Samsung XP941 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD Mini Review

By Nathan Kirsch

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

Samsung XP941 PCIe SSD MZHPU256HCGL

After reading about and trying out the Samsung XP941 M.2 PCIe SSD we can confirm that the these drives are hyped up for good reason. The Samsung XP941 is the fastest SSD available on the market and we were impressed by the real world performance numbers that we were seeing with the XP941 as the primary drive on a Windows 8.1 platform. We are looking into picking up one of these drives for fresh out of the box testing on an Intel Z97 platform. We have learned that many of the Intel 9-series boards have M.2 slots that don’t support PCIe SSD booting. The only board that we heard this is bootable in without any adapters is the ASRock Z97 Extreme6, which makes sense as that board was specifically built to support PCIe Gen3 x4 and the storage drive is directly connected to the CPU. There are also reports that the TRIM command is not properly being passed through the chipset, so that is another concern that warrants a closer look. Once more controllers and drives come out we expect to see Intel, AMD and motherboard makers to offer better support. The LSI SF-3700 controller series is due out later this year (or early 2015 if they miss that date) and will be the first mainstream controller that supports PCIe 2.0 x4. That is the only competition for the Samsung XP941 when it comes to controllers, so it looks like Samsung has the enthusiast market for M.2 PCIe drives wrapped up for many more months.

The Samsung XP941 was originally released as an OEM SSD, but they are being sold by companies as replacement parts. RamCity offers the drives for the prices below plus $29 for overseas shipping. You can also pick up a Lycom M.2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 adapter from RamCity for $24 that allows you to connect one of these drives to pretty much any platform that has an open PCIe x4 slot. They also have Bplus adapters that have heatsinks on them for around $60, which might not be a bad idea as this PCIe SSD does get pretty warm and uses about 5 Watts of power at load.

The M.2 PCIe SSDs is hands down the most exciting area for SSD and storage enthusiasts right now. The Samsung XP941 is a very interesting product due to the fact that it is the fastest consumer SSD in the world. If you want to be on the cutting edge of storage devices the Samsung XP941 is where you need to be looking!

Legit Bottom Line: The Samsung XP941 is the drive to own if you are wanting to get the most from your M.2 socket!