Samsung 950 Pro / GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 [SOLVED]

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

[SOLVED] MicroSoft has a hotfix for Win7 and Server 2008 that incorporates NVMe support. I installed it, cloned my RAID 0 boot drive over and it works like a charm.

For the life of me I cannot find any information or instructions to help me to get this to work. The MoBo recognizes the M.2 SSD but Win 7 does not.

Relevant specs?

Win 7 Home Premium
GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 / BIOS updated to current F7
i7 4790K
Samsung 950 Pro 256GB

Gigabyte and Samsung manuals are useless. FAQ's do not have any relevant information. I have tried to adapt information on MSI and ASUS MoBo implementations to no avail. Please help.

2

Drivers .. you need to install your chipset drivers or AHCI drivers in the beginning of the install. that or go to a later version of windows that sees it out of the box. i.e Windows 8 or 10 .. If you are already on 7 make sure youve grabbed all the drivers for your board and if you can source them from the original manufacturer of the chipset.

3

No this one isn't the drivers. The motherboard does not support the nvme standard, so this setup will not work.

4

Shit I forgot the 950 is the NVME drive.. damn.. well that kinda sucks

5

The Z97X-Gaming 5 does not have the support in the bios to run the 950 pro ssd. Only certain Z97 boards support the drive correctly, such as the AsRock Extreme 6 and 9. The Asus boards have been patched to support the standard, and I believe the Msi have as well. No boards except the Extreme 6 and 9 from AsRock have the Pcie 3.0 M.2 x4 connector that allows the drive to operate at full capacity. All other boards, from Asus, Msi, Gigabyte, and other AsRock boards have a M.2 slot that is wired at M.2 2.0 by 2, but the drive requires M.2 pcie 3.0 by 4 to operate at its fullest capacity. If the drive is ran in a rev. 2 by 2, it is bottlenecked down to 700mbps read and 700mbps write. So, my recommendation is either to get an adapter to run the drive at full m.2 pcie 3.0 by 4 AND a compatible motherboard, such as the Asus Z97-A, OR grab an AsRock Extreme 6.

Bottom line is that your current board will not be able to run the drive, and that a recommendation to get it running from me is the AsRock Extreme 6. I run this board with the previous generation of the NvME ssd from Samsung, the SM951. Its a great combo.

6

Eh.

That does not explain why the mobo sees the drive. I would not be surprised at all if the 950 pro could work as an ahci drive.

I am not totally sure how this works, but if I disable the NVME module in the linux kernel, I can still use it on my 950 pro just fine. Even if I disable NVME in the bios, I can still use the drive.

I would be very interested to see if using windows 10 would not remedy the problem.

7

I tried to install windows on the SM951 on a bios version that I didn't know didn't include NvME support and it just would not work no matter how much I tried. CSM had to be disabled or the system wouldn't even boot, but from there the drive could be seen in the bios but nothing would install to it.

8

Windows 8.1 installer has nvme support, win7 doesnt. Tried that in the past and had to order f win 8.1 to get my ssds running. Also I have no problem booting nvme (intel one) on motherboard that doesnt have official support (x79 chipset), the only issue is that its recognised by bios as pata drive hehe but works like a charm.

9

You may not have given me the precise information that I needed but it was driver related.
I downloaded a MS NVMe hotfix that sorted everything out. Boot drive has been cloned and is now operational.
When you said drivers it sent me down the correct path. Thank you for the prompt reply.

10

@thecaveman seems it was drivers.. well Good Im glad that worked

11

The problem was with Windows, I have installed a MS hotfix and it is working correctly. Regarding the bottleneck issue I may purchase a PCIe adapter in the future but it is working now. Thank you for your input.

12

MS NVMe hotfix sorted out the problem. Not going to WinX any time soon.

13

Ah, well there ya go.

I figured it had to be software. If your bios sees it, your mobo can use it.

It might not be as fast as advertised, but it should still work.

14

Nope, to get full capability I'll need a PCIe adapter. Current scores are not bad though and will hold me over for a couple weeks XD

CrystalDiskMark 5.1.0 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

  • MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
  • KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 850.093 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 793.041 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 748.490 MB/s [182736.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 327.864 MB/s [ 80044.9 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 785.037 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 749.137 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 50.588 MB/s [ 12350.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 207.909 MB/s [ 50759.0 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB C: 28.7% (68.3/238.4 GiB) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2015/12/24 16:33:45
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 6.1 Build 7601

15

Tomorrow I'm getting one of these:


To try to keep my SM951 cool, and if its good I'll report back. (I've got some copper heatsinks as well :)

16

I look forward to the feedback. Thank you.

17

Glad to see this drive works well since I have the same motherboard ;)

18

Sooooo yeah the adapter was doa... no matter what I did, the drive would not be detected in the bios, so R.I.P...

20

So this arrived in the mail http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S5M36J2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01

Installed in a PCIe x4 slot and it works great.

Samsung 950Pro in the M.2 slot CrystalMark scores.

CrystalDiskMark 5.1.0 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 850.093 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 793.041 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 748.490 MB/s [182736.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 327.864 MB/s [ 80044.9 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 785.037 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 749.137 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 50.588 MB/s [ 12350.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 207.909 MB/s [ 50759.0 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB C: 28.7% (68.3/238.4 GiB) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2015/12/24 16:33:45
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 6.1 Build 7601

And Samsung 950Pro in the PCIe x4 slot

CrystalDiskMark 5.1.0 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1664.940 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 962.849 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 773.641 MB/s [188877.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 334.563 MB/s [ 81680.4 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1531.145 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 963.601 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 50.300 MB/s [ 12280.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 241.129 MB/s [ 58869.4 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB C: 24.0% (57.3/238.4 GiB) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/07 14:52:33
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 6.1 Build 7601