M.2 drive length isn't always an indicator of drive capacity, but therearelimits to NAND-chip density and how many memory modules engineers can stuff onto a PCB of a given size. As a result, most of the M.2 drives we've seen to date have topped out at 2TB, though you can find a few 4TB and 8TB models at lofty prices. The typical capacity waypoints are as follows: 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. Early examples of the latest generation of M.2 drives, using the PCI Express 5.0 bus, also come in the Type-2280 format, but it's expected that some PCIe 5.0 slots on new motherboards will be built to support the larger Type-25110 format (25mm by 110mm), so we may well see PCIe 5.0 SSDs with these dimensions as well. PCIe 5 drives are capable of tremendous throughput speeds (in excess of 10,000MBps) that should generate abundant heat, and the SSDs we have seen so far come with substantial built-in heatsinks.

The biggest weakness of the P41 Plus is the performance. In my review, it only got up to 4,000MB/s in reads and 3,300MB/s in writes, just under the official rating of 4,125MB/s in reads and 3,325MB/s in writes. Great pricing helps make up for this, but so does Solidigm's custom Synergy software and drivers. Virtually every other company actually just uses Microsoft's default SSD drivers, but Solidigm's custom drivers boost performance by a decent amount, despite it being super low-end. Additionally, its 400TBW endurance isn't bad either. Going with anything less than 4TB with the 870 QVO will turn out to be a bad value as even TLC-based SATA SSDs without a powerful controller and DRAM cache will perform better in durability and transfer speeds. The main reason for QLC is that it makes 8TB a possibility and reduces the price-per-GB significantly to make it a worthwhile consideration. This change of mind return policy is in addition to, and does not affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law including any rights you may have in respect of faulty items. To return faulty items see our Returning Faulty Items policy.

So fast compared to what I'm use to! It has actually disrupted my morning routine as I use to have time to get a cup of coffee while my old system booted up, lol. Now I walk in with my coffee, hit the power button, and before I get my chair situated I have my login prompt. Loading large game files is so fast I hardly notice it and I have not yet been able to discern a single noticeable lag with a cut-scene load-in.

While PCIe 5.0 SSDs have arrived on the scene, they're not great for everyone for a few reasons: they're expensive, they're very hot, and all that extra performance doesn't mean much for most users today. PCIe 4.0 SSDs will remain the go-to for the average user for the time being, and one of the best you can get (perhaps even the best) is Corsair's MP600 Pro NH, a superfast drive that comes in a wide variety of capacities and costs very little. The drive utilizes the Phison E12S PCIe 3.0 controller. Although newer drives with PCIe 4.0 arrive with the newer Phison E16 and E18 controllers. But unless these SSDs use TLC, the QLC flash will still be a limiting factor in speed. However, from an engineering point of view, SSDs didn't needto be that big. The enclosure an SSD comes in has a lot of dead space inside. It's designed in that 2.5-inch size and shape to make the drive fit into those existing bays. So when mobile-device designers, challenged with slimming down laptops and tablets, reassessed this issue, the consensus was clear: The bulky 2.5-inch form factor, eventually, would have to go.I recommend this drive for compact, high capacity, relatively static data storage installed inside a computer. It would not be suitable for use as an external drive unless the drive was powered up frequently and mostly read rather than written to.

Smaller-capacity 32GB and 64GB M.2 SSDs are also available for use in embedded applications or for SSD caching, but these are of marginal interest to upgraders or PC builders. Pricing on these drives ranges anywhere from 10 to 75 cents per gigabyte, and the biggest factor affecting price is the bus type of the drive.It took around 18 hours to populate one partition with 3.225TB of data. Transfer speed from a 2.5" 4TB MLC SSD was throttled by SATA interface of the source drive so there was no speed advantage to be gained by the NVMe drive for me. Even when being read inside the computer, there will be no noticeable speed advantage unless working with enormous files (say 50GB-100GB or more), which I will not be doing. Drive temperature during population never exceeded 35°C with a 25.5° ambient temperature and no heat sink on the SSD. An external NVMe SSD is excellent if you can utilize its speed to improve your workflow, but these SSDs fall behind what SATA SSDs can offer when it comes to price and endurance. The Oyen Digital U32 Shadow is an example of a well-built SATA SSD that is a great storage medium for those who need a fast and reliable way to transfer their data between devices.