Samsung Pro 950 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

MSI Z170A Gaming M7 – Z170 Chipset
Intel Core i5 6600K (3.5Ghz) Quad Core 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GSKill TridentZ PC4-27700 8GB DDR4 (16-18-18-38)
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1

Storage Tested
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 256GB NVMe SSD - MZ-V5P256BW

Reference Storage
HyperX Predator M.2 240GB PCIe SSD – SHPM2280P2H

I couldn’t get any Crystal Disk Info from the Samsung drive and I suspect the software didn’t know what to look for.  In fact not only did I have to flash the BIOS on my MSI Gaming 7 to fully use the drive but needed to do some driver wizardry to even get Windows 7 installed.

The important thing to remember is that this particular drive may not be supported on your motherboard and it is up to the motherboard maker to provide the proper BIOS updates.  As we all know some mfgs are better than others when it comes to issuing updates to their “EOL” products so keep that in mind when making a purchase. 

For the benchmarks I choose to give a mix of synthetic and real world tests that are both repeatable and should provide a good basis for comparison.  The problem is knowing exactly what people are looking for when choosing a storage solution.  While some sites might go into the timing ticks of the individual NAND chips or latency of the controller I find that to be a little too technical.  (says the reviewer who benchmarks CPUs down to the thousands of a second)

Bottom line, the format may change let me know what you would like to see.