a b c Marshall R. (7 April 2014). "Buying an M.2 SSD? How to tell which is which?". Republic of Gamers. ASUS. Archived from the original on 27 April 2014 . Retrieved 28 April 2014. The SK Hynix Platinum P41 is a worthy choice for anyone looking to buy a high-performance PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSD without breaking the bank. It blew away several of our benchmark records. The P41 provides AES hardware-based encryption and a clone utility tool as well as SSD management software. Just be forewarned that with its blistering speed, you will want to add a heatsink, the one item of note that it is missing. 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.

a b c d e f g h "M.2 Connector (NGFF) Introduction" (PDF). ATTEND. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 February 2014 . Retrieved 17 January 2014. Samsung introduced a new form factor called Next Generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF), also known as NF1 or M.3, which may replace U.2 in server applications. [23] [24] Buy SYONCON AP425 M.2 2230 NVMe SSD 512GB XPC Technologies 2TB M.2 2230 NVMe SSD [PCIe 4.0 Interface, Fast Read/Write Speed, Large Capacity] Get ready for an immersive experience with exclusive gaming features including PCIe ® Gen 4.0 3, Western Digital's nCache™ 4.0 Technology, and Microsoft’s DirectStorage Support.Terms Apply. Promotion ends 3 December 2023. Items are subject to availability. Max 5 units per customer. We actually like these because often, you often get a robust heat sink on the M.2 drive. Some PCI Express-bus M.2 SSDs can run hot under sustained read/write tasks and throttle their speed. That said, unless you're running a server or something similar, where a drive is constantly getting hammered with reads and writes, that's usually not something you have to worry about. That's because many of these drives are so fast, they get their transfer duties done before they have a chance to get all that hot. 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. 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. Do not add a lot of thermal paste as it is not strictly needed. Nor do you need expensive thermal paste, as this is not a high-performance CPU. You want a very thin layer when spread out, as too much paste defeats the purpose.

Most M.2 SSDs are 22 x 80mm (W x L), but can be shorter or longer. You can tell what size an M.2 SSD is by reading the four or five-digit number in its name or on its printed-circuit board (PCB). The first two numbers are its width, while the others are its length (example: M.2 Type-2280). Having a longer SSD means more space for NAND chips but not necessarily more storage space.Revitalize and expand the storage of your M.2 2230 SSD compatible laptop such as many Microsoft ® Surface and Dell™ models. M2P4S M.2 (NGFF) PCIe base SSD to PCIe ×4 Adapter". HW Tools. 14 February 2014 . Retrieved 22 June 2014. A typical 1TB SSD usually has 952GB of available storage with around 913GB available after Windows 11 is installed versus the 823GB you'll have (with Windows 11) in one of these Western Digital drives. That's a loss of about 90GB. One last caveat to drop in before we get to our product recommendations surrounds Intel's SSD line. Intel for a while sold a family of M.2-based storage products under the brand name Optane, in two very distinct types of drive. Intel's "Optane SSDs" were SSDs like any other, bootable drives that can serve as a stand-alone boot drive or as secondary storage. They were discontinued for consumers in 2021, but you may still see them around. (Intel sold its SSD business at the end of 2021 to SK Hynix, which spun it off into a new subsidiary, Solidigm.)