There's now a super-speed PCIe SSD you can actually buy
Samsung has taken a commanding lead in next-gen SSDs that blow away old-school models, but it finally has some competition. Kingston's HyperX Predator PCIe SSD is now available with read speeds touching 1.4GB/s. That's still a far cry from Samsung's latest SM951 SSD, which reads at a ridiculous 2.2GB/s. But unlike Samsung's OEM-only model, you can actually purchase the Predator PCIe and jam it into your own PC build or laptop. You'll need an M.2 SSD slot to do so (preferably with four PCIe lanes), but if that's missing, Kingston will supply a PCIe slot adapter for an extra ten bucks or so.
Write speeds run at 1GB/s, and random read/write IOPS are a scorching 130,000/118,000 random. For that, your wallet will also get scorched: it's around $460 for the 480GB model ($230 for 240GB), or nearly double a regular HyperX 480GB SATA III drive. But that matches the price of Samsung's similar XP941 model, and prices will likely fall quickly now that there's some competition. Anyway, the performance is also more than double, and you can't put a price on bragging rights.
