M.2 Ultra vs M.2

[Ian82]

Hi, I've looked around but no-one seems to be asking the question.

I saw this high peforming samsung m.2 drive which seems to be in the league with top top m.2 speeds and wondering if there will be a bottleneck with the asus board I want to buy since it doesn't mention ultra m.2, if so I have a fallback option with the Asrock Killer, all listed below which has the ultra m.2.

Thanks in advance

Samsung 951 m.2
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/512gb-samsung-sm951-m2-(22x80)-pcie-30-(x4)-nvme-ssd-mlc-nand-read-2150mb-s-write-1550mb-s-300k-iops

Asus x99-m WS Micro ATX
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-x99-m-ws-intel-x99-s-2011-3-ddr4-sata3-m2-(pcie-sata)-2-way-sli-crossfire-dual-gbe-wifi-usb31a-

Asrock X99 Killer
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asrock-x99m-killer-31-intel-x99-s-2011-3-ddr4-sata-iii-6gb-s-satae-pcie-30-usb-31-sli-crossfire-micr

 

[n0ns3ns3]

You are good to go with Asus.
Have no idea about asrock. Search for the M.2 socket 3 or that M.2 uses 4 PCIe lanes on their support site

 

[Ian82]

asus website says "m.2 socket 3 2280" then says m.2 pci-2.0 bandwidth, i think the drive is pci-e 3

i know its backwards compaible but will the drive not live up to its potential?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

asus website says "m.2 socket 3 2280"

I know, that means that it is fully compatible with this SSD.
M.2 socket 3 = M.2 socket wired to 4 gen 3.0 PCIe lanes. 2280 means that it accepts M.2 cards of 22mm widths up to 80mm length.
I just have no idea about the Asrock. you can check it yourself

 

[Ian82]

i think the drive is pci-e 3 but the asus board is pci-2

i know its backwards compaible but will the drive not live up to its potential?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

i think the drive is pci-e 3 but the asus board is pci-2

i know its backwards compaible but will the drive not live up to its potential?

It will
and the board is PCIe 3

 

[geofelt]

Samsung 951 is not a retail product. You will only get support from the similarly performing Samsung 950 pro.

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are remarkably similar.

I replaced a Samsung 850 pro with a Samsung 950 PRO m.2.
Yes, sequential benchmarks were faster, but I could notice little difference in daily operations.
Moreover, I do not like the inflexibility of mounting m.2 devices.

My advice is to use the savings and buy a conventional ssd of larger capacity.

 

[Ian82]

Confusing because the website says m.2 pci-e 2


With x 2 x PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 10GB/s data-transfer speeds. It is the perfect choice for an operating system or application drive, making your whole PC or professional apps work as fast as possible.

 

[rgd1101]

asrock is fine gen 3 x4
asus one is gen 2 x2
it backward compaible, but you lost about 3/4 the performance

 

[Zerk2012]

I usually recomend a regular SATA SSD their 1/2 the price and your average user will never notice the differance unless your doing a lot of file tranfers or using it for a scratch drive.

 

[Ian82]

thanks everyone ive read and taken in everything

 

[MihailNaydenov]

ASUS are pretty explicit about M.2 support:

H170M-PLUS: M.2 with PCIe® 3.0 x4 interface

B150M-PLUS: M.2 with PCIe® 3.0 x2 interface


GIGABYTE also:
16GB/s on B150 and 32GB/s on H170


With ASRock is the same, ultra is for the higher tiers - H170, but also B150M Pro4/Hyper.

 

[wildcard1978]

Yeah hyper or ultra before m.2 don't mean anything it's a marketing timid just need to find out plain and simple if it's a gen 2 or gen 3 gen 2 m.2 is x2 gen 3 is x4