Z97 Extreme6/Samsung EVO 960 SSD

Will the Z97 Extreme6 MB allow the SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 250GB NVMe to run at rated speed (x4)? I have set the BIOS to use SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 for the drive. Anything else I need to do?

Getting a little smarter, I think. The "Force M.2" BIOS setting pertains to the "General" M.2 slot and has nothing to do with the Ultra M.2 slot? Therefore, since I'm installing a Samsung 960 in the Ultra Slot I can still use SATA_3_4 and SATA_3_5 for standard drives? Will the 960 installed in the Ultra Slot steal lanes to the cpu from the video card?

Is there a write up somewhere that explains what ASRock is doing on the Z97 Extreme6 MB to make all this happen?

I found a reasonably good write up on the Z97 Extreme MB and it explained what was going on with the Ultra port.

I now have the Samsung EVO 960 installed in the Ultra Slot and the benchmark programs all say it is very fast - although not as fast as several people have posted. I assume the old Z97 Extreme6/4790K is not quite as fast as the newer MB's and processors? Also, as expected the boot time improvement compared to the SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD is hardly noticeable - maybe 1 or 2 seconds faster at best.

One thing I don't understand is why the Samsung EVO 960 does not show up in the BIOS Advanced>Storage Configuration>M2_1 or M2_2 entries. The entries show "Not Detected" and yet the Hard Drive Boot Priorities shows the Samsung drive and allows it to boot W10 OK?




Edited by Ken429 - 04 Mar 2017 at 5:38pm