In essence, the 990 Pro caters to a niche demanding peak performance. Until PCIe 5.0 SSDs really hit the scene, it remains a top-tier choice for enthusiasts and professionals alike. I uninstalled some of my games (e.g. Baldur's Gate 3 & a couple of others) from my 6-y/o M.2 SSD & reinstalled them on this new SSD, the speed increase (especially shortened load times) was very noticeable. However, there are 2 issues that worsened the user experience for me: Corsair offers various cooling options for this drive, with the MP600 Pro LPX tailored with a low-profile heatsink fit for the PS5. The PCIe 5.0 SSDs still have plenty to offer. The Crucial T700 is unquestionably the fastest consumer SSD in the world that you can actually buy, at least for now, delivering up to a blistering 12.4 GB/s of sequential throughput and 1.5 million random IOPS over the PCIe 5.0 interface. That's an amazing level of performance from an amazingly compact device. Je voulais acheter ces SSD depuis pas mal de temps, mais ,comme vous l’aurez peut-être remarqué, les SSD ont vu leur prix chuter que depuis peu, ce qui explique mon acquisition tardive. Je voulais avoir le summum en version 4to, ce que ne propose pas malheureusement Samsung avec leur 990 pro (alors qu’ils avaient promis 🥲), alors j’ai pris le WD-SN850X, deux fois. J’en avais besoin pour loger en local tous les jeux gratuits récoltés sur Epic Games . Mettre près de 600 euros sur du matériel informatique ou acheter 10 jeux ? La question, elle est vite répondue.

That's not a bad thing. Especially in the case of laptops, an older machine might support only M.2 SATA-bus SSDs, and that will be the boundary of your upgrade path...end of story. As a result, the only reasons you'd upgrade the drive, in that situation, would be to get more capacity, or if the old one failed. Of all the M.2 SSD's on this list, the Samsung EVO Plus is the most expensive, in some cases (against XPG SX8200, for example) by a good margin. If you have the money to spend and you want the fastest SSD your PCIe 3.0 board can handle, then you can't go wrong with the Samsung EVO Plus. 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. (Credit: Zlata Ivleva) Its random read/write operations aren’t the best among PCIe 4.0 SSDS, so this SSD is best suited for loading very large files like video games, large media files, or as a boot drive.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. South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix is a relative newcomer to the consumer solid-state drive market, but you would never know that based on its first offerings. The SK Hynix Platinum P41, a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, is its best yet. It dominated our PCMark 10 and 3DMark Storage benchmark testing, setting several new records in the process. The P41 supports 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption. SK Hynix provides a clone utility tool, the SK Hynix System Migration Utility, for its SSDs, in addition to Easy Drive Manager software, which lets you see detailed information on drive health, run diagnostics, and erase the drive. And the P41 can be had for a very reasonable price in its 1TB and 2TB capacities. Who It's For

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. Efficient Cooling: The inclusion of a heatsink ensures that the SSD maintains optimal temperatures, preventing thermal throttling and sustaining high performance during prolonged usage. This feature is particularly beneficial for gaming and demanding applications. 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.

However, the 990 Pro comes with its caveats. Its current limited capacity options might deter some, though we anticipate more choices soon. Additionally, while its price matches high-performance PS5 SSDs, it sits higher than budget-friendly SSDs like the Adata XPG SX8200. Those strictly budget-focused might consider the more affordable Samsung 980 or 970 Evo. The PNY XLR8 CS3140 M.2 SSD is one of the best SSDs around, both for gamers and PC enthusiasts alike. Available in three capacities—1TB, 2TB, and 4TB—this SSD is a great swan song for the PCIe 4.0 era as PCIe 5.0 SSDs start to roll out.

Ultimately, this SSD is about delivering fast, consistent performance for the entirety of its very long life, so if you're looking for an SSD to perform constant data operations rather than just load up the best PC games that you'll never actually uninstall, than the Patriot Viper VP4300 is the M.2 SSD you've been looking for. How we tested the best M.2 SSDs The Patriot Viper VP4300 is a major contender for the best SSD crown with its impressive sequential and random speeds, fast copy operations, and low operating temperature. But most of all, this SSD is built for the long haul with a best-in-class 1000TBW endurance rating for a 1TB drive, and a 2000TBW rating for a 2TB one. has become a more attractive capacity point for SSDs as time has gone on. While there are now many options available, most come with compromises of one sort or another. You may have to settle for QLC, a weaker controller, no DRAM, unreliable hardware, etc. This is not always a big deal, especially if the drive is intended to be a secondary gaming drive. In the PlayStation 5, however, extra cooling is beneficial, so it’s convenient to have a heatsink option available. At the same time, laptops favor bare drives and especially single-sided drives, the latter of which have been very rare with TLC until recently. 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 WD Red SN700 doesn’t offer anything special for the general user, but is great for use in a NAS. The underlying technology is also starting to show its age, but that maturity is important for critical storage systems like a NAS where performance isn’t as much of a focus. The WD Red SN700 also doesn’t have power loss protection, although that isn’t surprising as this drive isn’t for an enterprise application. However, the warranty and rated endurance are strong, which makes this a good buy for the right usage, which in this case is in a NAS. This SSD is designed for use in desktop and notebook computer workloads and is not intended for Server environments.