M.2 SSD on old X58 system with M.2 PCI adaptor. Can it work?

[cucker tarlson]

1. temperatures will be an issue
2. isn't pci-e 2.0 x4 faster than 10GB/s m.2 ?

turbo m.2 (ultra m.2) is 32GB/s, an it's pci-e 3.0 x4. Pci-e 2.0 x4 would be 16GB/s then. 10GB/s is much slower.

Found an interesting post which seems to confirm that

"Hi, I have GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 motherboard (latest bios rev F7) and brand new Samsung 960 Evo which should get read speed close to 3200 MB/s. New drive was installed on this extenstion slot: http://allegro.pl/a2-kontroler-pcie...kMWMzYTgxZjVjMTIzMGI2MzU0ZTZjNzI3NzU1MjAyOQ== which is supposed to support PCI Express x4, V3.0.
After windows 7 installation, all drivers (including Samsung NVMe) and samsung Magician speed is limited to ~1700 MB/s.
Samsung magician report drive being connected using PCIe Gen 2 x4.
Why only PCIe Gen 2 is used at this case? Does this motherboard suppord NVMe drives at PCI-E Gen 3?
I tried to play around with bios options but none seem to help, even disabling XMP, which was described as solution in one thread."


So pci-e 2.0 x4 should give me about 1700MB/s read,which is neat. Note that SATA 6GB/s tops at 550MB/s. A 10GB/s m.2 could not possibly reach 1700MB/s, so it's certain that pci-e 2.0 x4 is faster than 10GB/s m.2


BTW I just learned there's a driver for 960/950 which is supposed to boost performance

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html


even googling it gives a pretty straightforward answer

pci-e 2.0 x4 should provide 60% more bandwidth than 10Gb/s m.2

 

[Tomgang]

hmm yeah i see your point.

And sata 3 is 6 GB/s and around 580 MB/s. so if am on the right side then 10 GB/s will not give you more than around 1000 MB/s in read or write. My point is that if i am correct 1 GB/s is around 100 MB/s. So that means pcie 2 will give you 1600 MB/s more at X4 or less and that is also what i get from PCIe 2 X4 as you can see in my screenshots.

So yeah for max possible speed, PCIe adaptor with X4 it is then.

But i stick to my first comment. If your motherboard support booting from pcie, running Samsung 950 PRO with the same PCIe adaptor i use will work. I mean it work with old X58 that is even older, so why shut it not work on newer teknologi. Go for it. M.2 speed is nice

 

[cucker tarlson]

these drives get horribly hot when not cooled and sitting next to a hot gpu. and why exactly would I skimp on a quality adapter if it sees my temperatures drop and performance increase for a fraction of the price of the drive ?

 

[Aenra]

BTW I just learned there's a driver which is supposed to boost performance

That's not a driver, it's a suite called Samsung Magician; a piece software doing nothing as far as "performance" may be concerned.
Please do not misinform or confuse people.

@Tomgang you missed my point; i think anyway. But if aluminum is good enough for you, it's good enough for me too.

 

[cucker tarlson]

That's not a driver, it's a suite called Samsung Magician; a piece software doing fuck all as far as "performance" may be concerned.
Please do not misinform or confuse people.

@Tomgang you missed my point; i think anyway. But if aluminum is good enough for you, it's good enough for me too.

Scroll down and do not misinform or confuse people who can clearly tell the word "driver" from the words "samsung magician" !!!

http://i.imgur.com/S6Pg53p.jpg

 

[EarthDog]

that driver has been there for quite a while AFAIK... it should be installed by default to have the thing working properly. Technically it does improve performance, but, it brings it up to spec by using the driver you are supposed to install in the first place.

 

[Bg8780]

Hey guys. I'm trying to get a 950 Pro 512gb to work on my EVGA E770 Classified.

I am using an Angelbird PX1 PCIe adapter. The 950 Pro shows up in BIOS but I'm unable to boot to a Windows USB install disk.

Any tips? I've tried the drive in AHCI and IDE mode to no results.

Thanks!

 

[EarthDog]

Is your board able to boot from pcie???

Did you change the boot order to boot from the usb?

What is the actual issue?

 

[Gasaraki]

You can get a M.2 NVMe SSD to boot on a X58 system. I have it set up and running. I have a BPX 512GB NVMe SSD that doesn't have a legacy ROM on it. You have to boot up using UEFI loaded on to a USB stick.

 

[Bg8780]

Is your board able to boot from pcie???

Did you change the boot order to boot from the usb?

What is the actual issue?

I'm not sure if the board can boot from PCI. Would there be any documentation on this from EVGA?

When booting from the USB drive it halts at a light blue screen (not BSOD)

 

[EarthDog]

Try a different port? Rebuilding the image on the usb stick?

 

[Bg8780]

Try a different port? Rebuilding the image on the usb stick?

Already did. I'm not able to get anything to boot up. I've also tried booting into a Macrium Reflect PE. That also halts.

Should I have the drives set as AHCI, IDE or RAID?

 

[trunks9us]

I can confirm that I am also using this as a boot drive and it works great. Thanks for the write up.

 

[Bg8780]

Congrats to those of you to get it working. I've still been failing on my E770 Classified. I'm thinking it just won't work on these EVGA boards. I decided to pick up two 250gb 850 EVO's and run RAID 0 on the Intel SATA 2 Controller

 

[trunks9us]

Congrats to those of you to get it working. I've still been failing on my E770 Classified. I'm thinking it just won't work on these EVGA boards. I decided to pick up two 250gb 850 EVO's and run RAID 0 on the Intel SATA 2 Controller

I am sorry to hear you can't get it working I am using a asus p6x58d-e mobo When I bought this back in 2010 I never thought I would be using it for this 7 years later. I really don't want to upgrade unless I have no choice.

 

[Bg8780]

I am sorry to hear you can't get it working I am using a asus p6x58d-e mobo When I bought this back in 2010 I never thought I would be using it for this 7 years later. I really don't want to upgrade unless I have no choice.

Agreed, I love this platform. I have a 6 core 970 at 4.2ghz under water and a GTX 1080. I score just as high on Firestrike as systems with a 7700k.

My old Mushkin Chronos Deluxe's achieved 550mbps read/write on the Intel ICH controller before one died. I expect these Samsung EVO's to be about the same. I just don't have the time to continue to tinker with this M.2 drive.

 

[EarthDog]

Agreed, I love this platform. I have a 6 core 970 at 4.2ghz under water and a GTX 1080. I score just as high on Firestrike as systems with a 7700k.

because you have more cores....look at your gpu score and compare that. Your card has a glass ceiling with that cpu.

 

[Flaky]

Should I have the drives set as AHCI, IDE or RAID?

This setting is for SATA controller. It has no use here (PCIe drive is not handled by this controller).

You said that the 950pro is detected in bios. Did you mean boot order, or somewhere else?

In general, booting from 950pro and booting the windows installer from usb are two separate things. You may need to try different sticks and different ports (I'd prefer 2.0 ones here).

 

[X58Forever]

Are there any issues installing windows 7 instead of 10?

 

[Tomgang]

Are there any issues installing windows 7 instead of 10?

I dont know for sure, but i dont think there shut be a problem since this is build in the SSD and has nothing to do with windows.

 

[Jetster]

sure it will work

 

[ulises]

Hello,

This is my board card:
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P ( old one )
Of course, i tried to install samsung ssd 960 mven and it did not work obviously.

As I have read it could perfectly work with Samsung 950 Pro NVME ( i have an adapter pci E) that i can buy from a friend but i must be sure it would work fine otherwise i can not give him back. It is difficult to find this SSD 950 in Europe and is is expensive. I can buy it for 100€ a samsung 950 nvme 256go.

I ponder over this hard disk 950 because i use a lot compression and decompression software as winraar, winzip ( big files 4go 40go, 10 go and so on ) and I think pages must be appeared quickly than a standard ssd.

This is the adapter nvme : https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/PCI-...D-Slot-Adapter-For-M-2-PCI-E/32766479188.html

Have you maybe a better idea, another SSD compatible with ma board with similar performaces ?

Thank you for your answers

 

[Flaky]

Having OS running of other drive, the 960 should be visible and usable as a data storage.
What OS are you using? If it's a win7, is it fully updated?

 

[ulises]

Hello,

Thanks for your answer.
Well, the 960 worked as a data storage, no porblem but it did not work as a system ( windows 7 and 10 fully updated) which is obivous as to my board card Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P , too old for SSD mvem.
This is the reason I was looking into the samsung 950

 

[Flaky]

But why do you need the OS on NVMe drive?
Just keep all your data on 960 and do the compression/decompression stuff on it.