Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB - M.2 NVMe Interface Internal Solid State Drive with V-NAND Technology (MZ-V7S2T0B/AM)

Product Information

Now, to reiterate an important point: A drive may come in the M.2 form factor, but that says nothing about the bus that it makes use of. Determining that is just as important as making sure it fits.

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When it comes to the real-world tests, we time how long it takes to copy a 30GB game install across the drive and use PCMark10 and Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, which includes a level load test.The synthetic performance shows the SN770 trails more expensive drives in terms of reads, although the writes are much closer. The 4K performance is relatively impressive and shows that the SN770 has something to offer in this crowded marketplace. It's not too surprising that this drive outperforms Samsung's DRAM-less offering, as that is a PCIe 3.0 drive, after all, but the extent to which it does is impressive. The earliest versions of M.2 PCI Express SSDs made use of the PCI Express Gen 2.0 x2 interface, which defines a throughput ceiling that's higher than SATA 3.0's, but not enormously so. That evolved into PCI Express Gen 3.0 x2 and x4, paired with a technology called Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) to propel performance even further, especially with heavy, deeply queued workloads.

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Nowadays, though, many lean, premium laptops can make use of PCI Express-bus M.2 SSDs. (Just about all new desktop motherboards with M.2 slots also support PCI Express M.2 SSDs, too.) With these, you may see a substantive increase in performance in benchmark testing, but in most real-world usage, they'll just feel like a fast, premium SATA SSD. In our tests, the Intel 670p loaded Final Fantasy at the same speed or faster than competitors. It also finished just two places below the vaunted PCIe 4.0 Samsung 980 Pro in PCMark 10. Those are very respectable marks for a budget drive. We mentioned NVMe above. NVMe is another technical hurdle to consider, because systems and motherboards need board-level support for these drives to be bootable. All late-model motherboards now support NVMe M.2 drives, but older boards are not guaranteed to support booting from an NVMe-based drive. Outside of new motherboards, these high-bandwidth, NVMe-capable slots are also found in some recent laptops. Also note that in some cases, a laptop may support a PCI Express NVMe drive, but it may be soldered to the motherboard and thus not upgradable. So, if you're thinking of upgrading a recent laptop or convertible, be sure to consult your manual very closely before buying one of these drives.

Next Gen Storage with PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs

SATA is slowest: SATA isn't as fast as an M.2 PCIe or a PCIe add-in card, but the majority of desktops and many laptops support 2.5-inch SATA drives, and many doing typical mainstream tasks users won't notice the difference between a good recent SATA drive and a faster PCIe model. The era of PCIe 5.0 SSDs is upon us, propelling us to new heights of stratospheric SSD performance. Blazing-fast PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs, which offer up to twice the sequential speeds of the older PCIe 4.0 standard, are now supported with Intel and AMD's current platforms, the Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 and 13th-Gen Raptor Lake. The Intel 670p is an older driver, but it is also a proven budget option that is often on steep sale. It’s best to grab it at 1TB or 2TB, as the 512GB model is slower with a smaller pSLC cache. The drive has DRAM, which is nice, and it has the fastest QLC on the market, even now. Performance outside of the cache does not suffer as much as a consequence.

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Thedata bus, or pathway, over which your data travels to and from an M.2 drive is a whole other matter, which is where PCI Express and NVMe come in. We'll get to the significance of NVMe in a moment; first, let's discuss the key physical traits of an M.2 drive that you need to understand. (The video below is a good primer.) All of this leaves the minor matter of how this drive actually performs. When it comes to peak sequential throughput, the Platinum P41 is basically as fast as anything else out there, bar a few rounding errors. OK, the Samsung 990 Pro is a bit faster at 7,462MB/s for reads to the P41's 7,375MB/s. But, honestly, it's inconsequential. The same goes for writes, where almost all the top drives will do just under 6.9GB/s. WATCH THAT BOOT.If your desktop is getting a PCI Express/NVMe drive for the first time, verify with the motherboard or PC maker that the drive will be bootable. It's unlikely, but a BIOS upgrade may be required to get you there. (This is an issue with older motherboards, not current ones.) Slightly less edifying are the P41's operating temps. At a 71°C peak, it's a little toastier than we'd ideally like. Not that we saw any signs of any thermal throttling. But temps that high is a teensy bit of a long-term reliability concern. Some PCI Express M.2 SSDs can run hot under sustained use, so having the M.2 module mounted on a vertical card can also mean better ventilation, and in theory less throttling due to heat. That said, these drives are so fast that under most normal use they finish data transfers before heat can become a major issue.

So, What Is the Best M.2 SSD to Buy?

This isn't a slow SSD, either. It's right up there with the very best PCIe Gen4 drives today at 7,400MB/s read and 6,500MB/s write. In our own testing, we measured it at 7,106MB/s seq. read and 6,504MB/s seq. Write—very nearly bang on what's advertised, which is really great.

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Rather more specific to this WD drive is the latest 2.0 version of the company's Game Mode drive management software. WD claims it improves game loading times courtesy of a so-called "read look-ahead" algorithm, which predictively caches game data. It now runs automatically, detecting when games are loaded. How much that kind of feature actually makes a difference in the real world is notoriously difficult to pin down. But it's unlikely to be revolutionary. The T700 is for gamers, creatives, and professionals seeking the ultimate in solid-state drive performance that today only a Gen 5 SSD offers. But unless your desktop is a recent, high-performance model that supports this standard, being able to run a PCI Express 5.0 SSD at peak speeds requires a considerable additional investment. You must buy a recent desktop that supports SSDs built on the PCIe 5.0 standard, upgrade an existing recent rig, or build one from scratch. By making such an investment and having the T700 serve as its brains, though, you're future-proofing your entire setup. Of course, SK Hynix isn't new to this space, but the new P41 is arguably the brand's first tilt at a truly high-end M.2 drive. The old SK Hynix Gold P31 was a bit of a clunky old thing, limited as it was to the PCIe 3.0 interface and a controller chip with a mere four memory channels. The new Platinum P41? It's got it all. In other words, while the speed freak in me loves what NVMe brings to the table, I recognize that in practice, it's usually not that noticeable. If you're looking to get the most from your money when it comes time to build a gaming PC, good SATA SSDs remain an excellent option, with prices now falling below 10 cents per GB. Know which bus you're on. In a laptop-upgrade scenario, you're almost certainly swapping out one M.2 drive for another, with the intent of gaining capacity. Make sure you know the specifications of the drive coming out of your system—and whether it's reliant on the SATA or PCI Express bus—so you can install the same, presumably roomier kind going in.Even in mSATA's heyday, though, a replacement was in the works. During development, it was known as NGFF, for "Next-Generation Form Factor." As it took shape, though, it took on its current, final name: M.2. The drives would be smaller, potentially more capacious, and, most important, not necessarily reliant on SATA. In my early career, I worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of "Dummies"-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I'm a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University's journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. But first, the shape issue. Any M.2 drive you are looking at will be labeled with a four- or five-digit number as part of its specifications or model name. It's a measurement, in millimeters: The first two numbers define the drive's width, the second two the length. Now let's reiterate an important point: You may know an M.2 solid-state drive's length and capacity, but that doesn't tell you about thebusor interface it makes use of. That detail is vital to know—just as important as making sure the drive physically fits in the space you have. We put every SSD we get in the PC Gamer labs through their paces in various benchmarks made up of a mix of synthetic tests and real-world applications. To ascertain a drives sequential throughput, we use ATTO SSD Benchmark for compressible data (a best-case scenario) and AS SSD for incompressible data (more realistic). We also test random throughput with AS SSD and a combination of CrystalDiskMark 7.0 and Anvil Pro.