Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

We got our hands on an NVMe SM951! How does it stack up?

Introduction:

There's been a lot of recent talk about the Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD. It was supposed to launch as an NVMe product, but ended up coming out in AHCI form. We can only assume that Samsung chose to hold back on their NVMe-capable iteration because many devices are unable to boot fron an NVMe SSD. Sitting back for a few months was a wise choice in this case, as an NVMe-only version would limit the OEM products that could equip it. That new variant did finally end up launching, and we have rounded it and the other Samsung M.2 PCIe SSDs up for some much awaited testing:

I'll be comparing the three above units against some other PCIe SSDs, including the Intel SSD 750, Kingston HyperX Predator, G.Skill Phoenix Blade, Plextor M6e Black, and more!

Continue reading our review of these hot new M.2 products!

Specifications:

These are all OEM products, but here are some specs from various sources:

XP941 (source):

  • Form Factor: M.2 2280
  • Capacity (GB): 128, 256, 512
  • Host Interface: PCI-Express 2.0 x4
  • MTBF: 1.5 Million Hours
  • Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER): < 1 sector per 1015 bits read
  • Power Consumption (Active/Idle): 5.8W / 80mW
  • Peak Read Sequential Performance: Up to 1170 MB/s
  • Peak Write Sequential Performance: Up to 930 MB/s
  • Peak Random Performance Reads: Up to 122k IOPS
  • Peak Random Performance Writes: Up to 72k IOPS
  • Physical Dimesions: 22 x 80 x 4 mm
  • Weight: 8.5g

SM951 (AHCI) (source):

  • Form Factor: M.2 2280
  • Capacity (GB): 128, 256, 512
  • Host Interface: PCI-Express 3.0 x4
  • Controller: Samsung UBX 3-Core
  • Flash: Samsung 16nm MLC
  • Power Consumption (Active/Idle): 6.5W / 50mW
  • Peak Read Sequential Performance: 2050, 2150, 2150 MB/s
  • Peak Write Sequential Performance 600, 1200, 1500 MB/s
  • Peak Random Performance Reads: 90k IOPS
  • Peak Random Performance Writes: 70k IOPS
  • Physical Dimesions: 22 x 80 x 4 mm

SM951 (NVMe) (source):

  • Form Factor: M.2 2280
  • Capacity (GB): 256, 512
  • Host Interface: PCI-Express 3.0 x4
  • Flash: Samsung 16nm MLC (verified visually)
  • Peak Read Sequential Performance: 1.08, 1.17 GB/s *
  • Peak Write Sequential Performance 800, 931 MB/s *
  • Peak Random Performance Reads: 120k, 122k IOPS
  • Peak Random Performance Writes: 60k, 72k IOPS
  • Physical Dimesions: 22 x 80 x 4 mm

* We know the NVMe SM951 has higher specs than what was stated in our source, but we don't have more accurate figures from Samsung.

Packaging:

Our NVMe SM951 was 'packaged' with another product we got in for testing.

The AHCI SM951 came in a 2015 Lenovo X1 Carbon that Ryan has been testing. I liberated it while he wasn't looking (shhh).

The XP941 came with another product, but we have a brown box pic for that one:

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