** SAMSUNG M.2 PCI-E Super-Fast AHCI & NVME SSD's IN STOCK (ELITE TIER SSD's)!! **

[.:SAmSuNG:.]

I dont think any Z97 board can run it full speed unless you use a PCI-E adapter.

 

[Gibbo]

Would the SM951 run at full speed on a MSI Z97 Max AC? Getting confused with some of the info on my motherboard spec sheet.

It does say supports up to 10GB/s but just checking encase they mean Gb/s.

Someone will correct me if I am wrong but full speed is 32GB/s I think?

So it would work but at 1/3rd of advertised speed. You need a PCI-Adapter or an upgrade to Z170 / X99 platform.

 

[Joe!]

Someone will correct me if I am wrong but full speed is 32GB/s I think?

So it would work but at 1/3rd of advertised speed. You need a PCI-Adapter or an upgrade to Z170 / X99 platform.

Each PCI-e 3.0 lane is 8Gb/s so yeah, 32Gb/s is full speed.

When Gigabyte X99 boards (for instance) advertises 10Gb/s it's because they're running PCI-e 2.0 x4, not 3.0. A tad misleading when they say they offer "M.2 x4" speeds in my opinion.

 

[thebennyboy]

What's the cheapest PCI-E adapter that OcUK sell?

 

[Joe!]

None that are bootable apparently.

Asus do a Hyper adapter which according to someone previously in this thread is bootable though.

 

[thebennyboy]

None that are bootable apparently.

Asus do a Hyper adapter which according to someone previously in this thread is bootable though.

Oh that's a shame as i was going to buy one of these. What do you mean by bootable? You can't use it as a boot drive?

 

[Joe!]

Yep - Gibbo mentioned it earlier on in this thread:

We looked at the Lycom DT-120 which seemed a great solution but the factory inform us it is not bootable with Samsung SM951 series, so we cancelled our order.

Do you know of a tried and tested bootable PCI-E card for the M.2 PCI-E SSD's such as SM951?

Obviously the one which Plextor use works but they do not sell it separately.

I've seen people selling off their Asus Hyper adapters which they don't use to try and coup some cost back from the X99 motherboards

Can 100% confirm the SM951 boots in a Asus Hyper adapter on my Z97 board. Just abit pricey and seem abit harder to find but they are black which fits builds a lot better than the green ones.

 

[phenx]

These are much cheaper than I expected, will probably look at getting the 256gb the next time I do a full upgrade.

 

[thebennyboy]

There is a review on the rainforest saying that they are using an SM951 on a DT-120 that is bootable into windows 10. Would bootability depend more on the motherboard?

Spoiler

My BIOS had an update to fix issues with Samsung m.2 drives.

Spoiler

 

[Joe!]

Good news in that case for potential buyers - A 256/512gb SM951 for boot + games

 

[thebennyboy]

What's the difference between the AHCI and the NVMe versions? All these different terms are confusing the hell out of me. Scared that i'll end up buying a PCI-E adapter/ SSD that are incompatible.

 

[.:SAmSuNG:.]

I think all MSI boards at least had a bios update to allow booting from pci adaptors.

 

[thebennyboy]

I'll make a ticket with MSI and ask them.

 

[Joe!]

AHCI is an older technology meant for spinning media, NVMe is designed specifically for SSD storage.

NVMe is slightly faster if I recall, but you can't go wrong with either. - NVMe is more likely to cause you less issues (if any) from what I have read too.

 

[thebennyboy]

nvm.

 

[thebennyboy]

Seems like my board supports NVMe and can have the drive set as a boot drive.

Source: http://eu.msi.com/news/emm/?List=59&N=3495

Z97 MPOWER MAX AC
E7888IMS.180

MSI X99/Z97/H97 motherboards can support NVMe devices as primary storage under Windows7 64bit and Windows8.1 64bit and fully support NVMe booting.

 

[Jamous]

I'm having one of these, thanks Gibbo!

 

[Joe!]

Seems like my board supports NVMe and can have the drive set as a boot drive.

Source: http://eu.msi.com/news/emm/?List=59&N=3495

Make sure you get the NVMe version then!