M2 SSD Compatability

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parsec

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Posted: 25 May 2016 at 11:47am

I forgot to say, if you bought an M.2 to PCIe slot adapter card like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38

You could put it in the PCIE5 slot, and get PCIe 2.0 x4. That would put your video card down to x8, of course.

Not sure if you could boot an OS from a PCIe slot with your board, but I don't know that it won't work either.

Hopefully someone who has tried that and sees this will let us know.

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Posted: 25 Aug 2016 at 1:48pm

HI Crazynex, parsec, Xalter and Phillium.
So, I appreciate the stuff I read on this thread.. good advice and info.
I got the Samsung 950 Pro running with only one or two hiccups that were dealt with.

Rig:

ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer, BIOS P1.60 01/06/2016
AMD FX(tm)-8150 Eight-Core Processor (family: 0x15, model: 0x1, stepping: 0x2)
ASUS Hyper M.2 X4 (PCIe to M.2 adapter card)
Samsung 950 Pro
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS

First, installing Ubuntu 16.04 to the 950 Pro in the mobo M.2 connector went with one hiccup. NO MBR on the device.. but no messages to indicate that. So, briefly, I did the install there (X2), but later got the ASUS PCIe to M.2 adapter card and redid the whole install there.

So following the advice I found on the web:

Before the install of the OS, first create an MBR and a partition on the device.. and a file system (I chose ext4) , possibly use GParted Live, or GParted in another linux computer..
Install the OS, cautious people unplug other SATA devices, I hear.
choose the option 'Install to Other' which allows you to look at the devices on your system and pick the right one.
Select the partition and mark it as the root of the file system.
When installing, install to the device, not the partition.. something to do with where the GRUB2 bootloader ends up maybe. So select the device.. like mine was device nvme0n1 and the partition was nvme0n1p1.
Then follow the menus.

So, benchmarks show that I'm using PCIe version 2 in the results... but I still like them and I can move the 950 Pro to my new machine when I upgrade.. like ASRock ZEN FX mobos this Christmas?. I'm dreaming..

so Benchmarks.. as they are, are here: http://imgur.com/a/NjGKb

PCIe 3.0 would be faster.

So I'm also running an Nvidia GX 750 Ti mid level graphics card. I noticed that if I run 4 HD 1080p movies at once in different VLC windows, , when I load a 4K movie on top of that, it gets choppy. Hard times! So that's when the SSD competes with the graphics card for bandwidth on the PCIe 2.0 bus, doing these tasks.

Comments on the state of Ubuntu w.r.t. the device: it works.. but I notice that that benchmark pic doesn't show the device manufacturer nor the model. So, NVME works.. but some of the fluff software that exists for SATA isn't aware or can't use the NVME interface to get that info... today.. August 25, 2016. : )

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Posted: 25 Aug 2016 at 11:00pm

xPorta wrote:

HI Crazynex, parsec, Xalter and Phillium.
So, I appreciate the stuff I read on this thread.. good advice and info.
I got the Samsung 950 Pro running with only one or two hiccups that were dealt with.

Rig:

ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer, BIOS P1.60 01/06/2016
AMD FX(tm)-8150 Eight-Core Processor (family: 0x15, model: 0x1, stepping: 0x2)
ASUS Hyper M.2 X4 (PCIe to M.2 adapter card)
Samsung 950 Pro
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS

Before the install of the OS, first create an MBR and a partition on the device.. and a file system (I chose ext4) , possibly use GParted Live, or GParted in another linux computer..
Install the OS, cautious people unplug other SATA devices, I hear.
choose the option 'Install to Other' which allows you to look at the devices on your system and pick the right one.
Select the partition and mark it as the root of the file system.
When installing, install to the device, not the partition.. something to do with where the GRUB2 bootloader ends up maybe. So select the device.. like mine was device nvme0n1 and the partition was nvme0n1p1.
Then follow the menus.

so Benchmarks.. as they are, are here: http://imgur.com/a/NjGKb

PCIe 3.0 would be faster.

I'm sure the 950 does not compete for bandwidth with the video card. The PCIe lane allocation depends on which PCIe slots are being used, since an x16 physical slot does not necessarily mean that it will be connected to 16 PCIe lanes.

The 990FX chipset provides 38 PCIe 2.0 lanes, so on your board you do have two true PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, each with x16 PCIe 2.0 lanes. The PCIE3 slot is x16 physically, but x4 electrically, since it is only connected to 4 PCIe lanes. That is stated in the specs, and you can see the difference between the PCIE3 slot and the other two if you look carefully at the top down picture of your board.

IMO, your 750 is simply choking on the load of that many 4K videos. You are lucky it does as well as it does now. You aren't using all of your PCIe 2.0 lanes now, and each device has its maximum lane connection now, you can't change that.

Were you able to install the Samsung NMVe driver in Ubuntu? If not, Ubuntu must have its own NVMe driver.

Strange that your 950 as the OS drive is MBR partitioned. In Windows, NVMe SSDs are GPT partitioned. No idea what's going on there.

NVMe and SATA are two different interfaces, using different drivers and controllers. If the software used with SATA drives works with NVMe, that's just luck.

xPorta

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Posted: 27 Aug 2016 at 6:07am

Hi parsec,

Thanks for clearing up my misconception about the lane allocations. ++

Re: MBR

I manually specified MBR using GParted to sidestep any UEFI and GTP friction with the OS installer. The UEFI is set in compatibility mode, so it was smooth.

Re: 750 Ti

I also have a bootable OCZ Vertex 4 on the system.. in running OS in that device with the vids stored on the NVMe 950 Pro... there was no stuttering.

In that config the vids and 750 are served up on PCIe..

So some of the workload went onto the Vertex 4 SATA bus for some reason...
Video driver and GPU+CPU may have transactions with temp files outside memory while doing these tasks.

Re: NVMe driver

It's been a native Linux kernel driver since kernel version 3.3 (18 March 2012)
I'm running 4.4 version right now. You can imagine my impatience waiting for mobo houses to bring it to the BIOS/UEFI but that's an 'ecosystem' thing, do you think?.
Anyway, that stuff I said about fluffware and NVMe vs SATA.. that was BS in retrospect, that's my fault, it's actually a few of the higher level GUI apps that are lagging a little with ability to display storage device Mfgr/Model etc.

Using the lsblk command ( List block devices), the correct info was displayed in the terminal for the NVMe based 950 Pro
aside: lsblk command at the bottom of the page...
http://fibrevillage.com/storage/53-lsblk-command-examples