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 An unapologetically bright RGB-lit PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, the S40G will bling up your PC if you're an enterprising builder. Its 4K read and write speeds should keep most gamers happy, too. Of course, to show off the lighting, you will need to have an open-frame rig, or one with a transparent-sided case. If you've already RGB'd your keyboard, mouse, video card, motherboard, case, and headphones, and are at a loss for what's left, the Spectrix S40G makes enough sense both in performance and looks to belong in any lighting-obsessed custom PC builder's arsenal. One other form that NVMe drives take, the U.2 drive, is confined at the moment to just a handful of SSDs. Its physical interface is much more common in servers than consumer PCs. A few high-end motherboards may have onboard U.2 ports, but most will require a specialized U.2 adapter that plugs into an M.2 slot.

The data 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.) Depending on what you need, any one of these M.2 SSD enclosures could be the best choice. But what sets one apart from another? Here’s what we’ve learned about each of these enclosures. Installing your M.2 SSD is straightforward, although you’ll need to use the included small screwdriver. Remove the screw from the lid and slide it away to reveal the inner housing. Inside is a thermal silica gel pad that helps transfer heat to the outside. The compartment will accommodate any sized M.2 SSD, from 2230 all the way up to 2280. And it supports both NVMe and SATA SSDs, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility. The UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure is an aluminum and silicone enclosure that allows for tool-free installation. Ready to shop? Not quite: Increasingly, mainstream drives now cite support for PCI Express 4.0 as opposed to 3.0. We've tested our share of M.2 SSDs that support the upgraded interface, and they are fast indeed. How much you'll be able to tell the difference, though, comes down to what you do with your PC.The ORICO M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure is made entirely from aluminum and boasts a 10-minute automatic sleep mode. The data transfer speed will depend on what type of drive you’re using. For NVMe drives, you get a full 10Gbps maximum speed. If you’re using a SATA drive, this will top out at 6Gbps. You’ll also be limited to 2TB of drive capacity. That said, you get everything you need to get started. Along with the enclosure, there’s a pair of 15.7” USB Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A cables. Best Durability: StarTech.com USB-C M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Enclosure Specifically, Intel users will need a 12th or 13th Generation Core CPU with a motherboard based on Intel's Z690 or Z790 chipset. AMD fans must have a Ryzen 7000 series processor and an AM5 motherboard with an X670, X670E, or B650E chipset. Important: You'll also have to be sure the motherboard actually has a PCI Express 5.0 M.2 slot implemented. The chipset is not a guarantee of that, just an indication that the motherboard maker could include one. (Some of these boards will have only PCI Express 5.0 x16 expansion card slots, and not 5.0-compliant M.2 SSD slots.) The USB port supports the USB 3.2 data transfer standard. This allows you to read and write files at a rate of up to 10Gbps. The enclosure itself will support up to a 8TB drive. That’s a larger capacities than most enclosures will allow. A pair of 12-inch cables are included for connecting to your computer or other device. Both are male-to-male, and one is USB Type-C to Type-C, while the other is Type-C to Type-A. 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.)

Though it can't quite match the gaming prowess of some of the latest generation of PCIe 4.0 speedsters, the SSD 990 Pro With Heatsink still offers respectable gaming performance while being a thoroughbred workhorse for creative tasks. It's an appealing choice and a worthy upgrade from the SSD 980 Pro. SATA-based M.2 SSDs are all well and good, but mostly restricted to economy models these days—PCI Express is where the cutting-edge speed is. Your system specifically needs an M.2 slot that supports PCI Express to use these drives; some desktop motherboard slots support both kinds. A given laptop might support only M.2 SSDs that use the SATA bus, which limits what you can do in terms of upgrades. The only reason you'd upgrade in that situation would be to boost the available storage capacity. Iv found caddies that use the realtek rtl9210 and B varient work very well for stability and reliability. No disconenctions no corruption no random drop outs.

PCI Express NVMe Drives 101: How to Buy the Best

The Samsung SSD 990 Pro, the company's flagship PCI Express 4.0 NVMe internal solid-state drive, gets high marks for raw speed, everyday application performance, a strong software suite, and hardware-based encryption. The heatsink-equipped version of this drive performed slightly better than the non-heatsink version (which we tested using our testbed's motherboard's heatsink) in most of our benchmarks. A few other recent internal SSDs have outpaced it in our gaming benchmarks, but its overall capability and deep feature set make this Samsung SSD a versatile drive well-suited for creative tasks. Who It's For

Also, make sure that if your system supports and you're shopping for an NVMe drive, any PCI Express drive you're considering is specifically an NVMe model. Merely using the PCI Express bus is not necessarily a guarantee of that; PCIe M.2 SSDs existed before NVMe, and though all current models support NVMe, some oldies are still on the market. Today's mainstream solid-state drives are PCI Express 3.0 and 4.0 x4 NVMe M.2 devices, and they leave the fastest SATA-based drives in the dust. We started out our list with the UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure. This enclosure accepts any length NVMe SSD, and installation takes just a few moments. That’s convenient if you intend to swap different drives in and out of your enclosure. We also appreciated the large, 8TB maximum capacity, which is great for archives. As we discuss in our parallel roundup, The Best M.2 Solid-State Drives, M.2 drives are differentiated by a four- or five-digit number listed in their names or specifications. The number is a measurement in millimeters, with the first two digits being the drive's width and the remaining two or three digits telling you how long it is. If you're a custom PC builder with RGB-lighting fever, and have RGB-ified just about every inch and corner of your system, perk up: ADATA has brought pretty lights to the internal SSD final frontier. The XPG Spectrix S40G is the most flamboyant NVMe drive we've seen to date. With the S40G's fine 4K write speeds, top-notch sequential-read speeds, and respectable durability rating, ADATA makes having a top-of-the line, over-the-top SSD affordable and fun, in one fell swoop. Who It's ForIn recent years, M.2 drive technology has been changing how we think about storage. Traditional storage has either been internal or external. Yes, you can swap out a traditional 2.5” or 3.5” internal drive if you want to. But there are multiple steps involved. An M.2 drive is a drop-in solution that can be implemented not just in full-sized PCs but in portable systems. I haven't tried recent enclosures, having given up with data corruption last summer (2022). While the data seemed to transfer okay, using FC in command prompt to compare the files revealed corruption on many/all files across various enclosures. The only one I can rely on is my faithful Sabrent EC-TFNE. One thing we appreciated about the design of the UGREEN enclosure is the easy, tool-free installation. The outer shell of the case is hollow, and you can slide it off with a little effort. Once you’ve pulled out the inner case, you install your M.2 drive in the enclosure. It’s large enough to fit any standard-sized NVMe drive: 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 will all fit.