Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Samsung SM951 256GB PCIe Gen3 8Gb/s x4 M.2 80mm (AHCI Version) Solid State Drive SSD

Nice piece of hardware for computer geeks

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2015

I just got this SM951 yesterday. It gave me some challenges to install it in an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 but I worked through them. The Ramcity help page on it was particularly useful. I am running Windows 10 on it - installed from USB created from the ISO. I had some confusion about certain combinations, you must use at least Bios version 2.04 - I find this version to be more stable than the newest version 2.10. Having the right bios will be critical for any motherboard with an ultra m.2 slot. It installed Windows 10 in less than 10 minutes. I also have a Samsung 850 Pro 256GB ssd installed in this computer with 16Gb of G.Skill DDR3 2400mhz ram and an I5 4690k. The SM951 has remarkable speed, using Samsung Magician V4.6 to measure speed against the 850 Pro we have this: SM951 sequential read 2234 mb/s, write 1240mb/s, random read iops 118428, random write iops 90444. The Samsung 850 Pro results are: sequential read mb/s 563, sequential write mb/s 527, random read iops 97647, random write iops 88857. This Ultra M.2 isn't just a bit faster! You don't really notice it on the desktop because everything is instantaneous. By the way the startup time on Windows 10 with the Bios hardware startup set to ultra fast is blazing, you get a desktop in 3 or 4 seconds. I am not overclocked at all (yet).

23 people found this helpful

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James S.

Boots Windows 8.1 on Asus X99

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Pros : Really fast, small, motherboard attached, and bleeding edge tech. Boots on Asus X99-E WS and runs like a scalded Ape. It took quite a while to sort out but it is worth it.
This drive is an OEM laptop drive but can be installed in Desktops with the latest PCIe 3.0 M.2and UEFI support.

Cons : Samsung OEM product, not sold as retail so Samsung offers little no support so you have to have pretty advanced skills to get this to run as Windows boot drive. Don't buy this and expect it to be plug and play.

Other Thoughts : The SM951 won't show in Asus x99 BIOS as boot drive when first attached. But it will show in BIOS after you have sucessfully installed Windows on it so be patient. You will see it during the windows install when you are prompted to select the drive location for your new Windows install but you might get an error message that Windows can't install on it. I tried many times and failed at this point.

The trick for me (not in the guides) was to first attach the SM951 to the MB along with a proven boot drive with Windows 8.1. Then boot the system with the proven Windows 8.1 install. Then use Windows Disk Management to initialize the SM951 as GPT (or convert to GPT if MBR exists). Remember the SM951 and the USB boot drive need to be GPT and UEFI. Now install Windows 8.1 to the SM951 from a bootable USB (GPT + UEFI) Windows 8.1 ISO made by Rufus or Windows Bootable Image Creator (see guides below). In order for Windows to install at this point the SM951 needs to show as unallocated space. If you get an Error trying to select the SM951 as disk just use ADVANCED to delete the volume on the sm951 and it will show as unallocated space.

Good guide here for install with Asus X99: (Format in GPT and do everything in UEFI)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No-ct8pQcIg

Good Guide here to create bootable USB using Windows Bootable Image Creator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Jzt1r0Qzw

Good guide here for generic Bios and bootable USB Windows Installer using Rufus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAw0CZFHcU

59 people found this helpful

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TimTamTomTikki

Some concern about over-heating, but otherwise it works well ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

Some concern about over-heating, but otherwise it works well. Storage size rather small for the price, but this should change over time, as with all computer storage. Ensure motherboard compatibility before purchasing.

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Jim R.

Not much different than a standard SSD drive. A waste of money for me.

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2015

Verified Purchase

I have been building computers since 1985, so I know a thing or two about how they operate. I installed this module in my new MSI X99S SLI Plus system (i7 - 5930K, 32gb DDR4), and no matter what I do in the BIOS settings, I can't get this thing to go any faster than a standard SSD drive. Maybe you'll have luck with a different board, but I'm certainly not impressed. Definitely not worth the money for me.

At the advise of another fine reviewer, I just tried out the AS-SSD Benchmark program, and the following are my results:

Seq: 1854.87 MB/s (read), 1022.14 MB/s (write)
4K: 34.31 MB/s (read), 100.59 (write)
4K-64 Thrd: 669.55 (read), 314.35 MB/s (write)
ACC time: 0.056 m/s (read), 0.035 m/s (write)

While the Seq readings are close to what the manufacturer advertises, I can honestly say that I don't "feel" any major difference in the speed of day to day work. It's faster than my Samsung 850 EVO 500gb SSD, but again, not impressively faster. Your call whether to buy it or not.

9 people found this helpful

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Happy Server Buyer

Fast but Issues

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

The good news is that I bought one to replace an inexpensive Crucial that cost 1/3rd the price and worked well as I needed more speed and it doubled my Passmark harddrive score to 7000.Overall score went from 5300 to 6100. This is a high score given the Video card. This is a fast M2 harddrive device! AND yes I did a virgin windows 10 install onto it and it only took a few minutes. No issues .
The bad news is that the published Passmark score is 10,600 and I only got 7072. Further bad news is that the performance degrades under heavy usage. Keep using it continuously and the 7000 soon be down to 4000 unless you often rest it OR defrag it frequently.
I have this device in a Mini X99 setup ( Asrock X99-itx/ac ) and despite the above issues and because I have a Video Card in the one slot I am continuing to use it. Others may wish to consider if they have surplus slots the NVMe Intel SSDPEDMW40 which in the same tests as above got a score of 11,937 which is superior to the Samsung and kills my 6100 score with a 6500 score on the Passmark overall test.

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AnotherAmazonJunkie

Super fast (at distruction)

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2015

Verified Purchase

I bought the SM951 because it offers read and write performance that is incredible.

As a basis for comparison, I used CrystalDiskMark to compare it to the Seagate 600 SSD I have as my main boot disk, a and RamDisk (DDR3 1600). The results are rather impressive when compared side by side.

Samsung SM951
Sequential [MB/s]: 1253 Read / 1229 Write

RamDisk (DDR3 1600)
Sequential [MB/s]: 3283 Read / 4765 Write

Seagate SSD
Sequential [MB/s]: 464.9 Read / 391.5 Write

Note that a RamDisk is really just a driver that enables me to use my computers memory like a disk. It's naturally faster, but does rely on an HDD to persist data, so I don't recommend using one for actual storage, but they are handy if you need to perform fast reads/writes .

Now for the reason for the 1 star rating:
The problem is that I had installed my programs, and started using the drive for video remuxing. I came home yesterday, and all my source video's were gone, complete loss, nothing in the recycle bin, and the application logs on the same drive also gone.

Digging into what the likely reason is, but I am considering a return :(

4 people found this helpful

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B.H.

How I Installed Mine:

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2015

Verified Purchase

This SSD works great and I was surprised how small it was. I dare say it's smaller than laptop memory!

But man, it was sure a whirlwind to install! After pouring through tutorials and forums post, it took me around a day and a half before Windows 7 finally installed was running at max speeds. I'm using it with the MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard, and could not find settings like, "Secure Boot" or "CSM" in my BIOS as online tutorials said to change. So I started playing with things on my own. Here were the steps I took to get it installed:

Opened Disk Management
Deleted the partition on my flash drive
Right clicked on it and choose "Convert to GPT"
Converted the Samsung SSD to GPT as well.
Formatted flash drive with FAT32.
Found Windows 7 iso file online.
Extracted the iso file with Magic ISO onto my flash drive.
Copied the folder efi > microsoft > "boot"
Pasted that folder in the "efi" folder. (Essentially, created a copy of the "boot" folder just 1 level up in the folder hierarchy.)
Opened the file, sources > "boot.wim" with the program, 7 Zip.
Within 7 Zip, selected the file, 1 > Windows > Boot > EFI > "bootmgfw.efi"
Extracted the file to the folder, efi > "boot"
Renamed the file, "bootmgfw.efi" to "bootx64.efi"

This prepared the flash drive with a UEFI installation of Windows 7. For those Windows 8.1 users, it looked like this process was a LOT simpler.

Then I went into the BIOS and set these settings:
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 Source Link > [PCH]
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 CH Strap > [M.2 PCH PCIE]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > SATA Mode > [RAID Mode]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > sSATA Mode > [ACHI Mode]
Settings > Boot > Boot mode select > [Legacy+UEFI]
Settings > Boot > Boot Option #1 > [Hard Disk:SAMSUNG MZHVP256HDLG-000]

From there, I disconnected all SATA drives, except my old boot SSD (which was left plugged in by accident. Not sure if that mattered).
Then I plugged in my flash drive into my front of my computer I boot it to with the F11 boot menu.
Went through the Windows installation steps, and choose Advanced Setup.
Choose Samsung SSD. (There was also a 100MB MBR partition there, I just ignored it and installed Windows on the spare unallocated space.)

That last step took a LONG time to get to work. I kept getting an error that a driver was missing. After spending several hours trying to above steps all over again, I left the computer off for awhile. When I came back, I tried again, with the only thing changed was my flash drive was in the front of my case and it worked! Not sure if flash drive being thrown off which port it was plugged into, or if the computer power in the SSD needed to be drained for awhile.

After Windows installed, sequential read and write speeds were only 700MBps and 600MBps. Much faster than my old SATA II SDD, but not nearly the speed I was promised. I played around in the BIOS I changed these settings:

Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 Source Link > [Auto]
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 CH Strap > [M.2 PCH PCIE]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > SATA Mode > [RAID Mode]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > sSATA Mode > [ACHI Mode]
Settings > Boot > Boot mode select > [UEFI]
Settings > Boot > Boot Option #1 > [UEFI Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager]

The first M.2 Source Link was the main setting that fixed the problem. After that I got 1900MBps and 1200MBps sequential read and write speeds. MUCH better!

Hopefully someone with my setup with have a easier time with this guide. Sure wish I had one.

5 people found this helpful

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Gregory J Semple

Great Specs...didn't work

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

This didn't work on my system, very disappointed.

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Mac Townsend

A useful option for older chipsets

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

wow. I have older motherboards, B75 and Z77 chipset ASUS boards using Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors. All 3-5 years old. I use Kingston Hyperx Predator HHL SSDs as boot drives on all these, sort of an M2 drive mounted to a pcie 3.0 x4 bracket.

I thought I would try a Samsung along with a seprately purchased pci-e bracket. I was thinking they'd be about the same.

Wrong.

The early UFEI bios in these boards would not see the samsung drive. They did see the Kingston drive. Windows 7 and Windows 10 both saw the Samsung drive once booted (off the Kingston) and happily accepted them. Bios would still not see it so it could not be selected as boot drive.

So I'm using it as a data drive for database publishing projects....where data drive speed can be more than helpful.

For grins, I ran a disk speed test comparing this Samsung to the system Kingston. Samsung was much faster except for random access. Then it was about even.

Bottom line. With slightly new chipset, perhaps Z97, this would be a nobrainer for boot drive in a larger size. With a really new chipset, I am certain the NVMe version of this thing would really be best...but for us in the old end of things, where NVMe support is nil, it is a useful option.

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M. Fields

Off to a bad start.

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

First experience with this drive on an Asrock Z97 Extreme 9.

Computer would post and attempt to boot, when booting from a USB windows install media it would see the drive but would not allow installation onto this drive due to "Firmware issue that prevents windows from booting from this drive".

When going into the bios to select it as a bootable drive, the bios would lockup at a black screen with a white pointer. 1 in 5 bootups I could get into the bios, but would not recognize the drive in either M2 slot on this board (the 2x or the 4x).

I started with bios version 1.14 and upgraded to 1.30 to try to fix the issue to no avail.

This drive is an upgrade replacement to an XP941 M2 pcie SSD thats the same size (256gb), so I know both M2 slots are working perfect.

The drive I received has firmware BXW2500Q 2015.03 but seems more or less DOA. I can't find anywhere online to download an upgrade or downgrade firmware for these drives.

Update: received a beta bios from Asrock and the SSD is functioning now (without uefi support though) but at least I know it's a bios issue and not a hardware issue.

18 people found this helpful

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