Samsung SM951 M.2 Gen3 x4 SSD (256GB)

SCUZNUTS

New member
Introduction
The Samsung SM951 is one of the first M.2 Gen3 x4 SSDs on the market.

Technical Specifications
The SM951 comes in three different data sizes; 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.
For me I got the 256GB drive and this is what I will be focusing on.
The SM951 256GB is meant to have a sequential read of 2150MB per second and 1200MB per second write, which at this point in time is faster than anything else on the market I am aware of without use of RAID.

Up Close
I got the OEM version of this chip so I did not get any consumer packaging others will later in the year. This M.2 SSD measures 80mm in length and 22mm in width.
FraCIwh.jpg

syJ4G9q.jpg

hU6SbdF.jpg


Test Setup
I will test this in my main system (Note my OS Win8.1 will be installed onto the SSD first which could lower some of the benchmark results).
MB: MSI X99S SLI
CPU: Intel i7 5920K
GPU: MSI HD 7970 TwinFrozr III

AIDA64
rdnp0nT.png

Posting link to compare speeds since I’m not sure if I can include screenshots from The Guvnor here -
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/crucial_bx100_1tb_ssd_review/5

ATTO
@128KB - 1268MB/s Write, 2167MB/s Read
@ 1MB - 1260MB/s Write, 2183MB/s Read
@ 16MB - 1272MB/s Write, 2175MB/s Read
Posting link to compare speeds since I’m not sure if I can include screenshots from The Guvnor here -
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/crucial_bx100_1tb_ssd_review/5

Conclusion
The SSD put me back $300NZD or £150 including shipping to New Zealand.
I like the idea of no SATA cabling making for a clean install, although the SM951 currently is not a favorite for its PCB colour the fact its pretty much entirely hidden away on your motherboard makes up for that.
Although I can't see the crazy boot times this device will offer (My GPU doesn't support full UEFI) the SM951 offers the best performance SSD you can get as of March 2015.
 
So this SSD simply plugs into your PCI-E and you are good to go?

This SSD uses the M.2 slot which runs over PCI-E and communicates under AHCI.

So if you have an M.2 with PCI-E support then its plug and play, operating systems should not need any special drivers to see and install on them.

Note there are M.2 slots which still run under sata and the same with M.2 ssd's that only run under sata - these will be bottled by sata gen 3 as all other mainstream ssd's are.

Hope this helps? :)
 
So this SSD simply plugs into your PCI-E and you are good to go?

It plugs directly into an m.2 slot. Confusingly the m.2 slot is (generally) wired up to use pcie lanes.

Presumably you could house the drive in a pcie slot adapter, if mobo doesn't have an m.2 slot.
 
It plugs directly into an m.2 slot. Confusingly the m.2 slot is (generally) wired up to use pcie lanes.

Presumably you could house the drive in a pcie slot adapter, if mobo doesn't have an m.2 slot.

Im pretty sure you can put it into an adapter there are some models that come with the adapter so you can run it either way
 
Back
Top