NVMe support maturity would be nice before making that investment
talk about "maturing" - the NVMe SM951 has even shipped yet and there's already an update on the controllers - running cooler and showing another leap in read speed
Phison Shows NVMe at 2700 MB/s and 340,000 IOPS
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/phison-ps5004-nvme,29250.html
What type of fan did you install? Was is some sort of antec spot fan?there's something to be said for waiting for the technology to mature. Most of the PCie SSDs, or the samsung units, were actually designed for the tablet /ultra notebook market, which aren't platforms most folks look to for serious workloads. And that's evidenced by the thermal limits samsung is now apparently installing on the SM951.
It's also interesting to me, anyway, that Intel chose to not release a M.2 board, instead opting for either the expansion card with a serious heatsink capability, but still requiring, iirc, 100 lfm of air movement, or the 7mm SSD capsule, which also acts as a heatsink.
While, imho, it's the most mature (currently) design for serious use, it's offered in "odd" capacities - the 400 GB size being the smallest - i like to clone my OS SSD regularly, which means having a 2nd 400 (or larger) unit to clone to
Then there's the pricing - $230 for the 256 GB sammy sm951 AHCI unit, is a lot of money for a gum stick sized pc of technology, when the same capacity in a sata SSD is now under $100
that having been said, i couldn't resist the lure of the speed and went for a xp941 when i found one at $182 shipped. Love the speed, even if it is 30-35% slower than the sm951 - but lacking any thermal limits, i've measured temps on the controller, with a non-contact thermometer, at 97C. I forget who, but one review reported 113C temps, so i've installed a small fan directly over the xp941. For whatever reason, the remaining xp941 vendors have upped their pricing to $300+ - go figure.
fwiw
What type of fan did you install? Was is some sort of antec spot fan?
the intel 750 was a smart choice - i just wish it came in 256 GB size as i clone my OS drive pretty regularly and just didn't want to have to buy a 512GB SSD (or another intel 750) to clone to
i suspect by 1st or 2nd quarter next year we'll be seeing a lot more well thought out designs
I only went with the xp941 as i was curious about the speed and found it for $182. I couldn't find any info on max temp but one reviewer did measure 113C. The SM951 apparently has a 82C max temp based on it's thermal limiter throttling at that temp in the legitreviews.com review.
at about the 45 minute mark in a video rendering task, i measured my xp941, and right at the controller (under the "IC circle 20" text on the label) it showed 97C with a non-contact (laser) thermometer. With the fan, max temp i've seen is 77-78C. I've been toying with the idea of using some solvent to carefully peel the label off at the front end, to let the heat transfer out faster.
But i went with the addonics expansion card as when it was installed in the M.2 slot with "x2" lanes, read speeds were 770 MB/s, write 570 MB/s. Moving to the expansion card in a "x4" slot, i'm seeing full speed (1203 read, 880 write)
I've seen RAM heatsinks for video cards, maybe a few could be attached to the 941 (something like this). Also does using it for video rendering help? My CPU is always the limiting factor there. At less than $1/GB that 941 is a good deal for these ultra fast drives. I have a limited time at my PC so every little speedup helps.