As SSDs have gotten faster, especially with the advent of NVMe technology, the vast majority of users don’t need to worry about RAID 0. However, there are still some niche applications where combining the speed of multiple, very fast SSDs is helpful – so in this article we are going to look at the current state of NVMe RAID solutions on a variety of modern platforms from Intel and AMD.
Samsung 960 Pro vs 950 Pro Performance & Thermal Throttling
M.2 drives like the Samsung 960 and 950 Pro can give incredible performance, but under sustained loads they can get hot enough that the drive needs to throttle the performance to stay within safe temperature limits. In this article, we will not only compare the 960 Pro to the 950 Pro in terms of raw performance, but also in terms of how quickly each drive will throttle.
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 Additional Cooling Testing
M.2 drives like the Samsung 950 Pro can give incredible performance, but they can sometimes run hot enough that the drive needs to throttle the performance to stay under safe temperatures. For those that need a M.2 drive to run at full speed for longer periods of time, we decided to run some quick tests to compare a number of different M.2 drive cooling methods.
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 Throttling Analysis
M.2 drives like the Samsung 950 Pro can give incredible performance, but they can sometimes run hot enough that the drive needs to throttle the performance to stay under safe temperatures. To help you decide if it is something you need to worry about, we decided to benchmark a Samsung 950 Pro in a variety of M.2 slot locations with a range of system configurations to show how much a Samsung 950 Pro might throttle in your system.
Overview of M.2 SSDs
M.2 is a new form of connectivity that allows a SSD to connect directly to the PCI-E bus allowing for theoretical speeds as high as 2GB/s. However, M.2 drives are complicated in that they allow for a variety of physical dimensions, connectors, and even multiple logical interfaces. To help our customers understand the nuances of M.2 drives, we decided to publish this overview of M.2 SSDs.
Samsung XP941 & Plextor PX-G256 M6e M.2 Qualification
M.2 is a new form of connectivity for SSD drives that allows them to connect directly to the PCI-E bus rather than going through a SATA controller. By bypassing the SATA controller a M.2 drive can have a theoretical maximum throughput as high as 2GB/s which is over three times faster than the 600MB/s SATA is limited to! Unfortunately, temperature and motherboard compatibility is a major issue with these M.2 drives.