Samsung 950 PRO M.2 NVM Express SSD

[Kano]

@Med

All you need is UEFI. It does not matter if you use systemd-boot or GRUB2 or if you boot the kernel+initrd directly via the Linux EFI stub. I would however like to know if it would be possible to add a 32 bit stub to a 64 bit kernel...GRUB in legacy mode will not work, that's most likely correct.

[bug77]

This is still the only semi-consumer M2 NVMe SSD on the market, even though it's been out for a while now (except the predecessor SM951 NVMe which is hard to find).

Not for long: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10328/...cie-ssd-review
Still, personally I'd get the biggest 850EVO I can afford over a 950Pro. I have a couple 850EVOs and a couple of Vertex4s and I feel none of them is holding me back. YMMV, of course.

[bug77]

Samsung really needs to come out with the 1TB version. They've promised it for 2016h1. Heck, even OCZ has a 1TB M.2 SSD now.

The 512GB version already has to throttle. Imagine how putting more chips on that sticks would pan out.

somehow it has bigger difference in specs than in real results

The secret is the 950Pro doesn't improve that much the random reads and those give you the real performance on the desktop. Sure, high sequential performance is nice if you move a lot of huge files around, but who does that all the time?
NVMe was supposed to lower the protocol overhead (and it does that, to some extent), but it seems the real limitation for the time being is the controller.

[anarki2]

These throttling issues are way overrated. It only kicks in under constant very heavy load for like 10 minutes. When's that gonna happen, really? Heck, even if you copy a whole 950 to another 950, that'll be done under that time.

Anyways, if you're so worried, just apply a pack of RAM heatsinks on it for like 2 bucks and put your mind at peace.

[boltronics]

What timing... I just brought two of the quicker 950 Pro 512Gb sticks (2500MBps read, 1500MBps write) which I intend to run in RAID0.

[LeJimster]

I've been keeping an eye on these NVME drives as the performance looks insanely good. But after reading many reviews it seems the real world scenarios for the average user won't notice any significant difference over a AHCI SSD. Also what worries me about these blighters is lack of cooling. They really need some heat spreaders on these suckers at the very least as they can get very hot and throttle performance. I don't like the idea of spending big bucks on something like this and then losing warranty because I had to take off the sticker to add some heat spreaders.

If I do decide to go down the NVME route, I'd want 1TB minimum. Only Toshiba with their OCZ range are offering this right now. I never thought I'd say this but Samsung need to step their game up .

Lastly, I would like to know what is going on with the U.2 spec Intel brought forward as a replacement for SATA. Everyone seems to be ignoring it, which is fine if they want to boycott Intel... But we need something to replace SATA and SATA Express wasn't the answer, if not U.2... What?

[sterky]

This is what i get with Samsung SM951 256GB NVME drive on AMD FX-8320 system so it's pci-e ver2 limited (Read speed is max 1.5GB/s instead of 2.3GB/s)
mate disk benchmark LINK
and test result LINK

Also this motherboard does not know anything about nvme so i have my boot partition on another SSD and from there it loads root from nvme.

[SBeaver]

A lot of people recommend using pci-e m2 cards with cooling fins on this SSD because of the heat and the throttling that happens when it overheats under heavy load.
I don't know how big that problem is under normal conditions, but that is pretty much the only negative thing I've seen about this drive (except the price compared to non-NVMe M2 SSDs).
This is still the only semi-consumer M2 NVMe SSD on the market, even though it's been out for a while now (except the predecessor SM951 NVMe which is hard to find).

[riklaunim]

Can you tests pts/sqlite with and without write barrier enabled (fstab mount options/on by default)?

[Med_]

I have one of those and it is great. There is one drawback if you use it as your boot drive (this is the only storage device I have in my computer in my case, so little choice), grub cannot boot on it as it does not recognize NVMe drives. I lost half a day and a part of my sanity trying to debug the issue. In the end I used systemd-boot and it worked fine.