Samsung 950 PRO [Official Thread]

Anyone know of a place (preferably in the EU) where I can get a heatsink that fits?
My MB is Z170i so my M.2 is on the backside..
 
Any thoughts on the Samsung PM971-NVMe SSD? 512 in a postage stamp? I still remember 512 for everything in your desktop.
 
hi guys, I'm using surface pro 1 for my programming work. It's time to upgrade already.

I really wonder if this 950 pro will significantly improve productivity. as in, the loading time of Visual Studio, debugging, compilation, sql server performance, speed of vmware virtual machines ?

anyone here using visual studio and sql server has personal experience changing from sata based ssd to 950 pro ?
 
nickchan said:
hi guys, I'm using surface pro 1 for my programming work. It's time to upgrade already.
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The Surface Pro 1 uses mSATA, not M.2. You could use an 850 EVO (like this one), but not a 950 Pro. The Surface Pro 4 could use a 950 Pro. Probably.
 
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rsquared said:
The Surface Pro 1 uses mSATA, not M.2. You could use an 850 EVO (like this one), but not a 950 Pro. The Surface Pro 4 could use a 950 Pro. Probably.
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Oh sorry for the confusion. I wasn't asking about upgrading the ssd. Rather I'm upgrading to a whole new laptop.

Particularly a gigabyte with i7 6700hq and 32gb ram. I will have a choice of either sata ssd or pcie ssd. So i wonder if i will notice a difference going either
 
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Do we have a consensus on this drive at last? Is it worth the price premium over, say, an 850 Pro? The 950 appears to still have some quirks, such as unremarkable random read/write performance, and long boot times.
 
Terpfen said:
Do we have a consensus on this drive at last? Is it worth the price premium over, say, an 850 Pro? The 950 appears to still have some quirks, such as unremarkable random read/write performance, and long boot times.
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I doubt there will ever be a consensus since people get excited about benchmarks.

My opinion:
-The 950 is an M.2 option.
-Virtually all load times are within 3% (probably CPU-bound), unless you're copying to a RAM drive.
-The 950 is storage-limited (512GB max) and double the cost of 2.5" options.
-Using 2 different physical drives to get enough storage, with the 950 and something else, gives a major performance penalty when moving files from you desktop to the other drive, compared to using a single drive.

So in short, if you're flexible on M.2 or SATA form factor, the 950 is a dumb buy for most people unless your goal is to run benchmarks and see big numbers.
 
Terpfen said:
Do we have a consensus on this drive at last? Is it worth the price premium over, say, an 850 Pro? The 950 appears to still have some quirks, such as unremarkable random read/write performance, and long boot times.
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Depends on what you do. Do you multitask? Do you use steady state? Do you transfer large files? Do you encrypt? The 950 PRO blows my Extreme Pro out of the water with Veracrypt encrypted drive. It also beats the Extreme Pro is steady state and latency. Extreme Pro was already beating the 850 PRO in this too. If you do encryptions, steady state,, multi disk intensive things at once this is gold. If you only game and stupid shit like that its not going to show a major different...faster yes...night and day? No. For ym use usage its night and day.

When I did not have my drive encrypted I could.
Rip 2 BDs
transfer to another SSD
run AV/AM
install something
and play a game all at once
oh I could also download and install a game at 15MBps which results in about 45-100MBps disk usage.
and there was a couple other things too but i forget. I posted earlier all the things I did at once and the thing was doing fine.

Name me any SATA drive that can do that....none My extreme Pro which is faster for those work loads than the 850 PRO would tank and eat shit when I would do all that at once. Hell it couldn't even do 1/3 of that at once


rsquared said:
The Surface Pro 1 uses mSATA, not M.2. You could use an 850 EVO (like this one), but not a 950 Pro. The Surface Pro 4 could use a 950 Pro. Probably.
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it uses a lite-on NVMe for Surface Pro 4/Book
 
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The two previous posts greatly imply that the answer to my question is "no."
 
I know that my SC NUC with the 950 Pro, is likely the fastest booting machine I've ever seen. Also, game loading performance is excellent. I'm not using this particular box for IT work... so just Windows 10.
 
What is you guys performance temperature?

My idle is 51c and my 950 Pro is located on the back of my motherboard.
During some random gaming the temperature is 61c.
 
I hit 75C if i leave GPU fans at auto o_O I turn GPU to 80% and i am at 45-50C less if at 100% but its too noisy without headsets.
 
True, I forgot to mention HW encryption performance differences. Or if you're copying to another SSD while doing other drive accesses. These special cases won't apply to most people...
 
I just purchased a MSI Ghost 002 and replaced the M.2 with the 950 pro 512. Is this drive going to run too hot in the long term?
 
zzz said:
True, I forgot to mention HW encryption performance differences. Or if you're copying to another SSD while doing other drive accesses. These special cases won't apply to most people...
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i use veractypt with Serpent-twofish-aes with whirlpool hash which is the slowest and toughest encryption and the 950PRO is faster even though its massively CPU limited.

Its faster just because its a better drive and can better load the CPU. System with encryption is significantly faster than the extreme pro

Now if Veracrypt just supported co processors :D

Dropbox - encryption tests
 
Just asking advice at the time it seemed
2x840 256 pro was best setup raid 0 I believe to make them faster that's how I currently have my pc setup.

Would selling them for an 850 evo 512 make any sense and just go with 1 drive?

I'm just trying to slim down my pc my parts and increase performance etc thanks
 
Sirste said:
Just asking advice at the time it seemed
2x840 256 pro was best setup raid 0 I believe to make them faster that's how I currently have my pc setup.

Would selling them for an 850 evo 512 make any sense and just go with 1 drive?

I'm just trying to slim down my pc my parts and increase performance etc thanks
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yes. 240GB drives are fairly slower in certain aspect and the RAID 0 does create some unneeded potential for failure. There would be a performance gain and loss with going to a larger drive. I would either upgrade to an NVME drive or upgrade to a 1TB SSD. 500GB drives are small and super annoying in my opinion and 1TBs are getting pretty cheap as in 300 or less now,
 
SomeGuy133 said:
yes. 240GB drives are fairly slower in certain aspect and the RAID 0 does create some unneeded potential for failure. There would be a performance gain and loss with going to a larger drive. I would either upgrade to an NVME drive or upgrade to a 1TB SSD. 500GB drives are small and super annoying in my opinion and 1TBs are getting pretty cheap as in 300 or less now,
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Ok thanks I think I will eventually try and unload them and just go to a 500+ size drive with good warranty !
 
Sirste said:
Ok thanks I think I will eventually try and unload them and just go to a 500+ size drive with good warranty !
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if you are in the states just use camel camel camel .com and price watch the drive you want. MX200/EVO are not the fastest drives but cheap comparatively. EXtreme Pro is tied with an 850 PRO in overall performance but the Extreme Pro has tanked in price so its a great buy in terms of performance to price for SATAs when on sale. Just price watch them all and buy on a sale and you will be good to go. This way when you decide to go to NVMe you have a 1TB drive that is actually useful....wtf are you going to do with 500GB right?

MX200/EVO good performance and cheapest (get whatever is cheapest)

Extreme Pro/PRO are best SATAs (get whatever is cheapest)
Extreme Pro is the way to go due to being cheaper. If Extreme Pro is only a little bit more than the above MX200/EVO get the Extreme Pro
 
Ok thanks I have no clue what devices you mentioned are been out of the pc game since the 840 pro was new and hot hah I'll look them up! As long as performance is close to what I got now I'm thrilled don't need anything fancier just skimming everything down and my boot up speeds are horrid with the raid 0 setup
 
Sirste said:
Ok thanks I have no clue what devices you mentioned are been out of the pc game since the 840 pro was new and hot hah I'll look them up! As long as performance is close to what I got now I'm thrilled don't need anything fancier just skimming everything down and my boot up speeds are horrid with the raid 0 setup
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Yea than an 850 EVO/MX200 is good for you and will offer a good secondary drive down the road assuming its space is adaquate
 
The manual is vague as hell for setting the M.2 up. I originally had my Corsair Neutron GTX for OS with Win 7 mbr. I converted the os from MBG to GPT. Then cloned the Neutron to the 950. Still had the Neutron installed but selected the 950 for the 1st boot. Didn't notice any speed increase and if anything was slower getting into windows then the Neutron.

I then removed the Neutron completely and it's sitting on my desk. Computer will not go into windows now. It shows the post screen (where you hit F2 or Del to get into bios) then a black screen then the post screen followed by a long black screen and back to the bios.

Current settings for boot:

CSM
Launch CSM Auto


Secure Boot
Secure Boot state Disabled
Platform Key (PK) state Unloaded
OS Type Windows UEFI mode

Boot Option #1 N1-Samsung SSD 950 PRO 512G
Boot Option #2 P5:HL-DT-ST- BD-RE WH10LS30
Boot Option #3 Disabled
Boot Option #4 Disabled

Save settings....Shows post screen....black screen....post screen....long black screen....back to bios

Check settings again for boot after the above:

CSM Same
Secure Boot Same
Boot Option #1 P6: WDC WD5001FZWX-00ZHUA (The WD black 5TB Game drive)
Boot Option #2 P5: HL-DT$%@$@$@ (Blu-ray drive)
Option #3 Same
Option #4 Same

Why it's changing the initial boot drive to a different drive on it's own who knows.

I've tried what seems like a million different combinations of the above settings and it just won't go into windows. I really don't want to reload windows since this is my game rig I have a ton of customization done and added files for many of the games. Which will all have to be redone again if I reload windows. Remember I have a 5TB black for games so there is a ton of stuff that will have to be redone.

Think of a reformat and reinstall as a last resort for sure.

I also have the ASMEDIA Sata controllers disabled because those aren't necessary since I only have two physical sata drives and then the M.2. Some boards get sata 5 and 6 disabled when using M.2 but according to the manual:

M.2 Support
This Motherboard features an M.2 slot, which supports both PCIE and SATA modes. The PCIE mode operates at full PCI Gen. 3.0 x4 speeds. The SATA mode shares bandwith with SATA Express port 1 and will automatically be disabled when a PCIe device was inserted.

PCIe operating mode
PCIEX4_3 slot shares with SATA6G_56, and does not share any lanes with other slots.

Auto Mode PCIEX4 Mode
PCIEX4_3 slot X2 mode X4 Mode
SATA6G_56 Enabled Disabled

U.2/M.2/SATAEXPRESS1 configuration
U.2, M.2 and SATAExpress1 share bandwith with priority set to M.2.

m.2 SATA device inserted m.2 PCIe device inserted m.2 port empty
U.2 Disabled disabled enabled
m.2 m.2 SATA mode M.2 PCIe mode N/A
SATAEXPRESS1 Sata 6G DIsable pcie mode enable sata 6g enabled pcie mode enabled sata 6g enabled pcie mode enabled

I'm seeing w7 doesn't support nvme. Can I plop the Neutron back in. Install the nvme win 7 drivers/patch then clone again to the m.2?
 
So after all the repeated above problems. I get home today and fire it up then walk out of the room. I come back to a windows screen and it saying my windows isn't genuine. I check and it's got some OEM key in place. So I change the key to mine and activate then look into samsung magician and get the following:

phDDwZt.jpg


Doesn't seem to be up to par and after rebooting windows seems to take some time to load up. I still have the post screen....black screen.....post screen.....black screen.....then windows 7 loading.

I have no idea why it isn't just posting then loading windows. I'm semi afraid to even jack with anything else in the bios. Looking back at the first page or two some people with Asus boards have a NVME option in their bios config. I find it hard to believe I don't with one of the most expensive and feature rich Asus boards out there. I need to see which version of the bios it's running out of the box. I'm sure maybe that option pops in with a bios update. I'm not sure if this thing is running to it's full potential though since the numbers above don't seem on par. I also don't get why it takes so long to load and shows the post screen more then once.
 
update bios and install windows and samsung drives. After that report back. Most likely the issue....i think you only need 1 of the 2 drivers but i am not sure. It is something i dont think we figured out.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
update bios and install windows and samsung drives. After that report back. Most likely the issue....i think you only need 1 of the 2 drivers but i am not sure. It is something i dont think we figured out.
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Running the asus disk now in case I missed something from the website. Will check on the bios version. Other then that I installed the nvme windows update and already have the samsung drivers installed.

out of box 0208 updating to 1701
 
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Only noticed like one new option in the bios and it wasn't a section for nvme. Still have double post screen showing. I did notice Boot option 1 is windows boot manager 950 instead of the actual 950 as being set for the 1st boot. I changed it back to the samsung 950 and I end up back in bios. Switch it from the samsung 950 to the windows managed 950 and back to windows I go. Went into the CSM again Turned off CSM and it won't boot (says my vga isn't compatible with uefi) So turned it back on but set the following:

Launch CSM Enabled
Boot Device Control UEFI driver first
Boot From Storage Devices UEFI driver first
Boot from PCI-E/PCI Expansion Devices UEFI driver first

The last three were set to Legacy Only. Not sure if it makes any difference or not but I did loose the double post screen. So now on a reboot it shows the post screen then starts loading windows. It still seems sluggish loading windows though. Not sure if it's a 7 thing or what. I need to just bite the bullet and upgrade to 10 Pro or better yet (although I'm going to hate like hell to setup 5TB of games again) reformat and do a fresh win 10 Pro install to get ready for DX12.
 
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depends on motherboard would be my guess. Some people report slow boots and others like me report crazy fast boots. So windows is working? Can you run crystal disk mark? i want to make sure you got the drivers working. writes are obviously bad with bad drivers so running that will quickly saw yes or no to working drivers.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
depends on motherboard would be my guess. Some people report slow boots and others like me report crazy fast boots. So windows is working? Can you run crystal disk mark? i want to make sure you got the drivers working. writes are obviously bad with bad drivers so running that will quickly saw yes or no to working drivers.
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I have the performance test from magician posted above but I'll look into grabbing mark also. The Crystal Disk I have only gives drive info nothing more. :-(

Running it now will update this post with results.

Looking at the first page of this thread the sequential looks like crap along with the first 4K tests.
rmapCiR.jpg
 
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SomeGuy133 said:
reinstall drivers and try again. Also make sure nothing else is running.
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Ok the Windows nvme patch takes forever to actually do anything. Just sits at the Windows Update Standalone Installer window forever searching for updates on this computer. What a crap way to release something but that doesn't surprise me with MS. This thing should be what it is a patch not a take all day and watch paint dry time waster. lol
 
*shrugs* You honestly are the only person i know to have this much trouble...i honestly don't know without being there. Sorry i am pretty busy so i do not have the time to do my own searching to help.
 
Benchmarking the C drive is never ever going to give you ideal results. You can't close "all programs" on C because windows is running on C. Services are running and accessing the drive, log files are being written, stuff is updating in the background, and even if you disable every service you can and close every program you can there's still base windows running and then there's virtual memory, which you can't get rid of by disabling the page file because one of the things windows, and most other modern OSs do is map the entire executable file and any libraries it needs to virtual memory that way it can discard and load pages from the file as necessary, which is why windows locks the files for any running programs and why you can't update a program that's in use, if you changed the file then next time windows needs to load something it's loading something from a different version of the program and everything would go to shit, and when you're trying to see absolute maximum performance a few time slices cut out here and there when the benchmark program assumes it has 100% of the devices attention a few hundred IOPS of random shit interspersed in there can cut out thousands of IOPS that might have gone to the more focused test.

If you REALLY want to see what your drive can do, install windows on a different drive and benchmark from there. The difference, especially in crystalmark, will be large
 
Well apparently running the windows hotfix doesn't remove the already installed version and that's what took forever for it to actually do something. Not sure how long started eating dinner and doing the evening tv show thing with my fiance. Came back in the office and it said it was already installed. So I removed the hotfix from windows update then ran the hotfix again and it was done in a matter of seconds. Not sure why it took forever the first time I installed it but it's installed again anyway. Now to install the samsung driver and bench again.

This is after reinstalling the windows 7 hotfix and the samsung nvme driver. Maybe it's windows 7 holding it back or the fact CSM is enabled because of my GPU not being UEFI. who knows but I know others are getting a ton faster on some of the numbers just looking at the first 2 pages of this post.
16OTw6y.jpg


Complete restart time (Clicking restart in win7 to it rebooting and reloading into windows) 56.23
Complete cold boot time (Power button to being in windows) (24s until the loading windows screen)46.08

To me this just seems much slower then my Neutron GTX. Especially since many people are saying about 4-5s from windows loading screen to being in windows. For me we are talking 22.08 from loading screen to being in windows. Then there are the numbers above....

Took me some time to find this as I rarely mess with event view mainly because I don't understand how the darn thing works and what to look for but noticed a screen grab on page 4 of this thread so went looking for mine. This members was 30632ms mine on the other hand

Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 102054ms

So I guess when I hit stop on my cells stop watch it wasn't fully loaded yet. That is insane!!! Almost 3 times as long as other members to boot.

Idle temp of the 950 is 63C which seems pretty damn high. Unfortunately I'm unable to install heat sinks for two reasons:

1.Idiots at Samsung put the sticker over the chips which if I remove the sticker the warranty will be void.
2. The m.2 slot on my viii Formula is under the armor plating on the board and I don't think there is any clearance between the ssd and the plating to fit heat sinks. Asus should have done a better job in the engineering department and made the cover (armor plating) a heat sink also. Instead it's cheesy plastic and I don't even think it touches the ssd so if it was aluminum/some other metal it would matter if it touched. Need to look for a fan that can plug into the usb header on my board to help cool this thing.
 
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Go to CrystalDiskMark Settings, there is an option to increase the number of cores used on random read/write tests, change it from 1 to 4.
 
Mannymal said:
Go to CrystalDiskMark Settings, there is an option to increase the number of cores used on random read/write tests, change it from 1 to 4.
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Did that but nothing is changing on this test so far. What it seems is going on though is something Samsung said wouldn't be a problem with these drives and in fact real world is a problem. Thermal Throttling. doing the write portion the drive is at 76C people are reporting throttling as low as 67C.

I'll try it in the morning on a fresh boot after it cools down all night. Getting too tired.

Need some dry ice for this puppy. Looking into cooling options now. Really don't want to muck up the look of my build with the spotcool fan especially since the stupid thing is blue led. :-( I have a red/white/black custom build. So that really isn't going to work. Eyes are starting to kill me so I guess it's time to go to bed and continue looking around in the morning. I really don't want to get a pci-e card that has a built in cooling solution. I liked the idea of the m.2 being hidden and cleaning up the build.

I can easily add in a liquid solution since I have tubing that is very near where it would be. Not sure if they make adapters with blocks or not. I haven't gotten that far. There are some intel ones made specifically for intel drives but other then that I'm not sure. I have plenty of cooling room though I could add the m.2 into my gpu loop it's hardly getting used anyway (290X RX480 rad never above 42C lol)
 
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