neiljwd wrote:
Samsung 950 Pro. Just as fast, m2 connection so nice n small.

Ah! Thank you. I was just coming here to see if that was the right type of drive to connect to the m2 connection. That's the one between the two PCIe x16 slots that will sit under the GPU right? Are there any concerns that that drive will be exposed to too much heat from the GPU?

I had the Intel 1.2 TB and it was a fantastic drive. I used it in my last PCIe slot and I thought the bios and AIDA64 reported that I was running at x16 speed for the graphics card and x4 for the intel? I am certain I got gen3 speeds on the drive as it matched intel's quoted speeds. Does the x4 slot share bandwidth with the DMI?

Either way I sold the drive and replaced it with a Samsung 950. Not because of performance, but because the warranty life was only 112 TB over 5 years or 70 GB a day. I recently sold a Samsung SSD I had for only 2.5 years and I had written 90 TB to it so with that usage in mind I felt 112 TB was too low.

I do not think the drive will stop functioning at that point, but resale value would have to take a huge hit if I were selling a drive near is warranty maximum. The 512 GB Samsung on the other hand is 400 TB over 5 years.

I am not sure why Intel released an enterprise equivalent drive with such low guaranteed usage life.

neiljwd wrote:
Samsung 950 Pro. Just as fast, m2 connection so nice n small.

Which board are you using? The Gene? I have been listening to that podcast stickied at the top of this forum and specifically the section where they discuss thermal throttling on the M.2 drives. They said specifically that those drives need good airflow to keep them cool to avoid throttling. I am looking at the Gene and I am assuming that anyone using this board is going to be using at the very least a single high-end dual slot GPU. The M.2 drive is going to be sitting right under that GPU and the airflow to it will be even worse if a dual GPU setup is being used. I just don't see how that drive can be adequately air-cooled sitting under the GPU.

Barbara917 wrote:
Which board are you using? The Gene? I have been listening to that podcast stickied at the top of this forum and specifically the section where they discuss thermal throttling on the M.2 drives. They said specifically that those drives need good airflow to keep them cool to avoid throttling. I am looking at the Gene and I am assuming that anyone using this board is going to be using at the very least a single high-end dual slot GPU. The M.2 drive is going to be sitting right under that GPU and the airflow to it will be even worse if a dual GPU setup is being used. I just don't see how that drive can be adequately air-cooled sitting under the GPU.

Thermal throttling does indeed occur, but only when the 950 Pro is pushed hard, and I mean hard. On top of that, if you have a side case fan it absolutely eliminates any possibility of throttling. The card idles at 36 degrees in my case, and when I push it with ATTO benchmark, which basically blows up the writes, it will not throttle. This is with my side case fan at 700 RPM which I cannot hear.

If I turn the fan off, only near the end of the ATTO benchmark will a throttle begin to occur, and it occurs at 75 degrees. Being under the GPU does not seem to be an issue for me either. If I pound firestrike ultra in demo mode looping, the Samsung pro heats up to about 42 degrees. This is with a Gigabyte G1 980Ti sitting right above it.

The talk of throttle with these things has reached fever paranoia, and while it does occur, it is hard to push it to that, and can be completely avoided with simple air circulation. Even if a throttle does occur, its unlikely you will lose much performance as it takes some strenuous work loads to push the temps that high. Remember, these things are built with laptops in mind which have basically ZERO airflow.

Sandbagger wrote:
Thermal throttling does indeed occur, but only when the 950 Pro is pushed hard, and I mean hard. On top of that, if you have a side case fan it absolutely eliminates any possibility of throttling. The card idles at 36 degrees in my case, and when I push it with ATTO benchmark, which basically blows up the writes, it will not throttle. This is with my side case fan at 700 RPM which I cannot hear.

If I turn the fan off, only near the end of the ATTO benchmark will a throttle begin to occur, and it occurs at 75 degrees. Being under the GPU does not seem to be an issue for me either. If I pound firestrike ultra in demo mode looping, the Samsung pro heats up to about 42 degrees. This is with a Gigabyte G1 980Ti sitting right above it.

The talk of throttle with these things has reached fever paranoia, and while it does occur, it is hard to push it to that, and can be completely avoided with simple air circulation. Even if a throttle does occur, its unlikely you will lose much performance as it takes some strenuous work loads to push the temps that high. Remember, these things are built with laptops in mind which have basically ZERO airflow.

Thank you Sandbagger. That is good information to know. I mostly made my choice because of the discussions of the new NVMe drives towards the end of the podcast where it comes to the discussions of performance in practical applications versus the raw numbers of benchmarking. I decided that the performance improvement if any would not help me at this time over the econmy of the Sata 3 SSDs. From what I understand the real advantage of these drives right now comes into play while doing video editing of large and multiple video files and benefit workstation builds more than just a recreational gaming PC like I want to build. But I will certainly look at the Samsung 950 down the line for upgrading if I start needing more storage as I am building in a really small chasis which is what appeals to me about these dirves. Perhaps by then they will have also engineered them into 1Tb storage capacity and I am glad to hear about your experience with that drive and to know that it is a viable alternative on this board for fast storage.