All-in-all, despite the fact that this drive has been superseded by the 960 series, the 950 series are still pretty decent drives (they remain on the Recommended list of some top reviewers). This goes to show how far ahead of their competition Samsung was nearly two years ago. A point to consider for notebook users: Reviews have pointed out that the newer 960 series drain batteries at a MUCH faster rate than the older 950 series (one reviewer noted that battery time was reduced by as much as 40 minutes with the 960s). Samsung has been made aware of this and is delivering new firmware to rectify the issue. The new firmware is currently available on Samsung’s website (or, the new Samsung Magician software will do it for you), but reviews have not yet confirmed that the update resolved the very high battery drain issue. Conversely, the older Samsung 950 series drives (such as this one) were the Kings of long battery time. On the other hand: The Polaris Controller on the newer 960 series does run significantly cooler than the UBX Controller on the 950s (and will therefore Read and Write data for about 20% longer before going into thermal throttling). But I was able to largely mitigate the (under heavy use) thermal throttling of the 950s by installing a small (17mm x 17mm x 2mm) aluminum RAM heat sink on the UBX controller. Note: The thermal throttling under heavy usage primarily showed up in notebook use because the more restrictive internal space somewhat inhibits airflow -- but the addition of the RAM heat sink largely resolved it. In desktop usage, with better airflow, I never experienced thermal throttling issues with the 950 drives.

I tested my ssd using AIDA64 Linear Read test and was expecting 2200mb/s with possible thermal throttling in the end. However I got consistent ~1500mb/s read speed with short lived 2300mb/s spikes. Sequential read in crystal diskmark gives me between 1100mb/s and 1600mb/s. I tested twice on cold system and drive temperature ranged btw 35C and 60C (thermal throttling should kick in at 70C). So, I contacted samsung, gave them my system config and screenshots to tests. Samsung support response was that after reviewing my motherboard (ASRock X99 OC Formula 3.1), they concluded that it does not have 32GB/s M.2 slot support. It's very disappointing response since they clearly didnt look at benchmark screenshots and didnt look at motherboard specs, since the very first thing that is on motherboard spec is 32GB/s PCIE3.0 x4 Ultra M.2 slot and, benchmark screenshots show occasional 2300mb/s speeds (which you can only achieve on PCIE3.0x4 M.2 slot) I returned my unit back to newegg (refund - i am lucky it has not been 30 days yet) and bought new one. Cloned old drive to new one and I am getting 2100mb/s average linear read speeds in benchmarks. Clearly previous drive was at fault and samsung didnt honor their warranty on a 15 day old drive. Lesson learned: samsung quality and warranty unreliable - test everything manually within first 2 weeks so you can return to seller if defective.

-You must first enable CSM (Compatibility Support Module) for installing operating system. Then, install NVMe driver. Once you're done installing NVMe driver, you can now then disable CSM in UEFI BIOS to boot little bit quicker as well as achieving a bit more read/write performance. -Boot time varies from system to system in regards to amount of RAM, peripherals, PCI expansion devices, POST delay time, ROM, firmware, OC settings, etc. -Samsung 950 Pro is much cheaper than Intel 750 NVMe SSD -Boots ways faster than Intel 750 -Consumes 7watts whereas Intel 750 consumes 22watts, regardless of capacity model -If you're a gamer or just client user that turns on their PC, boot up, open up web, play games, and watch vidoes that requires low queue depth, then I highly recommend Samsung 950 Pro. However, if you're content creator and/or do heavy workload applications such as web server, file server, multiple 10-bit/12-bit color source, or other applications that require much deeper queue depth, then Intel 750 is recommended. -1TB model of Samsung 950 Pro will be available in sometimes in the year 2016. -If M.2 slot is already occupied and wanted to install additional NVMe M.2 SSD, then you'll need PCIe to M.2 Adapter AIC from various vendors such as ASUS, Addonics, Startech, Syba, etc. -If 950 Pro was available in U.2 SSD, then it would've solved thermal throttling issue but as long as you prepare adequate cooling solution in your chasis, then read/write performance as well as temperature would remain intact. -Indeed, vast majority of users still use AHCI/SATA SSD and mechanical hard drive since it's cheaper and many motherboards nowadays come with copious amount of SATA Ports which natively supports SATA 6Gb/s which is adequate to most users. But AHCI can only sent 32 commands per queue whereas NVMe can send more than 64k commands per queue which obviously reduces latency. As a result, faster performance. -Overall, I'm happy with Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD and I'm glad that I didn't buy Intel 750.

Had Windows 10 Anniversary running on a Samsung 850 EVO of the same size. Used the Samsung Migration tool instead of Acronis or Partition Master and the 850EVO was bit cloned to the 950 Pro while Windows was up and running. What? Only works with two Samsung SSDs. I reset my bios to boot off the 950 Pro and checked all my data files, setting, etc. Perfect clone. Every so often, when I feel that a System Restore Point is not enough for the changes I have made, I use the Migration Tool to clone my 950 PRO boot drive to my backup Samsung 850 EVO. Takes less than 5 minutes. Have to reset drive letters for clone drive after reboot. 950 PRO Benchmark Results using Samsung Magician SeqRead = 2250 out of 2200 SeqWritte = 950 out of 900 RandomRead = 189626 out of 270000 RandomWrites = 82686 out of 85000 *** Not sure why my random reads have a lower percentage reading than the others. System: Gigabyte Z170x Gaming 7 v1.0 w/ F8 BIOS Cooler Master HAF 912 Top 200mm Fan Blowing Down Twin 120mm in front blowing in, 140mm Side Blowing In Intel Skylake I5-6600k OC @ 4400 mHz (24C Idle) LEPA AquaChanger 120mm Rear facing with 200mm fan above (CPU 24C, System 25C, PCH 36C @ IDLE) G.Skill TridentZ DDR4 3200 OC @ 3200 mHz ASUS GTX 750TI 2GB OC @ 135 Twin Fan (Had two DVI monitors) EVGA SuperNova Gold 650watts G2 on ECO mode Samsung 850 EVO 256Gb SATA III Samsung 950 PRO 256Gb NVME WDC 1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM Spindle Drive