Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 512GB SSD Review

Samsung introduced the SM951 last July during its annual SSD Global Summit in South Korea. Today we're running the drive through our benchmark suite to see if it lives up to the hype.

By Chris Ramseyer
published

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PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

This is our first set of tests with real software traces, which will show us the small differences between SSDs in the wild, outside of contrived benchmarks. The greatest performance increase you'll see from a single component comes from swapping out mechanical storage in favor of an SSD. As long as your drive of choice is reliable, the difference between one SSD and another is fairly small under normal consumer workloads.

Service Times

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Samsung's SM951 512GB shaves time off of most tests compared to existing PCIe-based M.2 SSDs. Still, the differences are small when we break them down into individual tasks.

Throughput

A second here, a second there; it all adds up. The throughput rating comes from the tests above, showing the SM951's significant performance increase.

Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
51 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blackmagnum
    This is an awesome upgrade for some Macbook Air/Pro users, but just wait until Intel shows their product... and will there be any hardware compatibility issues with DIY upgrades?
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    I'm disappointed the promised NVMe support did not materialize. But I guess Samsung is saving that for later retail products. Can't argue with the performance though, this is by far the fastest consumer SSD around.
    Reply
  • Memory Ever
    May I know the model and nae of the PCIe adapter you used in the tests???
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    No 1TB edition? Fail.
    Reply
  • tom10167
    I wish they'd put an 840 or 850 pro in the comparison just to give us a better sense of scale. This drive is incredible, though, and $550 for a 512GB cutting edge drive is not terrible!
    Reply
  • mapesdhs
    The Power Restricted Performance graph is stupid. Please stopping using
    graphs with origins that don't start at zero - the visual graphic impact is
    totally meaningless.

    Ian.

    Reply
  • jeffunit
    You might want to fix the labels of your graphs. Latency in seconds? One chart shows a write speed of about 80 gigabytes per second.
    Reply
  • liquidpower
    I also wished they put a 850 pro in the charts to see the jump from the fastest sata to the PCIe-based M.2
    Reply
  • maestro0428
    You can purchase these at newegg.com in the Enterprise SSD section. I want one!
    Reply
  • generalsheep
    Is this little bastard bootable,so i can use it as my maindrive?
    Reply