NEW Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe (think SM951 with VNAND & Black PCB) yum!

Mr Lazy said:
Hi, I'm putting together a Skylake build and am considering a 950 PRO as the OS drive but given the temperatures talked about in some of the reviews I'm concerned about increasing temps inside my case (especially as I have a 390X ;)). So I was wondering if any of the existing owners could comment on whether it had a significant impact on their case temps as I'd like to keep fan noise/temps as low as possible? I'm currently erring on the side of getting a 850 EVO for now and maybe waiting until 3D Xpoint is here. The main reason for getting a 950 PRO would be for a nice neat build (i.e. less cables etc.).

Just to be clear, I'm not concerned with thermal throttling, only case temps.
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Temperature and heat output aren't really that closely linked. Temperature is generally just how effectively something is being cooled.

2 different GPUs running at the same temperature won't necessarily be outputting the same amount of heat in to the case. An SSD running hot won't be dumping much heat in to the case, as overall they consume very little power.
 
Mercutio said:
Personally, I think the main "takeaway" point with these is how much they will be able to suppress regular SSD prices. SSD's are no longer a premium product (these are) so the battle will be over price rather than features.

The day 1TB SSD is £100 is the day I likely ditch all my mechanicals outside of backups or uber bulk storage and I don't think the days soooo far away. Maybe black friday next year.
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I've made the move myself already, and I've got 4 1TB and 2 256GB drives in my main PC.

After I went all watercooling, then got a smaller case the whirring of the mechanical drives was really grating on me, so they had to go.

I now only have mechanical drives in my file server computer.
 
crinkleshoes said:
Win 10 is slower than Win 7 on any system ;)

I would still be on 7 because of this, but with the support falling behind for 7, especially in games and drivers - i've stuck with 10.
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Incorrect - I've installed Win10 on at least 5 systems (3 of my own, 2 for friends) and it's drastically increased their performance in each case.

Boot up times are especially nippy compared to Windows 7.
 
Dave2150 said:
Incorrect - I've installed Win10 on at least 5 systems (3 of my own, 2 for friends) and it's drastically increased their performance in each case.

Boot up times are especially nippy compared to Windows 7.
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Boot up time is quicker, I agree - but I was talking about actual usage - boot time is largely irrelevant to most users.

You're wrong about general use... the most noticeable delays/lag is in file indexing/browsing - especially, for no apparent reason, the downloads folder when it has quite a lot (but not silly high number) of files - it can take a very long time.

It's been there since the beta and is in the latest patch version also - replicated easily in VMs and various different hardware from pre-built laptops to my own high-end rig with an m2 sm951 ssd
 
crinkleshoes said:
Boot up time is quicker, I agree - but I was talking about actual usage - boot time is largely irrelevant to most users.

You're wrong about general use... the most noticeable delays/lag is in file indexing/browsing - especially, for no apparent reason, the downloads folder when it has quite a lot (but not silly high number) of files - it can take a very long time.

It's been there since the beta and is in the latest patch version also - replicated easily in VMs and various different hardware from pre-built laptops to my own high-end rig with an m2 sm951 ssd
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I have to agree with you crinkleshoes I think the problems are down to windows 10. I have had my sm951 256gb drive for a few months now, installed on the X99 platform.You get to notice them after a while. Still have my old install on a Samsung 256gb 840 evo SSD swapped that over last weekend and it was a lot sharper at some tasks but not all. I will stick with the sm951 for now but if things do not get better with windows 10 next time I do a clean install I will swap back to a SSD drive.
 
shamus21 said:
I have to agree with you crinkleshoes I think the problems are down to windows 10. I have had my sm951 256gb drive for a few months now, installed on the X99 platform.You get to notice them after a while. Still have my old install on a Samsung 256gb 840 evo SSD swapped that over last weekend and it was a lot sharper at some tasks but not all. I will stick with the sm951 for now but if things do not get better with windows 10 next time I do a clean install I will swap back to a SSD drive.
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I'm going to do a bit more testing with this... it's been annoying me.

I have a 400GB Intel 750 & 512GB Samsung 950 Pro on their way to me... along with a new Z170A build.

I've seen it on other systems too, so I think it's inherent to Win 10 and like I mentioned, even there (albeit a bit worse) in the beta... but I'm curious now and will have a bit of spare time on my hands.
 
delpy8 said:
Guys do we know of any programs to test the health status of the sm951?
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Unless the SM951 is coming with amended firmware since I bought mine. Then the answer is "no". As far as I am aware, SMART functionality has been disabled in the firmware.

I've tried pretty much every utility out there (ie. CD info, HW Monitor, etc.etc.).

Also had a long chat with one of the guru's on the parted magic forum and that's his opinion as well.

As a side issue. Had my drive running on a clean windows 10 install for several months now and it still absolutely fly's. All benchmarks where they should be, boots to a useable desktop in around 13 seconds and windows itself still feels very responsive. My system gets used pretty hard as well. Work from home these days, sort of retired (ha) but still do a fair bit of work "off the books" as they say. And it also gets a good bashing leisure wise as well. So I don't personally see any real issues myself with either windows 10 itself, or its interaction with these sorts of drives.
 
Evening all. Just thought I'd share how installing a pair of 256GB 950's in a RAID0 array went. I've just gutted my PC after the upgrade itch became terminal and the 950's just called to me :D

Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 with two M.2 sockets. Setup is a bit of a pain and the documentation is sketchy at best...but that's life on the edge ;)

Updating the bios helped quite a lot and getting over the fact that my new NVMe drives weren't shown in the NVMe section of the bios at all was the next hurdle.

Next thing that threw me was having to set the SATA controller to RAID mode (rather than the default AHCI) despite the fact that these aren't SATA drives. Once done and after a reboot, an option appears under Periperals to set up "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" and that lets you configure the array. The manuals also show that you can set up an array with a conventional Option ROM style setup by pressing a key after the bios appears but as far as I can tell, this doesn't ever happen even if you turn off EFI booting as they state. It does say that a UEFI bios configured RAID set is only compatible with Windows 8.1 or 10.....which just gave me an excuse to jump on the 10 train before it derails completely. I've set Windows 8/10 mode on, Secure Boot on, disabled legacy boot and set Fast Boot to Ultra to get the fastest boot time.

I think you'll agree that the results are worth it:

Code: 
   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3226.382 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1912.134 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   783.199 MB/s [191210.7 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   667.244 MB/s [162901.4 IOPS]
         Sequential Read (T= 1) :  3181.224 MB/s
        Sequential Write (T= 1) :  1923.010 MB/s
   Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    51.827 MB/s [ 12653.1 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :   147.616 MB/s [ 36039.1 IOPS]

  Test : 1024 MiB [C: 33.0% (157.3/476.4 GiB)] (x5)  [Interval=5 sec]
  Date : 2016/01/05 19:33:27
    OS : Windows 10 Enterprise [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)

I should note that a RAID0 array does double your chance to lose everything as the entire content of both drives is useless if either fails. In other words, make sure you have a good backup of any data you want to keep!

Hope this is encouraging to anyone after the joy of overkill :D
 
mikeo said:
Unless the SM951 is coming with amended firmware since I bought mine. Then the answer is "no". As far as I am aware, SMART functionality has been disabled in the firmware.

I've tried pretty much every utility out there (ie. CD info, HW Monitor, etc.etc.).

Also had a long chat with one of the guru's on the parted magic forum and that's his opinion as well.

As a side issue. Had my drive running on a clean windows 10 install for several months now and it still absolutely fly's. All benchmarks where they should be, boots to a useable desktop in around 13 seconds and windows itself still feels very responsive. My system gets used pretty hard as well. Work from home these days, sort of retired (ha) but still do a fair bit of work "off the books" as they say. And it also gets a good bashing leisure wise as well. So I don't personally see any real issues myself with either windows 10 itself, or its interaction with these sorts of drives.
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Thanks mikeo I thought as much :)
 
Hi guys any Idea what is going on with my 950 pro with AS SSD its saying under nvme OK on top left side it shows in red 541697 K-BAD and when I put the mouse cursor over its saying OFFSET/ALIGNMENT @ 4K CLUSTER

Capture_SSD.jpg
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I wonder if its because I cloned the 256gb sm951 with Samsung Data Migration Software to the 512gb 950 pro
 
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