X99 Taichi: does it support Samsung Pro 850/950

Kayron wrote: Hello, I want to build a system and use a Samsung Pro 850 or 950 256 GB SSD as a boot drive with this motherboard... But looking at the x99 Taichi's  list of supported storage it has limited support for this brand: http://www.asrock.nl/mb/Intel/X99%20Taichi/#Storage (only sm 951 and xp 941 supported). Is this a case of lazy updating or am I going to have to look for another board? For that matter, I also noticed a bunch of mainstream RAM that weren't listed as supported...

First, I'm surprised that the Samsung 850 Pro, a standard SATA SSD, would be questioned about its compatibility. I could not name one SATA SSD or HDD that is not compatible with any modern mother board, if my life depended upon it.

I must say that the ASRock Storage QVL list for the X99 Taichi might give the impression that only a handful of SATA SSDs are compatible, since the number of SATA SSDs in the list is tiny compared to the number of SATA SSDs that exist currently. The incomplete nature of the M.2 SSD list could give a similar impression. The complete omission of PCIe slot interface SSDs like the Intel 750, or the U.2 physical interface of a variant of the Intel 750, both of which I personally use in my ASRock X99 Extreme6/3.1 board, also makes this QVL incomplete. It seems this list may be doing more of a disservice to those that check it, than its intended purpose.

But in both cases, all we need to concern ourselves with are the interfaces involved. If a mother board provides the type of interface that a storage drive requires, then it will be compatible.

SATA is the most common storage drive interface used and provided by PC mother boards. If a drive is a SATA drive, it is compatible with any mother board that provides a SATA interface. The X99 Taichi board provides ten Intel SATA III ports, six of which support Intel's IRST RAID. All of the SATA III ports are provided by the board's Intel X99 chipset SATA controller.

I have numerous SATA III and older SATA II SSDs, none of which are included in the Storage QVL. Since they are all SATA SSDs, they are completely compatible. Frankly, I don't own even one of the SATA SSDs included in the Storage QVL.

SATA support continues on the M.2 ports/slots, since we can find SATA M.2 SSDs in the Storage QVL. If one SATA M.2 SSD is supported, they are all supported.

Next we find PCIe and PCIe3 x4 in the Interface column. That may be confusing, since we don't find NVMe as an interface type, which we can see next to the SSD's model number in the Part No. column. There are several PCIe SSDs that are not NVMe, but also not SATA, since they use the PCIe interface. Those PCIe SSDs actually use the MSoft inbox SATA AHCI driver, with their own built in controller.

PCIe NVMe SSDs also have a built in NVMe controller, which is a new type of controller and interface, unrelated to SATA. If a mother board provides a PCIe interface, and provides NMVe support, as the X99 Taichi board does, they any NVMe SSD will be compatible, including the 950 Pro.

I've used, and currently use Samsung 950 Pros with my ASRock X99 and Z170 boards, and DeskMini 110W PCs as the OS drives. I also use a Samsung AHCI SM951 and Intel 750 and 600p NVMe SSDs with those boards or PCs. Forgot to mention the OCZ RD400 I picked up, just to see how it is, and get an M.2 to PCIe slot adapter card as part of the deal.

As you can tell, I'm an SSD enthusiast. I have never had a SATA or PCIe SSD that is not compatible with a mother board that provides the appropriate interface to the drive. That is what we need to check to determine compatibility, the appropriate interface.

The X99 Taichi board provides SATA, PCIe, and PCIe NVMe interfaces. The 850 Pro and 950 Pro will work perfectly as the OS drives with this board.

Kayron wrote: An amazing reply, now going to decide between the x99 Taichi and the Fatality x99 Professional Gaming i7.  Thank you for the thorough reply.

Thanks for your kind words!

Those two boards are very similar, the Fatal1ty X99 Professional Gaming i7 has a few more gaming oriented features some people might find useful.

If you are planning to use multiple video cards in SLI or CrossFireX, and use a PCIe SSD in the M.2 slot(s), be sure your CPU has enough PCIe 3.0 lanes. The 5820K and 6800K processors have 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes, while the more expensive models have 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The M.2 slots will use four PCIe 3.0 lanes for each M.2 SSD like a 950 Pro.

So two video cards with a 28 PCIe lane processor would run at: First card at x16, the second card at x8, leaving x4 for one 950 Pro. A 40 PCIe lane processor provides more flexibility.

Another important thing, both of these new boards support Broadwell-E HEDT processors right out of their boxes. Earlier X99 boards require a UEFI/BIOS update before a Broadwell-E processor will work in them, and the UEFI update must be done with a Haswell-E processor in the board.

One more question... is there a similar room for improvisation with ddr4 RAM, meaning they haven't done much to keep that list updated either?

Xaltar wrote: As a general rule, always check the RAM's product page for compatibility. While motherboard manufacturers do not update QvL lists all that often, RAM manufactures test each new model and provide compatibility lists for it. It makes sense, new RAM models come out all the time.