Samsung 950 Pro

[Thomas Norton Crossman]

Hi guys - i was wondering what you thought of this build and more importantly, whether you think i will run into any issues by using the Samsung 950 Pro PCI E SSD instead of a standard SSD/HDD. Also - if anyone has this particular SSD and knows what sought of read/write speeds you get i'd appreciate you letting me know - cheers.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/nortycrosal/saved/#view=rtg9TW

 

[juanrdp]

I see an M.2 SSD, not a PCIe one.

I'm using the M.2 ACHI version of the 941 SSD, the OEM version of the 950.

It's incredible fast, you really get 2Gbps+ and even 3Gbps+ on content that is compressible and i could use as a boot drive on a windows 10 instalation without any problem on a Z170 board.

 

[RCFProd]

The build overall is very good but upgrade your power supply to the Corsair RMx 750w. Your build deserves that quality power supply.

Do mind that the Samsung 950 Pro still only has beta drivers. I'm not 100% sure if it will boot you straight into Windows after you've got that installed on it, but I see no reason why it shouldn't boot. I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

Yes, that system will work to boot from the 950 Pro. No, you will not get 3Gbps reads or writes.

You will get what the drive can offer, which is about 2500Mbps for reads and about 1500Mbps for writes in benchmarks. Note that you are unlikely to get that in real-world usage. However, it will be a blazing fast drive.

Note that the 950 Pro will reach its maximum temperature (75°C) and thermal throttle when doing drive benchmarks. I would suggest either aiming a fan directly at the drive like I did (see pic below -- the drive is directly underneath the graphics card water block. I also removed the sticker covering the drive's chips.), or buying a set of those Raspberry Pi heat sinks (you need three heat sinks total) to put on the drive's chips. Either one will prevent the drive from overheating. In my case with the fan it never goes above 61°C when benchmarking. During normal use it's much lower than that.

 

[Thomas Norton Crossman]

Yes, that system will work to boot from the 950 Pro. No, you will not get 3Gbps reads or writes.

You will get what the drive can offer, which is about 2500Mbps for reads and about 1500Mbps for writes in benchmarks. Note that you are unlikely to get that in real-world usage. However, it will be a blazing fast drive.

Note that the 950 Pro will reach its maximum temperature (75°C) and thermal throttle when doing drive benchmarks. I would suggest either aiming a fan directly at the drive like I did (see pic below -- the drive is directly underneath the graphics card water block. I also removed the sticker covering the drive's chips.), or buying a set of those Raspberry Pi heat sinks (you need three heat sinks total) to put on the drive's chips. Either one will prevent the drive from overheating. In my case with the fan it never goes above 61°C when benchmarking. During normal use it's much lower than that.

Wow. Talk about a detailed response. Cheers mate!