Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 – Hitting 4.5GB/s

By Nathan Kirsch April 19, 2015

The Intel X99 Based Test System

Before we look at the numbers, lets take a brief look at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh UEFI mode installation of Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. This means windows defender, windows update, disk fragmentation and everything else that would interfere with testing was disabled. Windows 8.1 also had the power option set to high performance. We also disabled Turbo mode on the Intel Core i7-5960X to ensure our numbers are spot on and repeatable.

The Intel X99 platform that we used to test the M.2 PCIe SSD was based around the ASUS X99 Sabertooth motherboard with BIOS 1702 that came out on 04/15/2015. We used Intel RST storage drivers, the exact version was 13.1.0.1058. The Crucial Ballistix DDR4 32GB 2400MHz memory kit was run at 2666MHz with 15-15-15-28 1T memory timings. A Corsair Neutron XT 240GB SSD was used as the primary boot drive.

We tested with the Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD in a pair of ASUS Hyper M.2 x4 HHHL adapters. We inserted that adapters into the second and third PCI Express Gen 3.0 x16 slots and activated the drive in disk management. After assigning it a drive letter we performed a quick format with all the default settings. We then placed a 120mm fan across both ASUS Hyper M.2 cards to keep the cards from overheating as we know they like to throttle when overheated.

Intel X99 Test Bench

Intel LGA2011-v3 Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Core i7-5960X	Click Here
Motherboard	ASUS X99 Deluxe	Click Here
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Elite 2666MHz 16GB DDR4	Click Here
Video Card	ASUS GeForce GTX 960	Click Here
Hard Drive	Corsair Neutron XT 240GB SSD	Click Here
Cooling	Corsair H105	Click Here
Keyboard	Corsair K95	Click Here
Mouse	Corsair M95	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair AX860i	Click Here
Operating System	Windows 8.1 64-Bit	Click Here

CrystalDiskInfo 6.3.2 Readout:

Looking at the detailed information in CrystalDiskInfo 6.3.0 we find that S.M.A.R.T., NCQ and TRIM are enabled. The firmware version that we are running at the time of testing was BXW2500Q.

Let’s have a look at the performance!