M.2 SSD: Samsung XP941 vs Crucial M550 vs Plextor M6E

I figured this would be asked but I couldn't find any threads. Most new laptops these days are offering these 3 M.2 SSDs. I'm getting a new laptop. Wondering if there's any significant differences between the 3. Samsung seems to have the best stated read and write speeds but those are just peaks. Any other performance differences?

 

First thing that you should be mindful of - which is going to depend on your laptop - is which type of M2 format the machine actually offers, since there are three different ones and not all SSDs are available in all of them...

 

I plan on getting the Clevo P650SE, which during customization offers all 3 available to choose from.

 

Unless you plan on using your Samsung XP941 as a portable mini stove, I would stay away from it.

 

Seems like they probably all suffer from high temps: XP941 vs Plextor M6E

 

All the more reason to avoid M.2 for now then.

 

How many current notebooks have the M.2 PCIe interface for the fastest M.2 SSDs instead of the more common SATA interface? The higher interface speed of PCIe has the potential to make the SSD run faster (and hotter). There's some useful info about the sockets here.

Samsung also make the PM851 M.2 SSD with SATA interface.

John

 

Holy crap. So they go and create a standard to make the drives thinner than mSATA but they will end up being a lot thicker because they will require a heatsink. Nice. That Samsung XP941 looks like a nice drive though. I may have to look for a thin heatsink that might be able to fit on the controller chip to at least help dissipate some heat.

 

WOW...that is extremely high temperature.

@ HTWingNut ; Since Clevo P65X backplate is metal is it possible to put a thermal pad between M2 SSD and backplate and transfer the heat? I mean use the backplate as a heatsink?

 

I guess you could. If I get an M.2 SSD I'll give it a go and see. I think I have some thermal foam around here somewhere too.

 

Where is tiller when you need him...

 

n=1, (lol...)


I have to agree with the above about avoiding M.2 at this time. Half baked 'solutions' with ridiculously high temps (especially in a slim and light chassis like you're considering) is not what (sustained) performance is about.

I would be choosing a configuration with multiple 960GB SanDisk Pro's or even the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro's over any of these options.

For M.2 to be real:

PCIe 3.0 x4 AND NVMe supported on both the specific M.2 SSD AND the notebook bay/connections too.

A new/next gen controller is not a negotiable option: it is needed to give the performance required as promised by 'real' M.2 (PCIe 3.0 x4 and NVMe) while not melting the rest of your components while doing so.

A possible choice might be the Samsung SM951...

See:
AnandTech | Samsung SSD Global Summit 2014: 845 DC Pro with V-NAND, SM951 with NVMe Support


But so far no reports with one in an actual system (and supporting notebook circuitry) yet.


If you're building/buying this system to last you the next three to six years and the overall performance is important - I'd be seriously considering waiting for at least the next few months to see what pops up (even then, the price of what you're considering now should be cheaper by then too...).

if you simply need a system soon/today, 1TB Class SATA3 SSD's will give you better sustained performance, give you a jump on saving towards a 'real' M.2 platform and still give you higher sustained platform performance that you'll be able to use for as long as you need vs. throttling your whole system to something from the original 'Core' era (assuming you actually push your storage subsystem to the limits, sustained, with your normal workloads).


A year ago, this would have been a great system to buy (assuming a chassis that was made to cool the components properly, of course). Today, it is already yesterday's news.

Simply put: don't buy today as you're merely supporting beta/unfinished hardware vs. the SATA3 options we have now.


Good luck.

 

What really makes me curious though is why the controllers heat up so much more compared to the mSATA versions. Bad design/firmware, or something more fundamental on the hardware level?

 

They heat up because they are required to do ~3x the work of a SATA3 SSD without any mods from those same/weaker SATA3 SSD's.

They may even be 'converting' from a SATA3 interface to the PCIe 2.0 x2/x4 interface too.

Again; beta hardware which is just a temporary bridge to the real PCIe 3.0 x4 plus NVMe specs.

 

Problem is, other than the Samsung, they are not running any faster than most mSATA SSD's. It seems the controllers need to have some form of active cooling. I thought it was good that new laptops are moving to the M.2 standard, but now I'm not so sure. Honestly it would be nice if there was some transition period where they'd offer 2x mSATA plus one or two M.2 slots. I'd prefer my next laptop to have mSATA but it seems pretty much all of them are shifting towards M.2 unless it's a carryover design with updated GPU or something.

 

There are plenty of reports around about how hot the XP941 gets, but I'm yet to see any evidence to show that the drive failed early because of this, or that actually caused a real-world problem for the end user. Of course I will have some bias being a merchant, but can someone who has *actually* used the XP941 in their system for a reasonable period of time actually comment on their experience?

 

can anyone tell me the pros of getting one of these m.2 pcie ssds vs just getting two samsung 850 pros put in raid 0?

 

Well a big pro of just getting a single M.2 SSd is that you can attain the speed benefits similar to RAID 0 without keeping its drawbacks.

One major disadvantage of RAID 0 is the risk of losing data. RAID 0 theoretically can double the transfer speeds since both SSDs work in tandem and store "strips" of data rather than entire blocks that would otherwise reside on one SSD. However, if one drive permanently fails, the other SSD is left with essentially useless data as it is missing the other data segments from the dead SSD.

I guess as a general rule of thumb, always try to buy the largest capacity SSD within your budget rather than buying multiple cheaper and smaller SSDs. You can always go for a RAID config down the road once your storage space runs out.

SSDs have quite the endurance nowadays but you never know what may happen. Of course this all applies to simple RAID setups. There are more complex RAID configs that use dedicated hardware controllers which have the best of both worlds but these are more practical for businesses and enterprises.

 

well a normal spinning HDD has a higher chance of failing or crashing compared to an SSD. so getting an SSD automatically gives me more protection benefits. i've been using HDD's since forever and never had one crash. every computer i've owned and even my family has owned when i was younger only contained one single hard drive.

everyone says '' if you do raid 0 and one drive fails, you lose it all'' and i just say '' well if you only have one drive by itself and it fails, you still lose it all. lol''

 

Yes, but you now have multiple SSDs over a single one. If one SSD has a probability of failure of X then the presence of two or more SSDs must surely have a greater probability of failure than X.

 

id still be doing backups to an external hard drive or the cloud anyways

plus samsung has guarantees and warranties for 10 years

 

I'm not trying to bash about RAID. On the contrary, I am going to setup a RAID 0 config on my desktop soon. I just did not know your level of knowledge from your opening question so I wanted to give a general overview of the risks of RAID 0 in case you were not aware.

The warranties on SSDs are great but it doesn't change the fact that you lost your data. However, I agree that if you backup regularly, the benefits outweigh the risks with RAID 0.

 

im just excited to build my next rig. going from a generic 7200rpm HDD thats almost full to 850s in raid 0 will probably blow my mind. games take forever to launch. scans take forever. loading my huge media folders takes forever, and the biggest thing is adobe after effects. ill try to edit a video in adobe premiere, the open a few extra clips in adobe after effects to do some extra special effects and editing using the dynamic link feature. trying to import and connect several projects together and have them communicate back and forth with huge HD files chokes up the computer. ill get the grey screen for 20 seconds and cant click anything, when i have task manager open, itll show my hdd using a full 100 percent with insanely long response times.

it's so bad that i avoid linking after effects to premiere for the same video because of it

 

It definitely will blow your mind if you have been using HDDs all this time. I am waiting on a good deal for the same SSD to use in my new laptop which runs a 5400RPM stock drive. Going back to HDD speeds is brutal to say the least...

I don't know for sure but maybe it is worth waiting to get the Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSDs once it hits shelves since they are advertising up to 2150MB/s sequential read and 1500MB/s sequential write speeds. Normally these type of speeds don't translate to noticeable real-world benefits but since you are working with large files, you may notice the difference. Only problem is that it will probably be at the $1/GB mark.

 

Phase, what O/S, platform (SNB, IB or Haswell), processor and RAM do you run your current workloads with?

It sounds like your workflow may benefit from a RAID0 configuration. But it may respond equally well to a more simple but more optimal setup of two 1TB SSD's with WIP and Scratch disks placed on separate drives too. Samsung SSD's especially don't handle concurrent Reads/Writes very well, ime. The two separate drive setup may even be superior to the RAID array, depending on your specific workflow and specific SSD model too.

Before going to a RAID0 setup, I would maximize/optimize the following:

CPU = fastest quad core or higher you can afford today.
RAM= 16GB MINIMUM for video editing workflows 32GB+ highly recommended (This is almost more important than having a slightly faster cpu, but not above having more physical cores though)
GPU=a 'pro' model recommended that matches/supports the software you use vs. a mere gaming gpu model.

Last and least on the list is the storage subsystem. (Really).

So, what is your new config?

 

Consider yourself extremely lucky.

 

whole rig is in my sig...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...772-owners-lounge.768770/page-42#post-9933363

All drives are not created equal when it comes to RAID0. Samsung is a poor performance choice. http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6946/crucial-mx100-512gb-drive-ssd-raid-report/index6.html
While a single 850 Pro does well against the competition; Intel 730, Crucial MX100 in steady state testing, it falls behind in RAID0 steady state. Likely, IMFT NAND scaling at work.

It's your money, of course, but why pay to RAID0 Samsung 850 Pro when less expensive drives, some way less expensive, beat it? Even in the 1TB class with less choices, SanDisk Extreme Pro saves money and outperforms it.

 

Very slightly. Each drive has a failure of X independent of each other, so in theory you still have X chance of failure. But beyond that, RAID 0 can be fickle, requires solid drivers and firmware, and one bad bit can destroy the stripe causing it useless, where a single drive you can usually recover or only lose a small piece of data.

But in any case, unless you have a very specific need for 1000MB/sec sequential write performance, or have absolute need for a single 2TB SSD partition, RAID 0 is not worth it.

 

so who makes the best ssds for raid 0 in terms of firmware and drivers with very little issues?

 

That's not quite how the statistics work out. If one drive has a chance of failure of X, then the chance of it *not* failing is (1-X). If you put two drives together, then the chance of not failing is (1-X)*(1-X); since (1-X) is always less than one, (1-X)*(1-X) will always be less than (1-X), so you have a lower chance of it not failing. If a given drive has a 10% chance of failure over some given time frame, it has a 90% chance of not failing. But if you put two of them in RAID0, you now only have a (1-0.10)*(1-0.10) = 0.81 = 81% chance of them not failing. So your chance of failure went from 10% to 19% in this scenario.

I'm not trying to say whether or not RAID0 is worth that risk, since it depends on each person's overall system and workflows, but am just trying to explain how the risk works.

 

No, adding drives always increases the chance of failure, just like your second (bolded) statement shows.

81% chance of not failing for two drives is lower than 90% chance of not failing for a single drive.

 

That's why I said "a lower chance of *not* failing", which is the same as "a higher chance of failing" but since the statement I was working with, (1-X), was "one minus the chance of failing", that is what I stuck with. Same meaning, different phrasing. Then I clarified what the actual effect would be at the end.

 

I stand corrected.

(Pours another cup of coffee...).