well, it's supposed to work out-of-box without issues. not sure what happened to yours.

i am waiting for a new laptop. i will install samsung 850 evo m.2 sata ssd, do a direct clean install on it (from stock w10.home.sl to w10.pro 1607), install its stock drivers (intel.rst.14.6.1.1030), and install samsung magician 4.9.7 on it (turn on maximum reliability optimizations; rapid mode on; over provisioning set to default 10%).

i will post results here for reference.

yes, i am doing exactly what you said that didn't work: do a clean install directly with w10 pro 1607 (with the same iso, Win10_1607_English_x64.iso from the link you provided). if it doesn't work i can use 1511.

the stock os that comes with the laptop is w10 home single language; here we need w10 pro for work.

first of all, i apologize for everything i said previously. what you reported were right, and i was wrong all this while it's all about the leak of ms' scureboot golden keys. don't bother to try w10 1511. your system is all good (don't be fooled by the screen shot above; it's taken when the laptop has its secureboot DISABLED)

you're right that for a clean install of w10 1607, if your system has secureboot turned on, the ahci mode in samsung magician is indeed shown as deactivated. kernel-mode drivers from samsung magician 4.9.7 were affected, and they could not be loaded because of the new secureboot enforcement. why did i say previously that my machines were unaffected and worked fine? it's because i disabled secureboot for those machines after reading the news about the golden key leak (i forgot all about it, and told you i had secureboot enabled in them)

despite samsung magician reporting ahci mode as deactivated (due to failure to load their kernel mode drivers so as to detect ahci mode properly; it's just a misleading eye sore), ahci mode is actually enabled and working fine. i think we will get an update from samsung for updated drivers and have this resolved.

haha i rather admit my mistakes than giving nonsense to people.

secureboot can be turned off anytime. it's only useful if you wanna run windows that is secureboot-aware.

i suggest using this little utility, https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-sc...o-download-tool

yeah all are official .iso files. just grab what you need just in case

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0rb8RJWoyw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaPNHIl7Mx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsOL8iebGoI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2_lR2jssc

(.. and many more at youtube)

you can still benefit from the much higher iops in ssd.

samsung sm961 has been reported that when it's overheated, data loss occurred. (note that these are extreme cases; normal use cases usually don't exceed its max operating temperature of 70c)

if you're using these high-performance m.2 ssds for long-hour work processing, forget about putting it in m.2 slot, and use an adapter with heatsink. well, now there is a water-cooled option also.

3d tlc nand is just going mainstream. there are a few announced recently (e.g. crucial, intel) but they will take some time to populate.

if you want you can still use pcie adapter to use nvme ssds.

yes, these ssds will also be more affordable, and with larger capacities

although my first choice is still mlc ssds for work purposes, ssds with 3d tlc nand is more than sufficient for normal use. as long as you don't go beyond its limits, they do work very well.

samsung had an early lead, so they have a year or two of advantages in time. along the line samsung have also established reference points for us. hopefully other brands can catch up, and their tlc products can have similar or better characteristics.

as long as your mobo has a free pcie port (x4 at least), and supports uefi boot, you can run pcie x4 nvme ssd at full speed, as boot drive. haswell mobos should work. i have tested to set a pcie ssd up for z97 using pcie slot before (samsung xp941; this pcie ssd doesn't have boot oprom, it work well).

as for os, it's better to run w8.1 and up, because they have built-in native nvme driver.

if that's the case, everything should work for you

wow.

here i have 3 machines with kingston.hyperx.fury 240gb. (few months old) just in case i have regular backups for the os and stuff.

7mm, 9.5mm, .. are thickness of your ssd/hdd. use 12.7mm.

use ssd with the hdd bay in laptop (so that ssd can run at full sata3 speed), and put the existing hdd into the new caddy.

No i mean if you go search the internet about 'your laptop model replacement hdd caddy', it will tell you that.

I use hdd caddy in my aw's and asus g55 laptops. All are 12.7mm.

this one looks good. it's rare to find a new sata ssd with mlc nand for mainstream market these days (mostly are going tlc).

.. is this even necessary? i think these days people like led everywhere

different people have different taste.

i am not a fan of led stuff. when i use my pc, i am always looking at computer screen, not once at my pc cases hehe

with so many indicators to tell us what might go wrong, we will spend more time looking at them than to do what we want (at least i will do that hahaha)

haha! maybe they are cool for the first (few) times; then eventually you get bored, and might even forget about them. another thing is when some of the led is somehow spoiled either by nature or accident. that happened to me already. (i once treated my corsair k70 rgb half a bottle of coke lol; luckily after cleaning it up, led still work fine )

now i rather spend on performance than look.

finally. samsung.960.evo/pro are coming

960.evo is like pm961 for oem; while 960.pro is like sm961

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/samsung-p...chitecture.html
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-co...-corner-1328575