SM951 256GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe

nalla · 29 Jul 2016 at 21:43

yes your right on both counts

nalla · 29 Jul 2016 at 21:45

ooo that's looks a lot better m8 tried crystal mark

rystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 3511.733 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1790.538 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 566.303 MB/s [138257.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 430.062 MB/s [104995.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 2491.023 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 1748.491 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 50.073 MB/s [ 12224.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 164.647 MB/s [ 40197.0 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 42.0% (400.7/953.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/07/29 21:44:38
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)

nalla · 29 Jul 2016 at 21:46

thought id bought a duffer for a mo, cheers m8

mikeo · 29 Jul 2016 at 21:51

nalla said:
yes your right on both counts

If it is installed anywhere other than C: ... then just uninstall (or delete it) and re-install on your primary partition. That should sort your problem. Think it's some sort of write permission issue. A couple of the O/L review sites have fallen foul of this as well. AS SSD did exactly this for me a while back. As without thinking, I unpacked it into the download folder (held on a different drive) and had exactly the same problem. Put it on C: and issue went away.

_Jimlad_ · 29 Jul 2016 at 22:12

Just wish these came a little nicer looking. Instead of looking like a bit of laptop memory from the 90s

Dave2150 · 29 Jul 2016 at 22:21

_Jimlad_ said:
Just wish these came a little nicer looking. Instead of looking like a bit of laptop memory from the 90s

Wait for the 960Pro, sexy black PCB, Magician support, 5-10 year warranty

djxput · 3 Aug 2016 at 09:43

Ace Modder said:
SM961 is due very soon.

Im a bit of a newb when it comes to m2 drives.

So how do they work? atm I have 2 regular ssd sata input.

I dont think my mb can use m2 drives. So do I need a mb that can use these? And do they work just the same as regular ssd drives easy to install and set up windows etc?

oh if a new mb is requred what would be the best skylakes compatible mb for one of these?

_Jimlad_ · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:06

djxput said:
Im a bit of a newb when it comes to m2 drives.

So how do they work? atm I have 2 regular ssd sata input.

I dont think my mb can use m2 drives. So do I need a mb that can use these? And do they work just the same as regular ssd drives easy to install and set up windows etc?

oh if a new mb is requred what would be the best skylakes compatible mb for one of these?

i am not an expert, but you need a slot on your mobo, its not really new new tech, so you may well have a slot, but to make use of the speeds you may well need a newish mobo. they slot or screw in like a stick of ram and are picked up in the bios and during a windows 10 install, with windows 7 you would prob need the driver on a usb stick to detect.

Borealis · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:12

You need either a motherboard with an M.2. slot, or a PCI-E adapter card. M.2. slots first started appearing on high-end Z87 boards. By Z97, most boards have one. If you're on Z68 with a 2700K, I wouldn't bother doing a complete rebuild just to get M.2.

TBH, the difference in real-life performance between an M.2. drive and a SATA SSD isn't great. I've got a PC with an M.2. boot SSD and I really don't notice the difference between that and my other PCs using SATA SSDs. I think in some applications it is faster, but for day-to-day use I'll be sticking with SATA.

EDIT: Win 8.1 and 10 have native support for booting from NVMe providing your motherboard is compatible. Win 7 and 8 (not 8.1) can be a real pain. It's one reason I switched to Win 8.1 from 7 when I upgraded. I'm now on Win 10.

djxput · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:25

Borealis said:
You need either a motherboard with an M.2. slot, or a PCI-E adapter card. M.2. slots first started appearing on high-end Z87 boards. By Z97, most boards have one. If you're on Z68 with a 2700K, I wouldn't bother doing a complete rebuild just to get M.2.

TBH, the difference in real-life performance between an M.2. drive and a SATA SSD isn't great. I've got a PC with an M.2. boot SSD and I really don't notice the difference between that and my other PCs using SATA SSDs. I think in some applications it is faster, but for day-to-day use I'll be sticking with SATA.

EDIT: Win 8.1 and 10 have native support for booting from NVMe providing your motherboard is compatible. Win 7 and 8 (not 8.1) can be a real pain. It's one reason I switched to Win 8.1 from 7 when I upgraded. I'm now on Win 10.

Thanks for the info guys ... and nice to know about the speed differences. So a good upgrade just not something to consider when changing out mbs/cpus.

Id like to wait to see what zen can do before deciding on upgrade both for mb/cpu.

Borealis · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:39

When you do eventually change CPU/MB, check what speed the M.2. slot of any new board runs at. My board only runs at 10GB/s, whereas some boards run at the full 32GB/s. It is worth upgrading to M.2. as it means you have 1 less drive to screw/fix inside the case.

I would think that any new mobo (except maybe m-ITX) will come with M.2. as it's becoming much more available and widespread.

Deluxe1 · 3 Aug 2016 at 20:34

Do I need to install the samsung driver or is the windows one fine?

It's nice seeing the benchies from this drive but to be honest I'm not noticing anything significantly faster than when I had my 850 Pro as my windows drive.

_Jimlad_ · 3 Aug 2016 at 22:02

i used the windows one, from what people say you cant change once you go windows?

jonathanbruce · 3 Aug 2016 at 22:31

installing on Gigabyte 990fx-GAMING (AMD)

hello.
I have now also got the sm951 256gb nvme and the board does recognise it.
how do i install windows 10 on this ?
what do i need to do ?

I keep getting
"Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the BIOS menu",., I am sure it is!!

please help!

Deluxe1 · 3 Aug 2016 at 22:40

What motherboard?

neviditelny · 3 Aug 2016 at 22:50

How does the SM951 work with Win 7? I'm really thinking about getting one as my OS drive. Is it just to plug it in, start up and install everything?

I'm going to use a MSI Z170A Gaming Pro mobo.

jonathanbruce · 3 Aug 2016 at 23:02

Deluxe1 said:
What motherboard?

it's the Gigabyte GA990FX GAMING

_Jimlad_ · 3 Aug 2016 at 23:39

neviditelny said:
How does the SM951 work with Win 7? I'm really thinking about getting one as my OS drive. Is it just to plug it in, start up and install everything?

I'm going to use a MSI Z170A Gaming Pro mobo.

Windows 7 really ? Why ?

neviditelny · 4 Aug 2016 at 00:18

Mainly due to the fact I got Win 7 available so no need to buy a new OS (as i havent gotten around to try upgrade to win 10 yet).

Might go with Win10 though, but I havent used it at all so got no idea how good/bad it is compared to Win7 that I do like.

Deluxe1 · 4 Aug 2016 at 00:49

Not sure if the upgrade to win10 is still available.