Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 512GB SSD Review

[Guest]

Samsung introduced the SM951 last July during its annual SSD Global Summit in South Korea. Today we're running the drive through our benchmark suite to see if it lives up to the hype.

Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 512GB SSD Review : Read more

 

[blackmagnum]

This is an awesome upgrade for some Macbook Air/Pro users, but just wait until Intel shows their product... and will there be any hardware compatibility issues with DIY upgrades?

 

[Sakkura]

I'm disappointed the promised NVMe support did not materialize. But I guess Samsung is saving that for later retail products. Can't argue with the performance though, this is by far the fastest consumer SSD around.

 

[Memory Ever]

May I know the model and nae of the PCIe adapter you used in the tests???

 

[JOSHSKORN]

No 1TB edition? Fail.

 

[tom10167]

I wish they'd put an 840 or 850 pro in the comparison just to give us a better sense of scale. This drive is incredible, though, and $550 for a 512GB cutting edge drive is not terrible!

 

[mapesdhs]

The Power Restricted Performance graph is stupid. Please stopping using
graphs with origins that don't start at zero - the visual graphic impact is
totally meaningless.

Ian.

 

[jeffunit]

You might want to fix the labels of your graphs. Latency in seconds? One chart shows a write speed of about 80 gigabytes per second.

 

[liquidpower]

I also wished they put a 850 pro in the charts to see the jump from the fastest sata to the PCIe-based M.2

 

[maestro0428]

You can purchase these at newegg.com in the Enterprise SSD section. I want one!

 

[generalsheep]

Is this little bastard bootable,so i can use it as my maindrive?

 

[CyranD]

I have my eye on purchasing a Sager NP8652 in the near future. Currently they list Samsung XP941 as a option. I am hoping before am ready to buy they add the Samsung SM951 as a option.

Is this little bastard bootable,so i can use it as my maindrive?

Sager let you set the Samsung XP941 as the boot drive so I assume the SM951 can be used as a boot drive.

 

[Blueberries]

I would have liked to see the 850 Pro included in this as well

 

[CRamseyer]

I didn't need an adapter to test this product. The ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has a M.2 x4 slot that connects directly to the CPU.

Yes, this product is bootable. The only modern PCIe SSD that is not bootable is from Fusion-IO.

 

[wolfy747400]

Any ideas why this SSD performed a little faster on some tests on a Intel Z68 Express-based motherboard than the Z97?

 

[kyuuketsuki]

While the drive's performance is certainly impressive, the serving time graph shows what you really need to know: the performance will make practically no difference in the vast majority of consumer workloads. The only people who should be spending the premium for this drive are professionals who will regularly be transferring large files around. Anyone else is just wasting money, as any modern SSD will perform largely the same in practice, even if their benchmark numbers aren't as impressive.

 

[damric]

I am interested in M2 since my motherboard has a slot for one. Do they work as boot drives yet? I haven't been following closely but last time I checked they did not.

 

[RamCity]

This is an awesome upgrade for some Macbook Air/Pro users, but just wait until Intel shows their product... and will there be any hardware compatibility issues with DIY upgrades?

Sadly neither the SM951 or XP941 are compatible upgrades in the MacBook Air or the current cylindrical Mac Pro as the standard M.2 interface connector is different from the one that Apple use. Older Mac Pro towers are fine with the use of a standard PCIe to M.2 adapter card.

 

[RamCity]

I am interested in M2 since my motherboard has a slot for one. Do they work as boot drives yet? I haven't been following closely but last time I checked they did not.

Most 'modern' motherboards with Z97/H97 or X99 chipsets can boot the XP941 and likely the SM951 as well, so long as your bios is up to date. Also, like Chris mentioned in the article, you'll also typically need to install windows from a USB drive.

 

[CRamseyer]

Yes, they work as a boot drive.

 

[damric]

I am interested in M2 since my motherboard has a slot for one. Do they work as boot drives yet? I haven't been following closely but last time I checked they did not.

Most 'modern' motherboards with Z97/H97 or X99 chipsets can boot the XP941 and likely the SM951 as well, so long as your bios is up to date. Also, like Chris mentioned in the article, you'll also typically need to install windows from a USB drive.

Yes, they work as a boot drive.

Thanks. I might pick one up for my ASUS Z97I-PLUS.

 

[bit_user]

*yawn* I just clicked for some tasty NVMe benchmarks. Should have mentioned it's AHCI-only, sooner.

 

[hst101rox]

4K random reads/writes aren't any better than SATA 3 SSDs so as an OS drive I don't see an advantage. For mass storage/large files, sure.

 

[CRamseyer]

This drive has the highest 4K QD1 random read from a consumer SSD available today, over 12K IOPS. It has the highest QD2 and QD4 as well. Most of us will never get beyond QD8 under normal use. The 4K random writes are really good too.

A better metric to look at is on page 4, the mixed workload tests. You will never just read or just write data with an OS drive.

 

[Markor]

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Remove need to use googleapis and google.com Javascripst from your site(s) for basic functions, if you want me to read your articles and coem again!