Samsunng XP941

[Hopper642]

I am thinking of building a new machine with an Asus Maximus 7 Hero with a Samsung XP941 as this board has a M.2 PCIEx connector, but I am uncertain as to whether this is bootable. Does anyone know if you can boot the machine with this SSD? Does the Magician software recognize it? Thanks.

 

[Hellhammer]

Not bootable on my ASUS Z87 Deluxe at least.

 

[Hopper642]

That's disappointing. I had hoped it was bootable.

 

[Hellhammer]

That's disappointing. I had hoped it was bootable.

Fundamentally the issue is motherboards and their BIOS/UEFI. 9-series chipsets bring some ease to this.

 

[Hopper642]

Hope so, but I can't find anything specific on the topic. Will Asus' new Maximus 7 Hero allow the Samsung XP941 to be bootable? I just can't find the answer at this time.

Thanks for your help.

 

[RamCity]

Hope so, but I can't find anything specific on the topic. Will Asus' new Maximus 7 Hero allow the Samsung XP941 to be bootable? I just can't find the answer at this time.

Thanks for your help.

I posted this over on the rog.asus.com forums, and repeating here.

Support for the XP941 on motherboards is still patchy, but with the Z97 chipset here, like Hellhammer says, the tide is turning. A couple of things to note on the ASUS Maximum VII Hero specs page

1. On the overview page there is a reference to the M.2 slot being PCIe x2, so just two PCIe lanes are connected to the M.2 socket. The XP941 is a PCIe 2.0 x4 device, so needs 4 lanes to run at full speed. There's also some doubt that it will even run in a x2 socket.

2. In the footer notes:

The PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCIEX4_3) shares bandwith with PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot. The default setting is Auto Mode, which automatically optimizes the system bandwidth. If you install a PCIe 2.0 x4 device, the system will automatically detect and disable PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot.

It's possible the XP941 will operate in this motherboard, but only at about 800MB/s top speed and doubtful that it will boot.

Rod (Vendor rep for ramcity.com.au)

 

[Micrornd]

So it sounds as though the new Asrock Z97 Extreme6 board with the M.2 PCIe3 x4 may be the better way to go?

 

[RamCity]

So it sounds as though the new Asrock Z97 Extreme6 board with the M.2 PCIe3 x4 may be the better way to go?

Certainly ASRock are the only ones to specifically point to XP941 compatibility in the marketing material they provided to thessdreview.com on page 2 of this post.

We've got quite a few of the XP941's sold to customers with this board now, and expect to have some feedback from the early adopters soon on if the XP941 can be booted.

The other board of interest is the ASUS Z97I Plus.

The marketing material says it's a dual SATA / PCIe 2.0 M.2 socket, but no mention of how many lanes. My guess is that it's PCIE 2.0 x2 at most like the Maximus VII Hero is.

Edit 20/5/14 - several of our customers have confirmed now that the XP941 boots in ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard, and also runs at full speed - about 1200/950MB/s sequential read/write with the 512GB model. Only hitch appears to be when installing windows from DVD. If UEFI mode is enabled, the system can see the XP941 as a bootable drive, but not the DVD-drive. If legacy mode is enabled, the reverse is true. The workaround was to install windows from USB drive with the motherboard in UEFI mode.

Customers also report the boot time from cold to a usable desktop is about 10 seconds in Windows 8.1 with the 'super fast' boot mode enabled.

Rod (Vendor rep for ramcity.com.au)

 

[Hopper642]

Certainly ASRock are the only ones to specifically point to XP941 compatibility in the marketing material they provided to thessdreview.com on page 2 of this post.

We've got quite a few of the XP941's sold to customers with this board now, and expect to have some feedback from the early adopters soon on if the XP941 can be booted.

The other board of interest is the ASUS Z97I Plus.

The marketing material says it's a dual SATA / PCIe 2.0 M.2 socket, but no mention of how many lanes. My guess is that it's PCIE 2.0 x2 at most like the Maximus VII Hero is.

Rod (Vendor rep for ramcity.com.au)

Please update us as more information becomes available. Thanks.

 

[Hopper642]

I'm also wondering about Intel's X99 chipset too.

 

[Hellhammer]

So it sounds as though the new Asrock Z97 Extreme6 board with the M.2 PCIe3 x4 may be the better way to go?

Yes, the XP941 is bootable in the AsRock Z97 Extreme6 and runs at full PCIe 2.0 x4 speed. Ian, our motherboard editor, has confirmed that and we have a full review of the board coming up in the next week or so.

 

[RamCity]

Yes, the XP941 is bootable in the AsRock Z97 Extreme6 and runs at full PCIe 2.0 x4 speed. Ian, our motherboard editor, has confirmed that and we have a full review of the board coming up in the next week or so.

Awesome news!

 

[Revolution 11]

I sure hope Skylake has more PCI-E lanes either on the chipset or the CPU. Because it is looking hard on X97 to use M2 drives with SATA Express drives and USB devices concurrently, judging by the Asus Z97-Deluxe review.

 

[phillyman36]

If you use the XP941 on a AsRock Z97 Extreme6 does that mean the PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot will run at 3.0 x8? How would that effect gamers?

 

[Hellhammer]

If you use the XP941 on a AsRock Z97 Extreme6 does that mean the PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot will run at 3.0 x8? How would that effect gamers?

Yes, that is correct. Our review should be up soon (this week I think) and will include gaming tests with and without the XP941 to see the impact. Ian showed me some results earlier and it was about 1% loss in performance (though it can vary depending on the game and GPU).

 

[phillyman36]

Newegg has them right now for $499.00 for those looking for one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147349

 

[Ketchup]

Yes, that is correct. Our review should be up soon (this week I think) and will include gaming tests with and without the XP941 to see the impact. Ian showed me some results earlier and it was about 1% loss in performance (though it can vary depending on the game and GPU).

Yes, right here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8045/asrock-z97-extreme6-review-ultra-m2-x4-tested-with-xp941

 

[RamCity]

Also note, there has been some additional information posted on how to successfully boot the XP941 in an ASUS Z97 motherboard, which I think a l lot of people will find useful:

http://www.thessdreview.com/Forums/...nstalled-os-bootable-post36081.html#post36081

Rod (Vendor rep for RamCity.com.au)

 

[Laststop311]

How about in the mini itx Asus Maximus VII Z97. It has a pci-e 3.0 x4 m2 ssd slot. Does the xp941 boot on this motherboard?

 

[aviator79]

How about in the mini itx Asus Maximus VII Z97. It has a pci-e 3.0 x4 m2 ssd slot. Does the xp941 boot on this motherboard?

This depends completely on the BIOS. Check the specs or ask ASUS if it's not mentioned in manual.

 

[pleventi]

I have a Maximus VII Hero, and have the XP941 mounted in a M2 to PCI-E adaptor card, and plugged into the x4 PCI-E slot. It is bootable with the latest bios (I am using it as my windows boot drive).

Note: You shouldn't use the built-in M2 slot since its limited to x2 PCI-E, and you'll be missing out on some of the XP941's awesomeness. Plus you can get a heatsink for the PCI-E card to keep the XP941 temps at more reasonable levels.

 

[essential]

I am successfully booting the XP941 with an Asus Maximus VII Impact (has a native m.2 slot on a daughterboard). In Bios I had to change ACHI to RAID and Disable CSM (per instruction on another forum). An Asus rep emailed me and told me to change ACHI to RAID and it should work, didn't mention anything about CSM, he also said the XP941 should be bootable on all 9 series motherboards. I disabled CSM anyway, was able to install Windows 8.1 Pro (wanted to do Windows 7 but read that TRIM does not function properly on 7 for the XP941, but does on 8.1).

I then updated BIOS a few weeks later and it changed RAID back to ACHI and CSM back on. I didn't realize that ... but the system kept booting normally. I had some system instability and was crashing frequently. Not sure what was causing it so I uninstalled Intel RST and changed ACHI back to RAID and CSM back to Disabled. Not sure if ACHI/CSM had anything to do with it because I figure once you are in Windows you are in, but who knows, maybe it was Intel's RST. I've had an uptime of 5 days since making those changes.

 

[Fernando 1]

@ essential:

Since I have totally different experiences with my Samsung XP941 running on an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 (it boots natively fine as M.2 Ultra SSD), I have some questions to you:
1. Where within the BIOS did you set the M.2 slot to "RAID" mode?
2. Are you sure, that the Samsung XP941 SSD used any Intel RST driver?
In my system the M.2 Ultra port SATA Controller has the VendorID VEN_144D and the DeviceID DEV_A800. It is running automaticly in AHCI mode using the generic Win8.1 MS AHCI driver.
None of the Intel RST drivers do support a SATA AHCI Controller with the HardwareIDs PCI\VEN_144D&DEV_A800&CC_0106, which it has with my ASRock Z97 system.

 

[essential]

@ essential:

Since I have totally different experiences with my Samsung XP941 running on an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 (it boots natively fine as M.2 Ultra SSD), I have some questions to you:
1. Where within the BIOS did you set the M.2 slot to "RAID" mode?
2. Are you sure, that the Samsung XP941 SSD used any Intel RST driver?
In my system the M.2 Ultra port SATA Controller has the VendorID VEN_144D and the DeviceID DEV_A800. It is running automaticly in AHCI mode using the generic Win8.1 MS AHCI driver.
None of the Intel RST drivers do support a SATA AHCI Controller with the HardwareIDs PCI\VEN_144D&DEV_A800&CC_0106, which it has with my ASRock Z97 system.

1) Advanced --> PCH Storage Config --> Sata Mode Selection --> RAID

2) I did not provide any drivers while installing the device, if it used any Windows provided them, and Intel RST is disabled in BIOS. Windows saw the XP941 prior to switching to RAID mode, but wouldn't actually install to it till I made the switch.

 

[Fernando 1]

1) Advanced --> PCH Storage Config --> Sata Mode Selection --> RAID

AFAIK this just configures the configuration of the on-board Intel SATA Controller and has nothing to do with the M.2 configuration. So I doubt, that your XP941 ever ran in "RAID" mode.

You can verify it by opening the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and "Storage Controllers" sections of the Device Manager and looking for the details of the listed SATA Controllers.