What kind of M2 in Rampage V Extreme?

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skypine27

Gawd
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Apr 18, 2008
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Hello [h]

Im a bit confused as to this whole M2 thing. I'm going to drop a bunch of $ and build a 5960X / Rampage V Extreme to replace my system in my Sig.

For a boot drive, I was planning on going with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB. But then I thought about this whole M2 drive thing. I guess in the X99 they are bootable? But they don't seem to come in 1TB sizes yet.

Is something like a M550 512GB M2 "faster" than a SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB? I generally only run the OS and 1 or 2 non-steam games from the boot drive so 512 GB would be OK space wise.

Are there different types of M2 drives? If I get one, I want to make sure I get one thats fits in the Rampage V Extreme.

Thanks gents.
 
I'm also interested in M.2. The M550 seems to be the best one listed on Newegg.

Will M.2 have significant benefit versus a good SATA III SSD (like Samsung 840)?
 
Since I am jumping to x99, I would like to know this as well.
 
The short answer is yes, with the right drive. The M550 is not the right drive.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-xp941-256gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-mini-review_142369
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/samsung-xp941-pcie-m-2-ssd-does-1170-mbsec.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8006/samsung-ssd-xp941-review-the-pcie-era-is-here/6

More options are coming in the next several months, so I'd suggest using your existing SSD until additional options become available. For example, Samsung recently announced the successor (SM951 and SM953) to the XP941 SSD reviewed above, which provides about 2.5X the performance of the 850 Pro.
 
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As far as I know the Samsung XP941 I believe is the fastest one out right now but is hard to fine. Generally speaking most of the M.2 drives out now are at the top of the SSD performance area.
 
Wow.

I'm sold on that Samsung xp941 in the 512GB size. Would like to see a 1TB model but I guess I can live with 512 for now.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-xp941-256gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-mini-review_142369
 
cybereality said:
I'm also interested in M.2. The M550 seems to be the best one listed on Newegg.

Will M.2 have significant benefit versus a good SATA III SSD (like Samsung 840)?
Click to expand...

The M.2 physical form factor is capable of being connected electrically via either Sata3 or PCIe (in various combinations).

A lot of existing M.2 drives still use the (legacy) Sata3 electrical interface, which is no faster, but going forward you can expect to a shift to the faster PCIe electrical interface.

Even here there are problems, for M.2 PCIe can use either 2x or 4x PCIe lanes in either PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 speeds.

A lot of existing X99 boards (gigagbyte, i'm calling you out here), disappointingly use 2x PCIe 2.0 (10Gb/s), which has less than a third the bandwidth potential of a 4x PCIe 3.0 (32Gb/s) solution.
 
Yeah, 10Gbps M.2 is completely unacceptable. You won't notice that over 6Gbps SATA (unless you also get NVMe, but NVMe is still extremely rare). 16Gbps is going to be the minimum you should consider if you want a noticeable increase, in my opinion.

It won't be a big difference for most users, but these will be great for high-load databases, VMs, and scenarios where you otherwise write a lot of data to the drive. Maybe you reinstall operating systems a lot. Maybe you are using disk snapshots or doing some sort of backup to a different paritition on the same drive (or on another PCI-E based SSD). Could also be useful if you do a lot of work with large files that are accessed in random mode, such as some types of archive files. You can get by with a SATA SSD in many of these cases, but the difference could be noticeable. In some cases it will be a significant and important difference, but those cases won't be common.

The biggest increase will be NVMe and I really recommend you all hold off for NVMe if you intend to spend a significant amount on a PCI-E-based SSD. Weak PCI-E options like the Plextor M6E will be much closer to SATA than they will proper NVMe drives that should come out next year. Intel's P3000-series PCI-E (not M.2 though) SSDs are the only drives available to consumers that I know of that supports NVMe already. (Edit: Apparently SM951 also supports it. The XP941 didn't and also was not bootable, so don't buy the XP941.)
 
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the Rampage V extreme was finally in stock on newegg today (briefly) so I was able to order it and a 5960x

I didnt buy a drive or ram yet, will wait for prices on DDR4 to come down a bit as well as PCIE M2s to become more common.

The board specs just say:
1 x M.2 Socket 3, gray, , with M Key, type 2260/2280/22110 storage devices support ( Supports PCIE SSDs only)

Will wait and see if some some places get ahold of that Samsung SM951 for sale to everyone, not just OEMs.

thx guys
 
I highly doubt you will notice a difference between a M.2 SSD and a mid-range SSD. Maybe when NVMe SSDs come out in full force...
 
Yeah, I decided to wait for the Samsung SM951, which as far as I can tell, is NVMe:

"During Samsung SSD Global Summit, 850 Pro was not the only SSD being presented, but also the upcoming SM951.
This drive are the first Samsung SSD to support NVMe through PCIe, superior to AHCI currently used with SATA3 drives.

SATA3 SSDs today have a cap of 600MB/s because of the SATA limitation.
PCIe SSDs however, with the 9 series chipset from Intel, have a cap of 2000MB/s.
The new SM951 M2 SSD from Samsung comes with a blazing speed of 1600/1000 MB/s Sequential Read/Write and Random Read/Write is 130K/100K.
The SM951 is a NVMe SSD, which means bandwidth is greatly increased while latency is only 1/3 of current SATA drives.
Not only that, but they have 80% lower idle power consumption than traditional SATA3 SSDs.

The drive will come with Samsung`s new 3D V-NAND for greater endurance and capacity over current standard NAND.

No date was given about the release date of Samsung SM951 M2 SSD but soon."

Now, as for getting ahold of one without having to buy a laptop that I will simply gut and sell on ebay w/o a drive, well, thats another story. Places do sell the xp941 and ship world wide, so I have my fingers crossed that similar places will get ahold of the SM951 and do the same.
 
Skypine,

I posted the following to another thread, which you may find useful.

KenAF said:
It depends. The hierarchy is as follows:

(1) M.2 PCIe 3.0 X4 (up to 32Gbps theoretical or 3.2GBps real world max)
(2) M.2 PCIe 2.0 X2 (up to 10Gbps theoretical or 1.0GBps real world max)
(2) SATA Express (up to 10Gbps theoretical or 1.0GBps real world max)
(3) SATA 3 (up to 6Gbps theoretical or 600MBps real world max)
(3) M.2 SATA 3 up to 6Gbps theoretical or 600MBps real world max)
(4) M.2 PCIe 2.0 X1 (up to 5Gbps theoretical or 500-550MBps real world max)

You must have both a motherboard and a SSD that supports the same interface to achieve a given level of performance. If you stick a M.2 PCIe 2.0 X1 SSD into a M.2 PCIe 3.0 X3 slot, then you will get a max of 500-550MBps, not 3.2GBps. Similarly, if your motherboard only has a M.2 PCIe 2.0 X2 slot, then you will never achieve more than ~1.0GBps no matter what drive you use.

By the end of September, Samsung plans to ship its SM951 M.2 PCIe 3.0 X4 SSD with NVMe, which will deliver 1600MBps throughput (provided you have a motherboard with a M.2 PCIe 3.0 X4 slot) or 60 percent greater throughput than is possible with SATA Express. Samsung is expected to release a SATA Express SSD in 1Q 2015, but, again, it will be limited to around 1000MBps because SATA Express is a slower interface.

Be aware that some X99 motherboard manufacturers like Gigabyte only incorporated M.2 slots at PCIe 2.0 X2 as a cost-cutting measure. There are also few Z97 boards that have M.2 slots at PCIe 3.0 X4. Some Z97 motherboards only have M.2 PCIe 2.0 X1 slots which are slower than SATA 3.
Click to expand...
Initially, the SM951 will ship to OEMS (like Apple) only, but there will probably be resellers like RamCity that carry OEM drives.
 
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KenAF:

Thanks man.

Waiting for RamCity to carry the SM951 to put in my Rampage V extreme. Thx
 
I ended up buying this when I did my system upgrade.

http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/pcie-ssd/m2/m6e-m2-2280

with my Asus Z97-A, it is running in M.2 PCIe 2.0 X2 mode. And while it is faster than my other SSD's, it is not enough of a difference for what I paid for it then. Reads are in the 740MB/s and Writes are about 580MB/s. System will boot up in 11.7 seconds using Boot Racer as a Timer. Said System is in my Sig.
 
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marka211 said:
with my Asus Z97-A, it is running in M.2 PCIe 2.0 X2 mode. And while it is faster than my other SSD's, it is not enough of a difference for what I paid for it then. Reads are in the 740MB/s and Writes are about 580MB/s. System will boot up in 11.7 seconds using Boot Racer as a Timer. Said System is in my Sig.
Click to expand...

You definitely reaffirmed what has been said in this thread. Either M.2 PCIe 3.0 X4 or nothing. Good input.


Edit: Is there a list of known X99 boards that are M.2 PCIe 3.0 X4 compliant? For example Newegg lists the Asus X99 Deluxe as...

M.2 - 1 x M.2 Socket 3, with vertical M Key design, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (Support PCIE SSD only)
Click to expand...

I'm new to this but it doesn't look like they tell you unless 'Socket 3' means PCIe 3.0 X4. Does it? I mean, the MSI X99S Gaming 9 AC comes right out and says M.2 port, supports up to 32Gb/s speeds.
 
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I'm guessing the Rampage V Extreme is x4. Straight from the spec sheet:

PCI Express 3.0 x4 M.2,

Mine just arrived today, with the 5960x. But I cant do the system build until I can get ahold of 32GB of DDR4 @ 3000, and whatever PCIE M.2 is available
 
I know it'd just be a guess right now but which should be faster, a Samsung XP951 512GB SSD running at PCIe 3.0 X4 or two Samsung 850 PRO SSD's in RAID 0 ?

Also, about how much will the Samsung XP951 512GB sell for? Have they stated the prices yet?


Thanks
 
JaiWebb said:
I know it'd just be a guess right now but which should be faster, a Samsung XP951 512GB SSD running at PCIe 3.0 X4 or two Samsung 850 PRO SSD's in RAID 0 ?

Also, about how much will the Samsung XP951 512GB sell for? Have they stated the prices yet?


Thanks
Click to expand...

I'd guess event the current Samsung xp941 PCIE m2 is "faster" at nearly everything than 2 x 850 PROs in Raid 0.

Did you see the numbers here?

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-xp941-256gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-mini-review_142369
 
JaiWebb said:
I know it'd just be a guess right now but which should be faster, a Samsung XP951 512GB SSD running at PCIe 3.0 X4 or two Samsung 850 PRO SSD's in RAID 0 ?

Also, about how much will the Samsung XP951 512GB sell for? Have they stated the prices yet?


Thanks
Click to expand...

Non-NVMe SSDs in RAID still have absolutely no chance against NVMe. SATA for SSDs needs to go away ASAP.
 
Update:

I just talked to the guys at RamCity.au (one of the few places that reliably sells the Samsung XM941 and ships world wide). They said they expect to get the XP951 for sale between "November and early next year".

So take that for what it's worth.
 
Good thread, just wanted to say thanks for the heads up as I was looking into an X99 M.2 solution too. Though my system is primarily for gaming and I already have an 840 Pro, I'm probably not going to make good use of it if I do.
 
Hey guys, registered on the forum just to give a heads up.

I am an Australian who has just built an X99 system using an Asus Rampage V Extreme, after contacting Ram City (https://www.ramcity.com.au/) and speaking to Jeff on staff the ETA he gave me for XP951 and SM951 is Q2 2015, or roughly six months away.

So I went with the XP941 and will upgrade mid next year.

Also can I say that the customer service at Ram City is EXCELLENT.
 
thx for the update. Im not going to wait 6 months for the SM951, going to order the XM941 pronto

Thanks!
 
skypine27 said:
thx for the update. Im not going to wait 6 months for the SM951, going to order the XM941 pronto

Thanks!
Click to expand...

skypine27.....do you have any problem installing the xp941 as boot drive on your x99 computer? Was it easy?

Thanks.
 
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Kenshinco:

No, its not totally brainless but this thread covers it exactly and is what I used after many failed attempts at installing Windows 8.1 the wrong way:
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...xtreme-M-2-Setup-And-Windows-Installation-FAQ

They key info is here, you have to install from the Win DVD In UEFI mode, which I had never even heard of prior my new build:

Should I install Windows in UEFI mode or legacy mode?
For Plextor M6e owners, you can go with either install. Nevertheless a UEFI installation would be ideal since you get faster boot up times, better integration with hardware and a few extra features.

For Samsung XP941 owners, you're stucked with UEFI. Since the UEFI driver is embedded into the firmware itself, you will have no problems installing in this mode. The problem arises when you want to do a legacy installation because it requires a driver to be loaded during the installation process. With the XP941 being an OEM product, there are no drivers available to install in legacy mode.


How do I install Windows in UEFI mode?
As soon as the ASUS logo pops up during post, spam the F8 key. You will then be presented with a window to choose your boot device. Select your installation media that has the UEFI prefix.

(pic related):
http://rog.asus.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=42679&d=1414516888&thumb=1

After reading that, it was easy and just like a normal Windows installation.

One side note of caution. The XP 941 seems to be VERY sensitive to bad overclocking attempts (i.e., hung boot, booting loops requiring flicking of the power supply switch etc) and can have its MBR corrupted easier than it should, requiring a full windows re-install from the ground up (the recovery options from the win DVD do NOT work on the XP 941, always gives error "DRIVE LOCKED").

Im not kidding when I went say I went through 5 FULL windows installiations in less than 48 hours when I first started setting up this build. The good news is, a full Win 8.1 install (not including downloading MS updates) takes less than 10 minutes from DVD to XP941. I feel the key is, get your CPU and MEM to a CONSERVATIVE OC and then never mess with it again. The XP941 does not like to be the boot drive of a system where you are constantly tinkering with multiplers, voltages, and RAM speed settings.

Works great once you figure out your stable OC. Boot time into Win 8.1, even with all the little bullshit programs I let it load (steam, Asus AI suite, uTorrent, etc) is incredibly fast. Much quicker than my previous build which was a boot up from 2 x Crucial M4's in Raid 0
 
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