Samsung SM951 AHCI M.2 Solid State Drives

The Samsung SM951 M.2 Solid State Drives are currently the fastest commercially available SSDs, offering read and writes speeds of up to 2150 and 1500 MB/s respectively!

The SM951 boasts outstanding performance, supporting both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 interfaces. They can read and write sequentially at 1,600 MB/s (megabytes per second) and 1,350 MB/s respectively based on PCIe 2.0. This performance level is approximately three times faster than that of the latest SSD with a SATA interface and about 30 percent faster than that of the Samsung XP941, its predecessor. In addition, the new SSD’s random read and write speeds reach up to 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs / outputs per second) respectively.

For ultra-slim notebooks and workstations wanting to adopt the PCIe 3.0 interface, the SM951 can read and write sequentially at 2,150 MB/s and 1,550 MB/s respectively, which would provide approximately four times faster sequential reading performance compared to current SATA SSDs. With a PCIe 3.0 interface, the drive achieves substantially higher energy efficiency, requiring only about 450 MB/s per watt for sequential reading and 250 MB/s per watt for sequential writing, which translates into a more than 50 percent improvement in performance per watt over that of the XP941 SSD.

In addition, the SM951 is the first SSD to adopt the L1.2 low power standby mode (which allows all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is sleeping or in hibernation) as defined by PCI-SIG (the PCIe standards body). By embracing the L1.2 level of standby operation, the SM951’s power consumption is drastically reduced – to under 2mW, about a 97 percent decrease from the 50mW consumed using a L1 state.

Samsung’s SM951 comes in the M.2 form factor (80 mm x 22 mm), which is only about one seventh the size of a 2.5” SSD. Also, it weighs approximately six grammes. The drive’s compactness is well suited for most notebook PC designs, freeing up space for other components including the battery. The SM951 lineup consists of 512, 256 and 128 GB SSDs.

Please Note: While numerous motherboards support M.2 drives, they often restrict the amount of data that can be moved to and from the drive via the M.2 interface resulting in slower than expected speeds (around 50%) due to running at only PCI-e 2 speeds. To enable these drives to work at full speed, the M.2 interface on your motherboard must support PCI-e 3 and have four lanes (many only support two at this time).

PLEASE NOTE: The M.2 drives shown here are the AHCI version. Samsung have yet to release the NVMe version of these M.2 drives. It is expected that they will be released this month! As soon as we receive more information we will update this page.

PLEASE NOTE: These M.2 drives are compatible with Type M keys only. Please check your hardware is compatible with this type. There is also a Type B key which these drives will not connect to.

Tom from OC3D TV takes a look at the Samsung SM951 M.2 drive. See what he thinks of it by watching the video above.