M.2, Brute?

[JerryC]

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience to share concerning the M.2 formfactor SSD drives. I'm looking to replace a failed Samscum SSD drive, and since my mobo has an M.2 Sata 3 slot, I thought I might pick up one of these stick drives. A local computer outlet has a Crucial 1TB M.2 for $259 right now, which seems a pretty good deal being that some of the them i've seen are going for close to $700.

One of my concerns is if this drive will be bootable, as I would like to use it as my OS/program drive.

[buzz456]

"CHECK FOR BOOTABILITY. If you're installing an M.2 in a desktop board for the first time, verify with the board maker that an M.2 SSD of the bus type you are considering will be bootable. Though unlikely, a BIOS upgrade may be necessary."

From a article I read recently.

[JerryC]

Well, since no one seems to have any real experience with these things, i'll pull the trigger.

First off, let's wax a little nostalgic here and look how hard drive technology has evolved over about the last 25 years. I usually don't throw hard drives away, whether they are mine or i've salvaged them out of someone else's dead system, so i've got a bit of a museum collection. From left to right; 1.) Circa 1993, a Conner 120MB hard drive. Still has a working copy of Windows 3.1 on it; 2.) A 40GB Seagate Parallel ATA drive with a nice rubber jacket; 3.) A Maxtor 1TB Serial ATA, my first SATA; 4.) A Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD, it turned into a paperweight thirty days after purchase; 5.) A Samsung 950 Pro M.2 PCIe drive, my latest victim.

DSC_0198[1].jpg

I decided to get an M.2 because one of my other drives, a Seagate 1500, is not long for this world. The M.2 form factor is intriguing because you get a good bit of storage in a space about the size of a stick of gum. They are even smaller than memory modules. However in my experience there are a few caveats:

- What kind of M.2 slot is this? As it turns out, there are two types of M.2 drive interfaces, SATA and PCIe. The SATA maxes out at SATA speeds, about 510 Mbps, while the PCIe can get up to 2500 Mbps or more. You need to make sure what type of M.2 slot is available on your board before you buy. Newer boards may allow either SATA or PCIe - drive stick connectors for both are the same. However, my board was created when the M.2 technology spec was still being written, so it only uses the PCIe type of drive.

- Chipsets Matter. My motherboard is a Z97-A and has a chipset that supports the older Haswell 5th gen processors. Unfortunately this means that the M.2 drive will not live up to it's full potential, as the board can only handle 2x bandwidth through the PCIe bus. Newer chipsets can give 4x lanes so the drive can run full speed. I looked into a newer motherboard, but as it turns out, my board and proc are on the upper end of the Haswell specs, and is the cut-off point for DDR3 memory. So to upgrade, I would have to upgrade to a board with a new socket, which would also mean a new processor and memory. Not an economical upgrade for just two more bandwidth lanes. I am quite happy and sure that my 4Mhz Proc and 32GB of RAM will be able to power my endeavors for the next few years despite their "obsolescence".

- Price. M.2's are pricier than their SSD form counterparts, and PCIe's are even more expensive. However, I found an open-box deal at the local computer hardware store and was able to save $80 and still get the same manufacturers warranty. I swore that I would never buy another Samsung anything, but hey, $80 is good beer money!

- I Went Deaf. Unfortunately, I found after installing this little trinket that when I switched on the M.2, I lost my other PCIe slots, and therefore lost the sound card that was plugged into them. This is also a known issue on the SATA versions of M.2 for this mobo. I can still switch over to the onboard audio.

Installing the M.2 for me was a bit tricky, but nothing anyone familiar with computer innards can't handle. You slide the connector end into the slot, then screw down the other end to the riser. My mobo had riser space for a 2280 (22mm x 80mm) and 2260 (22mm x 60mm) drives. The only problems stemmed from the lack of space inside the case. I had to take out the sound card and removed the video card just to get to the M.2 slot. Being that it was so tight a space, and the fact that I have facehugger-like meat hooks meant it took a while to get the riser and the installation screw where they were supposed to be.

DSC_0208[1].jpg

Upon firing up the computer, I went into the UEFI BIOS. For my mobo, there was a simple toggle under the Advanced Options header to switch from PCIe to M.2 for the slot. After saving the BIOS setting, I booted into Windows with the old drive. The M.2 showed up in Windows as a blank drive. Out of habit, I did a quick format to brink it into the NTSF fold. I then downloaded and ran the Samsung Magician software. This is a great and simple piece that will allow you to do diagnostics on your Samsung drives. It also allows cloning, which I did for my OS, transferring all of my stuff from my overly-stuffed 240GB Corsair Force 3 drive to the new M.2. drive.

Once the drive cloning was done (the Magician software even assigned the new drive the "C:" letter), I rebooted back into the BIOS and set the boot drive to the M.2 drive. Wallah, that's it, i'm back in business. It wasn't hard at all.

Now for performance. As I said, M.2 PCI drives are blazing fast - if your motherboard and chipset supports it. First through the Samsung Magician software lets take a look at the throughput speeds for a regular SSD.

850EVO SSD Performance copy.jpg

As you can see, performance for the M.2 is still much faster than a platter drive, but in this case it is only 300 Mbps faster than a SATA SSD. It's performance is being throttled by the mobo chipset. If and when this drive makes it to my next computer build, it will be a data transfer monster!

950 PRO M2 Performance.jpg

[buzz456]

As a aside you do realize that your dead 850 was still under warranty right?

[JerryC]

Yes, but i'm still experimenting with it. I'm fairly certain that the drive controller is bad. As you can see from the Samsung software shot that I took that the drive will show up in system on occasion. However, when you reboot it will disappear. You have to disconnect and reconnect the SATA and power cable to get it to reinitialize. When you can get it to show up, you cannot write to it. That causes it to immediately disappear from the system. I was able to do a quick-format on it, but until i'm sure the drive is securely erased it won't be going out for repairs.

[peterhayes]

Jerry
I have an early M.2 board and had a lot of issues with the M2 slot as you describe. In the end I purchased an M2 to PCIe adapter - installed the m2 SSD it in a spare PCIe slot and everything worked fine! Just a thought!
pH

[JerryC]

Good catch, PH. I did mis-speak a bit though about the M.2 / PCIe issue. Upon further reading, it's not a problem with the motherboard as much as it is a setting. The toggle allows either PCIe port on or M.2 on, but not both at the same time. You can chose either with the BIOS setting. Given that I already have pretty good onboard audio, i'll simply give up the PCIe Soundblaster card. The only capability i'll be losing is "What-u-hear" recording. I can move the card to my testing computer for that.

And, an update on 850EVO. I finally got it to stay connected long enough to long-format the drive, then security wipe it through FreeDOS. Tomorrow I being the battle with Samsung for an RMA.

[GSkid]

BTW.... just saw your SSD thread.

I was thinking of getting two Samsung 512GB 950 Pro SSDs for my new laptop I want to buy. I not only want them for their blazing PCIe speeds.... I also want their longer MLC write endurance. They should last 2x-3x longer than the TLC equipped EVO series.

Putting the two 950 Pros in RAID-0 for the extra speed is tempting, but if one drive messes up.... I'm screwed. Putting them in RAID-1 would be more easy to swallow if these 950 Pro drives weren't so much money. That's a very expensive backup drive. To me it just makes more sense to back them up manually to the much cheaper ($20) 1TB 7200rpm HDD that comes with the laptop.

So how is TS2017 with the 950 Pro drive? Is there still a perceivable stutter when it's loading a new terrain tile in the sim?

UPDATE:

Okay...... I just found out that the brand new Samsung 960 Pro SSD is about to be released in mid to late November. It uses their new 48-layer 256Gbit MLC V-NAND chips Vs. the 950 Pro's 32-layer 128Gbit MLC V-NAND chips. Also.. while the 950 Pro's UBX controller has an ARM 3-core chip, the 960 Pro's new Polaris controller has an ARM 5-core chip and now dedicates one core for communication with the host system.

The 512GB 960 Pro performance increase over the 512GB 950 Pro as a result?

Sequential Read: 3500MB/s Vs. 2500MB/s.
Sequential Write: 2100 MB/s Vs. 1500MB/s
4kB Random Read (QD1): 14k IOPS Vs. 12k IOPS
4kB Random Write (QD1): 50k IOPS Vs. 43k IOPS
4kB Random Read (QD32): 330k IOPS Vs. 300k IOPS
4kB Random Write (QD32): 330k IOPS Vs. 110k IOPS
Read Power: 5.1W Vs. 5.7W (average)
Write Power: 4.7W Vs. 5.7W (average)
Endurance: 400TB Vs. 400TB
Warranty: 5 Year Vs. 5 Year

And... it's going to be about the same price as the current 950 Pro. I just live chatted with the place I want to get my laptop from. They said they should be hopefully offering the 960 Pro option in the next month or so. So I'll wait until I can get it. If not....I'll install it later. Samsung will be offering it in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. Sweet!

[JerryC]

So how is TS2017 with the 950 Pro drive? Is there still a perceivable stutter when it's loading a new terrain tile in the sim?

I haven't seen a terrain-border stutter in years. Those disappeared when I got my first SSD drive, a Corsair Force 3 Red on the SATA III interface. If your M.2 is getting the real deal 3000Mbps read rate, you shouldn't be seeing that kind of stutter at all. But then again, as with all computers, there are other factors to consider, such as memory and graphics card. Sounds though like it's going to be a doozie of a laptop!

[AmericanSteam]

So how is TS2017 with the 950 Pro drive? Is there still a perceivable stutter when it's loading a new terrain tile in the sim?

I haven't seen a terrain-border stutter in years. Those disappeared when I got my first SSD drive, a Corsair Force 3 Red on the SATA III interface. If your M.2 is getting the real deal 3000Mbps read rate, you shouldn't be seeing that kind of stutter at all. But then again, as with all computers, there are other factors to consider, such as memory and graphics card. Sounds though like it's going to be a doozie of a laptop!

I know it has been a while, did you get the M.2 and did you see any improvement? I put on in my desktop and run both TS and TSW on it. I will get 3.5+ MB/s on TSW. Monitored with task manager. I am getting write speeds of 3.20MB/s.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

I know it has been a while, did you get the M.2 and did you see any improvement? I put on in my desktop and run both TS and TSW on it. I will get 3.5+ MB/s on TSW. Monitored with task manager. I am getting write speeds of 3.20MB/s.

I suppose you meant GB/s?

I have a 1 TB 961 which is the cheaper OEM version in my VR rig. It is fast, but as usual after a few days of use, "why can't this thing go any faster", thoughts crop up, LOL.

What I don't like about M.2 is the location of the slot directly above the main GPU card. My VR rig runs a 1080TI and despite adequate circulation, on die temperatures rise up to 180 F and the metal backplate of the card also radiates lots of heat. The OEM version of the 960 series doesn't allow monitoring, because when the SSD gets too hot, it will start to throttle. Perhaps the SSD picks up heat radiated from the graphics card, being so close above it?

So for future storage updates I think I still will be using SATA SSD's, as their performance in actual practice doesn't differ that much from a M2 SSD.

Perhaps those really fast M2 SSD are more meant for professional heavy duty data center servers?

[AmericanSteam]

You definitely need to keep the box cool for these. I have three 6" fans, two 4 1/2 fans as well as the CPU cooler radiator (two) fans. All drives stay about 32°C as well as the MB and M.2. The CPU and GPU will run at around 52°C when running TSW and slightly lower when running TS2017.