Question 1

Why is the failure rate so unusually high?

Accepted Answer

Some background... I am an electrical engineer.  I have purchased 6 Samsung 950 Pro SSD's, and 5 Samsung 960 EVO SSD's, for use in building computers for my company.
Over the last four months, I've had NO failures of any Samsung NVMe SSD.
I believe that the recent failures of the 960 EVO's is due to overheating.  It should be noted, that the computers I've built using Samsung's NVMe SSD's all use Intel's Integrated Video, and no separate video card is present.  This allows for better cooling of the NVMe SSD since no HOT video card is mounted near the SSD.  Also, I'm not using these computers for gaming, but for circuit analysis, where simulations can run 8 hours or more.
Samsung NVMe SSD's provide for throttling when the temperature gets too high, and that should prevent damage to the SSD.  I have not heard of overheating with the 950 Pro, only the 960 EVO.  Perhaps the firmware for those SSD's need to be modified to prevent overheating.  I've updated the firmware for each of the five 960 EVO's I've purchased, using either Samsung's Magician or their Linux bootable .iso file being shown online.
I'm also considering adding a heat sink to the 960 EVO's, in an effort to avoid problems.
These failures with the 960 EVO SSD's is very troubling, and is indicative of a new technology.  I believe we will see many cooling solutions being used for NVMe's in the future.  For now, it is important to use the latest firmware for any 960 EVO SSD you purchase.
Good Luck, Steve Kahn

Question 2

Can I use this as a bootable OS drive on an ASUS X99-A LGA 2011-v3 mobo? I plan to put it in the M2 slot.

Accepted Answer

I have a Z97 and have used all Samsung m.2 including 960EVO as boot os.  Z97 will use 960 but only at x2--X99 specs say on board supports x4.  Technically it should boot.  The trick usually is the operating system.  You must have a active uefi bios and have the boot drive formated efi.  Win 7 will not auto format efi--must manually format.  If you're not familiar with it, just Google it.  There are several tutorials.  Win 10 supposedly will auto format, but I haven't tried it.

Question 3

How can I know that this will work with my Thimphu-K Motherboard? It has an M.2 slot but no available PCIe slot? I’m new to computers, but will this need a PCIe slot to work? Or just the single M.2 socket? If it helps, the motherboard is a key M socket 3 format. Thanks!

Accepted Answer

You can look it up, but PCIe is a communication methodology used within motherboards, CPU's and storage devices (in general).  Presumably, your motherboard is at version 3.0.    Additionally, various CPU's have varying lanes available for communication, which are divided up between GPU, PCIe1x (etc) connections, etc.
Long story short - plug in the 960 evo M.2 into your motherboards M.2 slot (hopefully a PCIe 3.0 x4 enabled slot, so you can take advantage of the advertised maximum data transfer rates).    Don't worry about the PCIe 1x slots, they do not apply to the M.2 SSD you have.

Question 4

Will this work with the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon?

Accepted Answer

Taken directly from MSI's website:
 
2 x M.2 slots (Key M)
Support up to PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s
Support PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe U.2 SSD with Turbo U.2 Host Card2
M2_1 slot supports 2242/ 2260 /2280/ 22110 storage devices
M2_2 slot supports 2242/ 2260 /2280 storage devices
Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready for all M.2 slots

Question 5

will this work with msi b350 gaming pro?

Accepted Answer

It should as your board has a built in M.2. slot. You do want to download and read manual first to check how the board uses m.2. On my board, if I use M.2. slot on board, it disables or uses two of the available sata 6 ports on the side of the board. They also have pci to m.2. adapters you can use if you have any issues.

Question 6

Is this better and faster than AMD Radeon R7 OCZ?

Accepted Answer

in short yes, fast of course is a very relative term. are we talking sequential, non-sequential, access times. what que depth would you use the most. these all influence what drive is fastest for you. in general this is drive is the second fastest drive on the market bested only by the 960 pro. however 850 pros are just as fast for common use cases, especially in raid 0. if you want more information visit pcper for the best reviews and comparisons of ssds.

Question 7

I'm getting a max read of 1312MB/s on a ASUS ROG Strix 17".... What am I doing wrong?

Accepted Answer

would need system specs to say for sure, but if the laptop is over a year old then the chances of having a slower M.2 bus is most likely your problem, if it is a new laptop and you have a 2.5 sata drive in it as well as this try taking that out and see if opening up PCI lanes helps the speed it maybe being throttled due to not enough bandwith.

Question 8

Why is the lifespan so short? I would buy it but.................

Accepted Answer

2 things, this drive is made with tlc flash which inherently has has a much shorter life span than mlc flash like the pro model has. A;so the 250gb model had a flaw that led to much higher drive failure than is normal. i personally pre-ordered 2 and had both fail on me. Samsung gave me replacement drives within days of me contacting them. the flaw probably has been resolved and any drive bought now should have a long life that Samsung drive usually have. However,   if you can splurge on a 500gb model i would, they so far have had no issues.

Question 9

can this work on my MSI Z270 GAMING M5 LGA 1151 Intel Z270 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard?

Accepted Answer

Yes, that motherboard has a M.2 slot but the manufacturer states that "The SATA5 and SATA 6 ports will be unavailable when M.2 PCIe SSD module has been installed in the M.2_2 slot. Please refer to page 33 for M.2 & SATA combination table."

Question 10

Can this drive be reset?

Accepted Answer

to quickly reset it, you can boot off of windows install media and instead of going through the install, go to command prompt, run diskpart, select disk 0, clean. (This assumes you only have this single drive in your pc)

If you want to secure erase it, you could use a parted magic boot disk and run the nvme secure erase utility.

Questions & Answers