Dell XPS 13 2015 + Samsung 950 PRO m2 Upgrade = :-(

When I ordered my Dell XPS 13 back in May of this year, I ordered it with a 256 GB drive knowing I'd eventually upgrade to a 512 GB drive once the new NVMe m2 drives were out. I didn't fully grasp the variations in m2 and when I pre-ordered the 512 GB Samsung 950 PRO NVMe I expected to pop it in and go. No such luck. I should have known they wouldn't make it that easy... :-(

The drive is physically compatible of course, but has the "M" key edge connector while the drive I pulled out has the "B&M" edge key connector. I'm running the A05 BIOS on the Dell, but it can't see the 950 PRO drive a the BIOS level. The on-board testing tool reports "no hard drive". So this seems like a BIOS issue.

Anyone have any ideas? Is this a matter of Dell supporting it with a new BIOS update? Or will it never work because the XPS 13 isn't compatible with this generation of M2 drivers? Looks like I need to return this either way, but if Dell eventually supports it, I may buy it again.

If it will never work, any suggestions on a 512 GB drive that will work? Would the Samsung XP941 or XP951 work? Any idea on the difference between the two (the XP951 is $50+ more).

 

Interesting. The problem is probably NVMe drive recognition.

If it does require a BIOS update, I'd be doubtful if Dell released an update for that. They aren't going to spend the time developing and testing a feature (NVMe support) that isn't used in any of the factory configurations of this laptop.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Hi Jason,

interesting and :/ as i remember an advertisement for the "5xxx generation of intel XPS13 2015" claiming NVMe support couple of month´s ago.

But why NVMe i mean does that worth the price on this machine (i mean, yeah NVMe performance is great, SATA overhead gone ... but it´s still an dual core Ultrabook) - in other words, i also think about to upgrade my 256GB to 512GB, but in focus of $ to an m2 2280 SATA module instead (as long as the NVMe pricetags are that much higher).

Did you reached out the Dell Community? They´ve got also an Forum and are pretty quick in answering (spoken for Europe but i guess in US too).

Edit: also if you get the NVMe SSD working, and you put it under heavy load (like just for benchmarking i don´t know) remember they may get pretty hot, maybe it make sense to monitor (yes they will throttle if they´ll getting too hot) - not sure if any kind of cooling pad (or heatsink pad, i did not know the correct word in Englisch) is required, as i ´ve seen NVMe SSD´s only with such kind of "thermo pads" in notebooks until now.

Regards
aVa

 

Could be, or it could be that the XPS 13 simply doesn't support M2 PCIe...I thought it did, but now that I'm researching this there's just a lot of guesswork and speculation without much in the way of facts. :-(

 

I thought the same thing - I was sure it was PCIe compatible, and I thought (assumed) that NVMe was just an add-on.

Samsung 950 PRO -Series 512GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD 2-Inch MZ-V5P512BW: $349.99 USD
Samsung XP941 512GB AHCI M.2 80mm PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD - MZHPU512HCGL - OEM: $312.90 USD

Samsung SM951 512GB AHCI MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD - OEM: $377.46

As you can see. there's little to no price difference - and it's CHEAPER than the SM951...!?! It looks like the SM951 is a PCIe part, so I may have to go for the XP941 to get a working drive...

I posted this exact same message over in the Dell community so I could double my chances of figuring this out.

 

Ah okay, pressing thumbs for an solution (still hope for BIOS upgrade or such easy stuff).

Also interesting the pricetag for NVMe vs SATA module, here where I´m living the 512GB NVMe is at 350 € and the SATA at 170€ - so thats why i would choose SATA over NVMe at the moment - in your case absolutely clear to go for the newer technology one - pretty weird world.

 

I installed a 512Gb Samsung SM951 512GB AHCI MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD over the LiteOn 512Gb SSD (due to problems with my first XPS 13 9343) and it has worked without any issue since the original installation.

 

Dell XPS 13 9343 does support PCI-e but gen 2.0 (Broadwell limitation), two lanes (not four) bandwith and AHCI protocol. Bandwith and prototcol limitations could be BIOS modified, maybe.