Samsung 950 Pro on ASRock Z97 Pro4

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   I picked us the 250gig Samsung 950 Pro today at my local Microcenter.  The M.2 slot on the Pro4 would accept the 950 but it wouldn't run it at full speed so I purchased a PCIe adapter.  The board had no trouble recognizing the 950 running on the adapter and Windows 10 installed cleanly without a problem.  I should note that I did a clean install using the UEFI method.  I read somewhere the 950 wouldn't install properly (as the bootable OS drive) unless you did a UEFI install.  I may test this theory later but at least for now I can report the UEFI install worked perfectly.
I ran a couple of quick and dirty benchmarks immediately after the clean install.  I did take the time to install the Samsung NVMe driver first before running the tests.  Here's what Anvil, ATTO and Crystal look like.

I just got the drive installed so I haven't had much time to play with it.  I'm coming from an M.2 850 EVO and the system doesn't really feel different.  The 950 definitely has faster sequential read and write performance but 4k random reads aren't much faster on the 950.

If anyone else is trying to get one of these drives going on their Z97 board I'm happy to answer questions.

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fdisker Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01 Sep 2015 Status: Offline Points: 24	Post Options Post Reply Quote fdisker Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Samsung 950 Pro on ASRock Z97 Pro4 Posted: 05 Nov 2015 at 3:10am
	I picked us the 250gig Samsung 950 Pro today at my local Microcenter. The M.2 slot on the Pro4 would accept the 950 but it wouldn't run it at full speed so I purchased a PCIe adapter. The board had no trouble recognizing the 950 running on the adapter and Windows 10 installed cleanly without a problem. I should note that I did a clean install using the UEFI method. I read somewhere the 950 wouldn't install properly (as the bootable OS drive) unless you did a UEFI install. I may test this theory later but at least for now I can report the UEFI install worked perfectly. I ran a couple of quick and dirty benchmarks immediately after the clean install. I did take the time to install the Samsung NVMe driver first before running the tests. Here's what Anvil, ATTO and Crystal look like. I just got the drive installed so I haven't had much time to play with it. I'm coming from an M.2 850 EVO and the system doesn't really feel different. The 950 definitely has faster sequential read and write performance but 4k random reads aren't much faster on the 950. If anyone else is trying to get one of these drives going on their Z97 board I'm happy to answer questions.

parsec Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996	Post Options Post Reply Quote parsec Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 05 Nov 2015 at 11:29am
	Interesting, thanks for posting the benchmarks. My local MicroCenter is already out of stock of both models. The release of this SSD is strange, is seems the NDA date for reviews is later than the release date of these drives! UEFI installation/booting is the only way to install Windows IMO. You can boot these installations fine with CSM Enabled, MSoft puts a hidden MBR partition on them. The reasons EFI booting is better are many, but the main reason is as long as CSM is enabled the only UEFI firmware feature being used is the graphical point and click UI for all the options! Here is a 256GB AHCI SM951 for comparison: It seems some write performance was traded for better read speed. I expected the 950 to be better. The Crystal DM results look better for the 950: I like the high 4K read speed on the 950, otherwise its kind of a mixed bag IMO. My guess is the write speeds were slightly limited on the 950 to keep its temperature down. These SSDs run warmer than SATA SSDs in metal enclosures. What temperatures are you getting for your 950? The ATTO results show the write speed really locked in to 900MB/s, which is great of course but I would think it should be better than the SM951 if only due to the use of 3D V-NAND.


fdisker Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01 Sep 2015 Status: Offline Points: 24	Post Options Post Reply Quote fdisker Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 06 Nov 2015 at 2:56am
	I hit my local microcenter yesterday 30 minutes after they opened. They were stocking both the 512 and 256 gig models when I walked in. It didn't look like they had more than 10 of each model. Glad I got there early!! I'm still very happy with the drive and its performance. I wouldn't recommend the purchase to anyone already running a modern SSD. The extra performance you get just isn't worth the money. Still, as an enthusiast I do like playing with new technology so the 950 definitely scratched my itch. I'm already looking forward to Intel 3D XPoint next year.

fdisker Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01 Sep 2015 Status: Offline Points: 24	Post Options Post Reply Quote fdisker Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Nov 2015 at 8:43am
	I was curious to see what the performance hit would be if I ran the 950 in the m.2 slot. The Z97 Pro4 does have an m.2 slot but it only runs at Gen2 x2 (10Gb/s) speed. Running it in the adapter gets me PCIe Gen3 x16 speeds which are more than twice as fast. Dropping the 950 into the m.2 slot didn't present any problems. I didn't need to make a single BIOS change in order for it to boot. Nice. Here's the ATTO and Anvil scores. As you can see the sequential speeds are slower but the random speeds aren't impacted as much. If you're after maximum performance on a Z97 board you definitely want to run this drive in a PCIe Gen3 slot using an adapter. The drive works fine in the m.2 slot but you're not getting the performance you paid for.

fdisker Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01 Sep 2015 Status: Offline Points: 24	Post Options Post Reply Quote fdisker Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 11 Nov 2015 at 11:55am
	Responding to my own thread, again, because I'm lame. Thought I'd let Asrock Pro4 users know that I made some BIOS changes and disabled UEFI boot for no other reason than to see if I could install Windows 10 without UEFI. I had read that the NVMe 950 Pro required a UEFI configuration in order to work. Not so. The 950 was recognized with the CSM (Compatibility Support Module) enabled. The Windows 10 installer (booting from Sandisk USB stick) found the drive no problem. I was able to delete the previous Windows 10 partitions and reinstall with no problems. Bottom line is this. If you have an Asrock Pro4 and buy the Samsung 950 Pro you'll be able to use it with Windows 10. No idea what your experience will be with Windows 7 or Windows 8.

rybackgamer Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 16 Feb 2016 Status: Offline Points: 5	Post Options Post Reply Quote rybackgamer Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Feb 2016 at 1:38pm
	Hello, I'm use Z97 Pro4 too. And i use with PLEXTOR PX-G128M6e on M.2 But The interface on M.2 PLEXTOR PX-G128M6e SSD is SATA3 that's not what i want. So how to set the SSD to make it use PCIe gen2 mode? I already ask the local distributor on my country but they don't know how. Could you please explain to me. My bios ver. is 2.20 (Asia) OS : Win 8.1 (64 bit) Thank you very much Edited by rybackgamer - 17 Feb 2016 at 10:45am