SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2280 500GB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7S500B/AM

Pros: Just setup with Windows 10 and zooooom. Up and running so fast I didn't even have time to measure it. Even the first run of updates finished in under a minute (was watching closer this time).

Cons: Well, it is a Samsung and they tend to make very good electronics. Time will tell.

Overall Review: Got two so onto cloning to see how fast that works.

Pros: Installed Windows 10 Pro from USB from installation start to being at the "Cortana" introduction was about three and half minutes. Fastest Windows install I have ever done. Also amazing that you don't have to worry about cables at all - makes building a system that much easier.

Cons: None really

Overall Review: Go for a Samsung EVO or Pro, they are worth the money over competitors.

Pros: Tiny size, good capacity, very fast.

Cons: None yet.

Overall Review: This was my first M.2 experience. I worried about how to get Windows on to this thing and Googled for advice. Much of the available advice is a couple of years old or more and is already obsolete. I found lots of conflicting advice such as: "Enable CSM", "Don't enable CSM", "Turn off Secure Boot", "Don't turn off Secure Boot", etc. The one constant was that the newer the advice the fewer and simpler were the suggestions offered. Since my ASUS motherboard is reasonably new (oldest BIOS dated 2-23-2018), and since the mobo manual said nothing about tweaking the BIOS for an NVMe drive (It is a pretty skimpy manual), I decided to place my bets on ASUS . If they saw fit not to advise me on using this drive I probably didn't need any such advice. So I installed the newest BIOS file, restored the "Optimized Defaults" (which included an AMI native NVMe driver), stuck in my Windows USB stick, rebooted and let it rip. My faith was well placed. ASUS, Samsung and Windows got together and worked their magic. 10 minutes later I was dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Windows had no trouble finding and using this drive. And I had no trouble at all since I just used the Optimized Defaults. So far I'm loving this drive and I have no problem recommending it.

Pros: Easy to install. Appears to perform the same or better than my old rig's SATA3 SSD RAID0 setup. Cheaper than ever to make the move to SSD. I paid less for this 2TB module than I did for 2x250GB in my last rig.

Cons: Nothing so far.

Overall Review: Totally worth the investment, in my opinion. I'd say the one possible concern is that the benchmarks only matched the advertised value when using Samsung Magician. Using Crystaldisk Mark and a couple others, I was generally seeing numbers only 2-4x my older SATA3 RAID0, and none that got much higher than 50% of Samsung's number. Also, I'm not certain how much of the 2-4x bump was due to the across the board upgrade my new rig provided. Regardless, it's still an upgrade in the end, and for a better price than in the past. Totally worth it.

Pros: M.2 for the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 Mobo. This is my first SSD, and I am forever spoiled by the speed it offers. Booting to Windows 10 was insane. Words on the street is that M.2 can run hot. Fact is, if it is used for gaming and not I/O intensive tasks (ex: rendering), the heat generated and related "thermal throttle" will not effect you in such a way that make it noticable. Don't live by the artificial benchmarks as it does not reflect what a usual workload would be for your M.2 drive.

Cons: Price may be? It is a fine piece of technology so I cannot lay claim that the price is a negative aspect.

Pros: Read/write speeds are exactly as the description says. Samsung magician bench marked mine at 3544 read, and 3338 write . No drivers needed came factory with latest drivers.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Will be buying more in the future!

Pros: - Being M.2, the install for this took about 5 minutes. My motherboard has two M.2 slots, so my main drive was already an SSD and this slotted in next to it. - Speed was comparable to the 500GB 970 PRO main drive, and a bit faster in sequential reads/writes. - Very reasonably priced for a very good performing drive!!

Cons: - 500GB is about the bare minimum for a single drive system, if you need more - go for the 1TB.

Overall Review: - Would highly recommend to other people, in fact, I have already recommended it to people!

Pros: Bang for buck Faster than HDD and older standard SSDs

Overall Review: I heard about the great strides M.2 NVMe expansion cards have made for increasing boot/load and read/write times, and I wasn't disappointed. You won't notice as big of a difference between a normal SATA SSD and an m.2 NVMe card as you would from a regular HDD, but its still pretty noticeable and I would recommend it 100%. Not a con by any means but it is a lil different to install with it being an expansion card (slot), but not difficult by any means. Just make sure your mobo has a compatible m.2 NVMe slot and make sure you don't buy just any m.2 drive make sure its NVMe to get the full value of your money/upgrade.