Samsung 950 pro compatibility

[JonHewett95]

I'm thinking of buying a 950 pro to use as a boot drive however my system is a couple of years old now. 

Specs;

• i7 4770K
• Asus Z87-A

I think they are the only important specs for this question.

 

Motherboard PCIe support is

 

2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)   (-1  for GPU)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x2 mode) 
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1  
2 x PCI

 

 

 

[paddy-stone]

I assume you mean getting an adaptor card for the M.2 version?  if so, then it would have to go in slot 1 or 2 to use the x4 lanes it needs.

[SaladFingers]

Don't get an NVMe drive to put directly on a Z87 platform. The m.2 slot they use is Gen 1 (x2) so while they will definitely be fast you won't be able to get the full performance out of it (I think it's around 1gb/s maximum?) so not a great value. Some motherboards can't even boot from them, that's also a bummer.

 

I would suggest 2 options, either get that drive and put it in a PCI enclosure, or get a real PCIe SSD. That way you can get full performance, but that will limit what you can do with your PCI (like SLI/CF etc). Also this will for the most part keep your drive cooler.

[JonHewett95]

6 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

I assume you mean getting an adaptor card for the M.2 version?  if so, then it would have to go in slot 1 or 2 to use the x4 lanes it needs.

So the only way to get this working to its full speeds would be to get a new motherboard and skylake chipset? Thanks. I'm not thinking of doing SLI any time soon so I'm fine filling up the other slots. Any suggestions on PCIe SSDs because the ones I find are either adapter cards for m.2 or they're 2x the price of a m.2 SSD. Thanks for your help.

[PrimeSonic]

5 minutes ago, JonHewett95 said:

Any suggestions on PCIe SSDs because the ones I find are either adapter cards for m.2 or they're 2x the price of a m.2 SSD. Thanks for your help.

At the moment, the only worthy PCIe NVMe drives that aren't through adapter cards would be the Intel 750 line.

To compare them to the Samsung 950 PRO in a nutshell. The 950 PRO will have better random 4k performance. The Intel 750 will have better sequential performance.

 

Either way, both are going to be blisteringly fast compare to anything still using any form of SATA.

 

If the 950 PRO is within your budget and you're looking for NVMe performance, an Intel 750 is another solid choice, if not the only other choice at the moment.

[SaladFingers]

7 minutes ago, JonHewett95 said:

So the only way to get this working to its full speeds would be to get a new motherboard and skylake chipset? Thanks. I'm not thinking of doing SLI any time soon so I'm fine filling up the other slots. Any suggestions on PCIe SSDs because the ones I find are either adapter cards for m.2 or they're 2x the price of a m.2 SSD. Thanks for your help.

I'm not very up to date with these, but last time I checked Intel had some great choices, though pricey. An adapter card would work perfectly fine though since you don't need the extra slots.

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, JonHewett95 said:

So the only way to get this working to its full speeds would be to get a new motherboard and skylake chipset? Thanks. I'm not thinking of doing SLI any time soon so I'm fine filling up the other slots. Any suggestions on PCIe SSDs because the ones I find are either adapter cards for m.2 or they're 2x the price of a m.2 SSD. Thanks for your help.

OK, I think you got confused there. As the others suggested above, there are PCI-e NVME cards out there. But for the samsung 950 pro there is only the option of using a PCI-e M.2 adaptor to put the M.2 card in for you at the moment with your motherboard. You don't have to get a new motherboard or CPU at all, you can either get the 950 pro M.2 card with a pci-e adaptor card too and that will fill a x16 pci-e slot on your mobo and run at x4. Or get a different Pci-e card like the intel 750 to also fill a x16 slot on your mobo.

[JonHewett95]

3 minutes ago, SaladFingers said:

I'm not very up to date with these, but last time I checked Intel had some great choices, though pricey. An adapter card would work perfectly fine though since you don't need the extra slots.

 

3 minutes ago, PrimeSonic said:

At the moment, the only worthy PCIe NVMe drives that aren't through adapter cards would be the Intel 750 line.

To compare them to the Samsung 950 PRO in a nutshell. The 950 PRO will have better random 4k performance. The Intel 750 will have better sequential performance.

 

Either way, both are going to be blisteringly fast compare to anything still using any form of SATA.

 

If the 950 PRO is within your budget and you're looking for NVMe performance, an Intel 750 is another solid choice, if not the only other choice at the moment.

 

Thank you both, going might get an intel 750 series PCIe, since when I eventually upgrade my system I can keep that.