Samsung SM951 M.2 slot or PCI-e Slot

Brighttail · Apr 11, 2015

Hi there,

I just purchased one of the Samsung SM951 M.2 SSDs from Ramcity in Australia. While I'm waiting for it to be shipped I've been trying to find out some information of where on my motherboard I should put it.

I am using an Asus X99 Rampage Extreme motherboard. It states that its M.2 slot runs at x4 speed and of course shares the band width with the PCI-e x4 slot at the bottom of the board. I have been using the XP 941 M.2 SSD with a heatsink in the PCI-e x4 slot due to the fact the XP 941 gets so hot. This apparently is not the case with the SM 951.

I have been reading in a few reviews that their tests find that the M.2 slot is faster than the PCI-e x4 slot and I was wondering about the truth of these statements or if it made sense. Some will suggest I plug it into both and test it but my system is water-cooled and the m.2 slot is well hidden behind the reservoir at the moment, so it would be a pain to get to.

So I'm asking thoughts and opinions and / or if anyone has tested one of these or the XP 941's in the actual M.2 slots on a x99 rampage extreme?

tical2399 · Apr 11, 2015

Brighttail :

I have my xp 941 in the m.2 slot. People talk about heat, but my 980 is in the top slot and the m.2 port is in the middle of the board, so no issues. Maybe if you sli or something you might have an issue, but for single card, I go m.2 slot.

Brighttail · Apr 11, 2015

I do SLI but I also am water cooling so the heat from the GPUs are not an issue. I have just seen people take the temps at full load and they were over 100c!

That being said the original reason I opted for the PCIx4 slot was that my original motherboard, the X97 Forumla coudln't fit an 80mm M.2 drive. I have since upgraded to the x99 Rampage which does.

tical2399 · Apr 11, 2015

Brighttail :

But those test are also moving gigs and gigs at at time. I've seen test on the 941 where it got alot hotter than the plextor m6e pcie 2x2 drive, but it was finished so much faster that it was under load for far less time. The 951 should be somewhere near twice as fast as that which would reduced time under load even more. I'd put the 951 in the m.2 slot but thats just me.

Brighttail · Apr 11, 2015

Fair enough. I'll be using it as a boot drive so other than the original install and patching a few games i'll be running on it, there shouldn't be massive amounts of gigs running through it at extended periods of time.

I think i'll give the m.2 slot a shot and use the pci-e x4 card with the xp941 i'm replacing in another computer.

Too bad you can't run m.2 in RAID

Brighttail · Apr 11, 2015

tical2399 :

Brighttail :

But those test are also moving gigs and gigs at at time. I've seen test on the 941 where it got alot hotter than the plextor m6e pcie 2x2 drive, but it was finished so much faster that it was under load for far less time. The 951 should be somewhere near twice as fast as that which would reduced time under load even more. I'd put the 951 in the m.2 slot but thats just me.

My original question still stands tho, will there be any difference in speed between the M.2 slot and the PCI-e x4 slot?

tical2399 · Apr 11, 2015

Brighttail :

tical2399 :

My original question still stands tho, will there be any difference in speed between the M.2 slot and the PCI-e x4 slot?

Nope. 4x is 4x no matter the interface

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Samsung SM951 M.2 slot or PCI-e Slot

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