M.2 SSD in X51 R3 - Samsung 950 Pro? - Help Needed

having the same issue with the alienware 17 r3 will let you know when I have solved this and give advice

I ended up using the M.2 PM951 (256GB) AFTER not being able to get the the 512GB Samsung 950 to be recognized.   I also loaded the Samsung Driver to no avail.

I assume that there needs to be some kind of change in the BIOS from Dell in order to make this work.  I can confirm that the PM951 (256GB) works.  One tech at Dell told me that they don't support 512GB.

I have a NVMe Samsung 950 Pro installed and working just fine on an x51 R3. I simply installed it and booted from the 2TB HD, then used Macrium Reflect to image the entire hard drive with four partitions (size adjusted) to the 512GB 950 Pro. Then I removed the hard drive and it booted just fine from the M.2 port.

Note--there are only two PCIe 3.0 lanes on the x51 R3 M.2 port. You will not get the full sequential read speed as you need four PCIe 3.0 lanes to do that. Still much faster than regular SATA III ports.

I have no idea why Dell would limit the design of it's latest x51 R3 motherboard with only a 2xPCIe 3.0 lanes on the M.2 port. Such a travesty.

Well that's strange. I never had that problem. I don't think the SATA port matters at all. Yes--my monitor has been connected via both HDMI and now DisplayPort. Maybe check the BIOS settings for boot and make sure the hard drive is the first boot device and disable the others?

Do you have a GTX 960 or are you using the Intel HD HDMI port? When I had the original hard drive (Sata Port 3 I believe) and the 950 Pro in there after cloning, it would continue to boot off the Hard Drive instead of the M2 port. So I basically just took the hard drive out to store as a backup, and put in another SSD on that Sata port, and then it booted from the M2 950 just fine.

I installed the Samsung NVMe driver when I was troubleshooting wondering why I only got two PCIe lanes active, but have since gone back to using the Windows 10 NVMe driver. I could not get it to recognize more than two lanes, so my guess is that this is a motherboard limitation. Still, it's plenty fast with just two lanes--and really, only affects the sequential read speed I believe.

I was starting to give up hope ;)

When I put the M.2 drive in I can't boot to my Sata drive (ie my current boot drive). I can't even get to the bios screen - its just a black screen until I remove it and reboot.

Was your display attached to the GTX 960 when you installed the drive? - I'm using HDMI from the 960

I also don't know if I'm using the proper Sata port on the board (or if that even matters) for my current Sata drive. I'm using Port 3 - think that matters?

I just tried changing BIOS setting and removing variables - no luck! 

With the M.2 installed I can't get past the blank screen. I noticed that the machine registered the F12 key input (it highlighted the text in the lower corner) but then still goes to the blank screen.

Yeah I have the GTX 960 connected via HDMI. I did try just using the Intel HDMI port to get to the BIOS but it didn't do anything different. 

I even went as far as removing the GTX and just had the M.2 installed - nothing! 

The only sign of hope is when I did the ePSA test. The machine does see a "SSDCard" installed.

Recently got my X51 R3 and now looking to juice it up.

Since you don't get the speed benefit of 4 lanes, does it make sense to just go with the cheaper "Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB M.2 SSD". Is there any advantage to using the Samsung 950 Pro?

Thanks

Thanks!

On a similar note, which is the easiest of the M.2 SSD drives to install, bios setup for bootup etc

1. Samsung SM951 256GB

2. Samsung PM951 256GB

3. Samsung EVO 850

4. Samsung 950 Pro NVMe

Any other? If we ignore the speed, which is the most compatible, easiest to setup

The PM 951 is the compatible chip, but I can`t initialize the PM 951 on my 17r3

Is there documentation about how to setup the nvme with macarium?

I used Macrium to clone the drive to SM951 and then removed the 2TB HD but the bios will not detect the SSD, it shows no NVME or M2. Sata Devices? How can I get the SSD to show up in the bios so I can boot from it?

I wanted to add to this as I had this problem today as well. I have an X51 R3, slightly modified from the original configuration to add a EVGA 960 4 GB card. I installed a Samsung 950 Pro 256 GB SSD in the riser card and had the same thing happen: black screen. It looks like everything was fine except there was no video output - disk was obviously booting and everything. 

I came across this thread in searching for the answer and removed the 950 SSD to see if I would see the same behavior - but still had a black screen. After a re-seat attempt it booted fine (making me not quite confident of what the issue really was, seating the card or the following) 

I updated the BIOS to the most recent one as of 6/7/2016 and after that the system booted with video without any trouble. 

Hi M3RiceRocket - I have run into the same situation you have. There is no hold down screw for my Samsung m.2 SSD. How did you find one that could be used?

Thanks for your response.