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

Samsung SM951 512GB AHCI MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD - OEMIntel NUC Kit NUC6i5SYH BOXNUC6I5SYH Silver/Black specs identify maximum bandwidth of SATA drives as 540 MB/s and M.2 SSD PCIe drives as 1600 MB/s. Low speed versions of this device, like Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB M.2 3.5-Inch SSD (MZ-N5E500BW) listed on Amazon as frequently bought together with Intel NUC kits or others like Transcend 512 GB SATA III MTS600 60 mm M.2 SSD (TS512GMTS600), squander that valuable bandwidth. The Intel NUC spec also indicates that it supports "AHCI mode", so the Samsung SM951 512GB NVMe MZVPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD - OEM version may not work. I don't know, but this AHCI version works great. I experienced a lot of frustration getting my Intel NUC to boot from this device, and found no explicit instructions online. Here is the simple solution: On startup press F2 into BIOS and disable "Legacy" mode. Press 10 to exit and save. Install Linux Mint 17.3 from a USB flash drive, and it will format the Samsung SM951 AHCI SSD and install an EFI boot version of Linux Mint that will boot in UEFI mode. The attached images show the disk info and two benchmarks, with average read & write speeds far above the EVO read & write speeds of 540 MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively. More detailed instructions and reasons will be found in my review of the Intel NUC.

If you are planning to use this PCI SSD as an OS boot drive it DON"T DO IT unless you desire and have the knowledge to go beyond simply putting your OS dvd in the CD burner and installing. These are considered OEM drives and do not contain the necessary setting for to install an OS boot drive without going through (non-trival for non computer geeks) the steps for making a USB boot drive containing your OS install disk contents. Some have gotten it to work by following a bunch or crazy procedures - I never got it/motherboard to recognize the OS flash drives I was trying to install the OS with so it became a cache drive for adobe.This works great as a data drive and is very fast but for an OS boot drive get the Kingston HyperX series. The Kingston is plug and play for installing Windows

It's a very fast drive, specs are amazing, however it is very hard to get working on certain motherboards. Make sure your board, even though it accepts an M.2 slot, that the Bios is willing to work with this drive easily. It was a big headache to install on my Gigabyte UD3H Black, spent 3 days trying everything to get Mac OS X or Windows 7/8/10 installed. After installation boots would freeze constantly. Returned, and going to wait on next gen and motherboards to catch up to this tech.

this drive is excellent. it is tiny, blazing fast and easy to install. don't listen to people telling you it can't be used as a boot drive, they don't know what they are talking about, and need to do some research. this is a uefi drive, and thus needs to be loaded in a uefi system, with uefi settings. that's the whole ball of wax. do that, and it is as simple as pie. the cheapest place i found to buy it is hard2findparts, and they lived up to their rating. although i bought standard shipping, they shipped it two day priority, and i received it in about three days because of the weekend. you gotta love that. they answered my query's very promptly, and were easy to deal with. so all of that, besides selling it much cheaper than anyone else on amazon. can't beat it! the drive gives me 500gb's of bullet proof performance for my boot os, and plenty of space for everything else. gotta love this drive. it is a little bit slower on windows ten because of the ahci drivers, but even so, is still the fastest drive you can buy, and this is something ms should fix soon.

I bought this for a new build. ASUS Z170 Deluxe motherboard with new Intel Skylake processor and GTX980 TI Superclocked+ as well as some DDR4 3400 memory. Wanted a blazing fast drive to go with it and I didn't want to wait for an NVMe drive. Big mistake.Impressed at first, but then I had a crash where a critical system file was corrupted and was affecting startup. 50/50 chance of a successful startup. Even then after extended use system would BSOD and back to the 50/50 start up game. A Windows 10 reinstall fixed the issue.Fast forward 2 months later, to today. I turn on my computer to find a "can't find bootable drive" error. A check showed the drive as UNALLOCATED SPACE, meaning there's not even a format (NTFS, FAT32, etc.) left. It's done and bricked after barely any use.The icing on the turd cake is that since this is OEM, there is no support (no RMA) from Samsung. $350 dollars down the drain during the holiday season. Amazing.Now I'm ordering a similar and similarly priced NVMe drive. And it'll be a consumer model so I WILL get support if it bricks.Don't waste your money on this particular piece of junk, go with the 950 PRO NVMe instead. At least if the consumer version breaks you'll have a chance to RMA it.Also don't waste your money if you want an easy installation. M.2 drives take some technical know-how to get working properly.

Hi,I have this ssd and z170 maximus viii hero and i can't install windows 7 on it...My usb key is fine, it boot on it but i can't see the SM951 ssd when i want to choose the disk for install windows...How to do please