Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MMZ-V7S1T0BW )

Product Information

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.

For most PC applications, that probably doesn't matter. But for small form factor rigs and perhaps a gaming laptop, every little can undoubtedly help. On that note, for most applications, we'd probably go for the cheaper bare drive rather than this more expensive model with its heat spreader. The revised SN850X is inherently a cooler-running thing, after all.Experience superior performance and reliability that you can only get from the world's number one brand for flash memory since 2003. All firmware and components, including Samsung's world-renowned DRAM and NAND, are produced in-house, allowing end-to-end integration for quality you can trust. Pay for your phone and an inclusive bundle of calls, texts and data in one easy-to-manage monthly fee.

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. 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.The NVMe, or Non-Volatile Memory Express interface, has been designed specifically with solid state drives in mind. In contrast, SATA, the previous interface in charge, was built to cater to most HDDs. The thought is, at the time, that no storage would ever need to exceed its lofty max bandwidth. To the surprise of a few, new storage mediums such as solid state absolutely blaze past SATA's max bandwidth, and so a new protocol in NVMe was born. It improves game loading times courtesy of a so-called "read look-ahead" algorithm, which predictively caches game data. It's a highly competitive SSD with great performance and an attractive design and offers good value for money.