Samsung 950 Pro SSD Review

[Guest]

NVMe in the M.2 form factor is finally a reality for desktop enthusiasts. Retailers begin selling Samsung's 950 Pro today, and we already have three drives in-hand.

Samsung 950 Pro SSD Review : Read more

 

[alidan]

you need to had a standard hdd to some of these, such as the gaming benchmark, as i want to say most of us dont have money for a ssd game drive, but a 4tb drive that can almost hold every game you own if you install everything, that's more readily available, apposed to the same price for 1/8th the space.

 

[Larry Litmanen]

I always wondered why was M.2 designed to lay flat on the motherboard and not sideways like RAM. Wouldn't you save a lot more space on the mobo, plus if it is sideways you can easily find a spot for it on MITX boards.


Also, if i have a modern motherboard (i have MSI Gaming 5, Z97) do i need to go into the BIOS and change something if i want to install this M.2 NVMe SSD.

I know you had to do something on older mobos when installing an SSD.

 

[Larry Litmanen]

you need to had a standard hdd to some of these, such as the gaming benchmark, as i want to say most of us dont have money for a ssd game drive, but a 4tb drive that can almost hold every game you own if you install everything, that's more readily available, apposed to the same price for 1/8th the space.

I game a lot and i have 850 Pro in 256 GB capacity. You don't really need that much space for games if you keep only 2-3 games installed at once. I play one game at a time, when i finish i just uninstall it. What's the point of saving it on PC if i will not play it again ever or at least for a while.

 

[Eggz]

Ooooh yeah! Exactly the review I've been waiting for!

 

[jtown80]

alidan... no one wants reviews of standard Hard drives. Your behind the times if your still focusing on them and it is pointless to do benchmarks on them.

 

[CRamseyer]

Hard drive performance barely even show up on the results when we show throughput performance. The reverse happens in the latency tests, the HDD lines are so long you can hardly see the NVMe performance.

 

[rgd1101]

Can you check the temp and power usage?
Perform much better on the Z170 then on the Z97 reviewed at anandtech.com
Wonder how it perform on an AMD motherboard.

 

[tom10167]

Very cool, I was/am excited for this. However the real world bencmarks say it all. Best case scenario 12 seconds on a 6 minute job is not much and many of those tests were showing half a second difference in performance. Nowhere near good enough for me. Still a nice step but I'll wait for cheaper m2 drives.

 

[rgd1101]

850 [strike]PRO [/strike] EVO is cheaper. Wish they compare both 512GB m.2 and the SATA drive.
Real world peformance probably close.

 

[arossetti]

I'm glad this form factor is starting to take off and is reasonably priced. Less cables and power connectors to muck up a build.

 

[thundervore]

And the sticker is still upside down when you install this on a motherboard because most of, if not all the M.2 connections are to the right of the motherboard.

 

[samuelspark]

I always wondered why was M.2 designed to lay flat on the motherboard and not sideways like RAM. Wouldn't you save a lot more space on the mobo, plus if it is sideways you can easily find a spot for it on MITX boards.

Because this allows M.2 to easily fit in laptops.

Also, if i have a modern motherboard (i have MSI Gaming 5, Z97) do i need to go into the BIOS and change something if i want to install this M.2 NVMe SSD.

I know you had to do something on older mobos when installing an SSD.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Who's gona buy the 750 series SSD if the 950 pro is faster and way cheaper?

This is one nice SSD, I'd defiantly consider buying this if i needed all that power.

 

[robert3892]

Was there any mention about availability as in when this item will be released?

 

[CRamseyer]

Was there any mention about availability as in when this item will be released?

Newegg has them in the US already and Scan in the UK. I haven't checked Amazon, Tiger Direct or others but if they don't already show them they will by the end of the week most likely.

 

[Emanuel Elmo]

you need to had a standard hdd to some of these, such as the gaming benchmark, as i want to say most of us dont have money for a ssd game drive, but a 4tb drive that can almost hold every game you own if you install everything, that's more readily available, apposed to the same price for 1/8th the space.

I game a lot and i have 850 Pro in 256 GB capacity. You don't really need that much space for games if you keep only 2-3 games installed at once. I play one game at a time, when i finish i just uninstall it. What's the point of saving it on PC if i will not play it again ever or at least for a while.

Very true but still, I miss the days when I would launch my steam account and have every game I own installed and ready to be played.

Friends come over see a game they want to play, I would say sure. Now I have am like... I have it but we have to wait for the install, patches, setting, etc....

Tends to kill the excitement quick.

My two cents.

 

[TheGeeked]

Since the Z170 "Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7" & "MSI Z170A GAMING M7" motherboards has two M.2 slots and supports raid modes, could you guys get one of said boards and two Samsung M951 NVME M.2 SSD's and two Samsung 950 Pro NVME M.2 SSD's to put them in raid 0 for comparison benchmark speed tests?

 

[TheGeeked]

Was there any mention about availability as in when this item will be released?

Newegg has a Release Date: 12/01/2015

 

[Gurg]

I always wondered why was M.2 designed to lay flat on the motherboard and not sideways like RAM. Wouldn't you save a lot more space on the mobo, plus if it is sideways you can easily find a spot for it on MITX boards.


Also, if i have a modern motherboard (i have MSI Gaming 5, Z97) do i need to go into the BIOS and change something if i want to install this M.2 NVMe SSD.

I know you had to do something on older mobos when installing an SSD.

Not all motherboards will run this at tested speed unless you have a M.2 slot that uses x4 lanes. Many M.2 slots such as the one on my Gigabyte x99 motherboard only have x2 lanes which if it runs will only run at half the speed. If you want to mount this vertically then buy a Lycom M.2 PCIe adapter board ~$30 for using in your PCIe slot. The slots for these were made horizontal as they were designed for laptops initially and also don't want to interfere with the PCIe slots used for video cards on desktops. I get full advertised speeds from my Kingston Predator in the Lycom in one of my PCIe slots. Also beware that your computer setup may not have enough free PCIe lanes and you may end up reducing the number available for your video cards. With my 5820K my M.2 in my PCIe slot takes 4 leaving 24 still available for my 980s in sli.

 

[oskerw]

I always wondered why was M.2 designed to lay flat on the motherboard and not sideways like RAM. Wouldn't you save a lot more space on the mobo, plus if it is sideways you can easily find a spot for it on MITX boards.


Also, if i have a modern motherboard (i have MSI Gaming 5, Z97) do i need to go into the BIOS and change something if i want to install this M.2 NVMe SSD.

I know you had to do something on older mobos when installing an SSD.

Laptops and tablets are why it's designed to lay flat. Yeah with SSDs you had to change to AHCI, not sure about M.2 storage.

 

[CRamseyer]

Since the Z170 "Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7" & "MSI Z170A GAMING M7" motherboards has two M.2 slots and supports raid modes, could you guys get one of said boards and two Samsung M951 NVME M.2 SSD's and two Samsung 950 Pro NVME M.2 SSD's to put them in raid 0 for comparison benchmark speed tests?

I just finished testing a pair of SM951-NVMe drives in RAID0. I'll have an SM951-NVMe 512GB and RAID0 performance comparison coming out soon. RamCity has the SM951-NVMe drives.

I won't have a GBT or MSI board to test the array on. I'll stick with the ASRock board for now.

 

[rgd1101]

It will be nice if you can run some SATA connect SSD, SATA interface m.2 and add them result to the "Real-World Software Performance chart"

 

[rgd1101]

Was there any mention about availability as in when this item will be released?

Newegg has a Release Date: 12/01/2015

Amazon
released on October 29, 2015.

 

[chalabam]

I always wondered why was M.2 designed to lay flat on the motherboard and not sideways like RAM. Wouldn't you save a lot more space on the mobo, plus if it is sideways you can easily find a spot for it on MITX boards.

Because this allows M.2 to easily fit in laptops.

Laptops and tablets are why it's designed to lay flat. Yeah with SSDs you had to change to AHCI, not sure about M.2 storage.

It also bugs me.

Memory modules are vertical on desktop motherboards, and horizontal on laptops.

I see no reason for wasting all that space on a desktop motherboard.

I hope Tomshardware personnel ask to the likes of Asus and Gigabyte to include more M2 slots, and pack them vertically.