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TedUK · ‎10-18-2014

Hey all.

It looks like I will be building something expensive with the Impact VII.

In the specs it says the board has a 3rd gen PCIe M.2 socket.

Are there any 3rd gen drives out there?

The two fastest M.2’s I have been able to find are the
Plextor M6e M.2
•Sequential Read Speed: Up to 770 MB/s
•Sequential Write Speed: Up to 580 MB/s

and the Samsung XP941
•Sequential Read Speed: Up to 1170 MB/s
•Sequential Write Speed: Up to 930 MB/s

Although I can’t use this as a boot drive (Boo Hiss)

What is the fastest you have seen that I can use as a boot drive?

Cheers,
Ted.

MeanMachine · ‎10-18-2014

Hi TedUK and if booting from an M.2 is a priority then don't be disheartened.

M.2 is a new technology and potential performance is phenomenal. I'm sure current problems will be worked around through the use of M.2 to PCI-E adapters unfortunately this limits your choice of motherboards at the moment, if you want to use the Samsung XP941 as a boot drive.

What is more exciting is the M.2 controllers LSI and Marvell are rumored to be working on that and supposedly are more efficient than the current M.2 controllers. If true, you can expect to see even better performance, reduced temperatures (as at the moment they run incredibly hot) and much better motherboard compatibility in the near future as MB compatibility is not very good right now.

The Plextor drive will work as both a storage and boot drive but the Samsung has problems booting on some boards, unless you have a Z97 or H97 motherboard, The Samsung XP941 can only be used as a storge drive at the moment.

Plextor drives will work as a boot drive on nearly any late model board while the Samsung drive will only work on newer chipsets that include native M.2 support. It is best to contact the manufacturer and ask them which M.2 cards your motherboard will support booting, before purchasing an M.2 drive.
MM

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My System Specs:

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CPU:AMD R7 2700X Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i Case: Corsair Carbide 780t
Memory:G.Skill TridentZ F4-3200C14D-16GTZR SSD:Samsung 500GB 960 EVO M.2

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TedUK · ‎10-19-2014

Greetings MeanMachine my antipodean friend.

I did mention I was going to use the ASUS Maximus Impact VII which is a Z97 and hopefully it’s first BIOS update has improved compatibility. As it has no spare PCI slot I can’t use an adapter. If it had a slot I would use the latest OCZ Revodrive.

I think things are improving and there are published workarounds for people using Asus Z97 Pro.

The Impact VI is listed as compatible but that only used a PCIe x2.

This post also says Gene VII and Hero VII are compatible so that gives me hope.

I emailed both Samsung and ASUS but as it is the weekend I will have to wait for my reply. If I get one at all.

I am curious to hear you talk about heat as my rig will be almost entirely passively cooled so more heat is bad.

Ted.

maukkae · ‎10-19-2014

I would like to share that the XP941 & Lycom DT-120 pcie-m.2 adapter combo works fine and boots on the ASUS Maximus VII Ranger Z97 motherboard. Just had to disable CSM from bios and load intel raid drivers during the Windows installation. Also had my sata drives setup as raid already.

This way I can utilize the 4x lanes on the XP941 and not limit myself to the 2x lanes on the mobo's m.2 slot.

TedUK · ‎10-19-2014

Hi Maukkae.

It’s good to know that the ASUS Z97’s are playing ball.

Sadly I can’t use the adapter with the Impact VII (unless I want to do without a graphics card) so I will have to hope that the new BIOS 0412 and the x4 socket are now Samsung friendly.

Ted.

Myk_SilentShado · ‎10-19-2014

Can the XP941 be seperated into 2 parts like some of the other PCIe SSD cards? if it can be, pull it apart and connect the smaller card into the board's M.2 slot, provided the smaller card is key type "m", I believe is what the MVII series of boards support

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TedUK · ‎10-19-2014

Looking at the pictures it seems to be a single card with an M Key SSD Connector which is the PCIe x4.

I guess I will have to buy one and see if it works. 🙂

Ted.

mikej · ‎10-27-2014

I hope I am not interrupting a private conversation. If so, I apologize. If not then..... Could any of you recommend a M.2 eSATA 2260 SSD of about 250gb (less than $300) that will work as a stand alone boot drive on my M7F (formula VII) by part number? Crucial or Samsung would be nice. Faster is better. I have to be careful as returns are out of the question. Total loss unless e-bay.

pleventi · ‎10-28-2014

TedUK wrote:
Looking at the pictures it seems to be a single card with an M Key SSD Connector which is the PCIe x4.

I guess I will have to buy one and see if it works. 🙂

Ted.

Edit: Oops! Looked at the wrong board. Looks like this is a x4 M.2 slot. Looks like you're golden. You'll drop your main slot down to x8 mode, but that shouldn't matter for any GPU card today.

In my setup (a XP941 mounted in a PCI-E x4 adaptor, running on an ASUS Maximus VII Hero) its bootable and works great.

TedUK · ‎10-28-2014

Hi Mate.

Welcome to the thread.

A lot of people recommend the Plextor M6e M.2 as that works right out of the box as a boot drive.

I have purchased the Samsung XP941 but until my processor arrives in about a weeks’ time I won’t be able to assemble my rig (Maximus Impact VII) and won’t be able to tell you if it works or not.

I emailed Samsung and they didn’t have a clue about what I was talking about.

I emailed ASUS and they said it won’t work “Unfortunately that slot only supports datadrives only but not the bootable drives.”

…but I am not entirely convinced. The Impact VII manual says you can use it as a boot drive and the QVL document tells you the BIOS setting to do it.
I have also been chatting to the guys at flexxmemory.com who have some very helpful case studies on their website.

I will let you know how I get on but if you need an answer today the Plextor is the way I would go.

But make sure you look at multiple sources of info if returns are not an option.

Cheers,
Ted.

Fastest M.2 you have seen?