 5-year warranty. 

We thank BIWIN Storage for supplying this review sample, they are an official HP Business Partner.

Recommended  Downloads