SM951 as OS boot device information

I've searched the forum and sorry if I've missed the solution in someone's post. I have a new (yesterday) ASRock Extreme 6/3.1 board, with Intel i7-4790K, and Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD (512GB AHCI MZHPV512HDGL-00000). Setup was straight forward, M.2 installed in the Ultra M.2 connector, Windows 8.1 installed, system boots just fine.  Knowing in advance of the thermal throttling issues (which I have now demonstrated for myself) with the SM951, I also ordered picked up a couple PCIe 3.0 4-Lane adapter cards ("Micro SATA Cables M.2 (NGFF) PCIe SSD M Key to PCIe X4 w/heat sink" and "Addonics M2 PCIe SSD - PCIe 3.0 4-Lane adapter"). The plan is to dedicate a cooling fan to the M.2 SSD.

Potter wrote: Hi Guys!   First of all, Sorry for my bad English! I have an X99 Extreme4/3.1 motherboard, and i use SM951 (MZHPV....) ssd for os. My question is.: Where i can find in bios that option where i can switch M.2 slot to Gen3 mode? Becuse in win 10 i use ssd-z and that says to me, it running on SATA3. But this device is for PCI express x4 GEN 3. my bios is the latest version, but i see in the x99 extreme4 edition is have a newer version bios. Can i use that bios for x99 Extreme4/3.1 motherboad? If Not, and if not yet available option to switch Ultra M.2 to Gen3 then when will that bios update coming? Thanx for the help, and the answere! Bye Charles

SSD-Z is wrong!  There is no switch needed to change the Ultra M.2 slot to PCIe 3.0, it will run that way automatically when an SM951 is connected to it.

SSD-Z is not able to detect PCIe SSDs correctly, which is true for most if not all hardware monitoring programs.

I have an SM951 in a Z97 Extreme6 board, and there is no switch in the UEFI/BIOS to change from SATA to PCIe for the Ultra M.2 slot. The shape of the part of an M.2 SSD that goes into the M.2 slot is what tells the board if it is a PCIe or SATA SSD.

You can prove that your SM951 is using the PCIe 3.0 x4 connection by running a benchmark test on it, which should perform well above what a SATA SSD can do. For example, my SM951:



This test is CrystalDiskMark, you can download it free here: http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

You cannot trust all the programs you can find, and notice that Windows 10 cannot tell you what type of SSD the SM951 is. I don't know of any program that will identify PCIe SSDs correctly. They are very new, and really not sold like regular SSDs are. Samsung does not show it among their SSDs on their website, and their own Magician software does not work with the SM951.

You have nothing to worry about, your SM951 is not operating as a SATA SSD.

Thanks for the reply parsec. Yes, for the install I skipped the details. Looking at tweaktown and elsewhere I've seen reference to success getting a system to boot off the M.2 SSD in an Addonics card in a Z97 Express6 (not Z97 Express6/3.1) board, but only after installing what sounds like a beta bios release.  The Express6 and Express6/3.1 boards do not use the same bios so I'm imagining that I also need an update with similar changes that were made for the Express6 board. Make sense?

Yes, I agree that whatever was done for the Extreme6 should also be applied to the code for the Extreme6/3.1. Anyone from ASRock follow these discussions?

parsec wrote: I really think you are being overly concerned about the SM951 throttling. I've used mine for months in the Ultra M.2 slot and it has never throttled. I use mine as an OS drive, and it is at 30C as I write this. I have my monitoring program (HWiNFO) set to display its temperature in red when it reaches 50C, and that has never happened. 50C is well below the throttling temperature of 80C, IIRC.