Question 1

How do you install this?  Does it just plug into a PCIe x4 slot and then install the driver, etc.

Accepted Answer

It is designed to mount in an M.2 slot, which is a relatively new system. If your motherboard is more than a year old, it is not likely to have an M.2 slot. Alternatively you can buy a PCIE to M. 2 adaptor and that will work just as well so long as your computer isn't too old. I can not say how old it can be and still benefit from the upgrade. You would likely run in to a bios issue before a hardware one. If you don't understand these terms, then you should find a computer geek in your neighborhood to help out. Good luck.

Question 2

My son has the HP 750-160qe and I want to get him an SSD for Christmas. He's a gamer and asked for upgrades, and I think he mentioned an SSD. I want to surprise him, so don't want to ask him again. I'm not really familiar with this, so I was wondering if anyone knew if there is room for this SSD in his setup? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, there is no M.2 slot on the "Kaili2" motherboard in your son's machine.  You could probably get a SATA SSD however, if there are SATA ports available (there are 4 on the board, and unless the machine has 3 hard drives and an optical drive, you should have at least one port available).  An M.2 SSD is typically faster than one on a SATA interface, but both are faster at reads than a traditional HDD.

However, for "Performance", an SSD gives very specific gains.  It will make things installed on it load faster, but when most gamers talk about upgrades and performance, you're probably better off upgrading the video card and/or memory.  A new video card is the single biggest upgrade in performance for almost all gaming experiences.

Question 3

will this drive work with my TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 AM3+  Motherboard?

Accepted Answer

If it has a m.2 slot, the card will work, but will be limited in speed. You need a board with PCI-E 3.0 which doesn't come until the new AM4 motherboards. I ran into this problem with my intel Z97 chipset. It ran at 7-800 MB/s where under PCI-E 3.0 it runs at 2.5 GB/s or better. I have 2 of these and was able to copy 22.8GB in under 10 seconds with my new cpu and board. You need a Ryzen cpu and board when they come out next month.

Question 4

does the evo have the same 32gb data transfer rate as the pro?

Accepted Answer

I think that's a bit misleading and not sure why people list this drive (or even the pro) in that fashion because it doesn't reflect the transfer speed at all. Rather, the 32Gb/s (little g) is referring to the bus speed required for the drive, which is 32 gigabits per second (Gen 3 x4 M.2 slot). At that rate, you can handle up to 4GB/s (big G), or 4 gigabytes, of data transfer per second.

Having said that, the sequential reads of the EVO are 3.2GB/s and the sequential writes are 1.9GB/s. The Pro is 3.5GB/s and 2.1GB/s respectively. The other main difference between the EVO and the Pro is the warranty, in which the EVO has a 3-year warranty whereas the Pro is 5. If you are comparing this to any SATA drive (M.2 or otherwise), which usually caps at around 600MB/s Read/Write, you can see that the EVO is far superior to it in terms of performance with the Pro only being slightly better, yet costing a lot more.

Question 5

is this 2.5 inch and compatible with Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro.?  I can't find a replacement hard drive anywhere.

Accepted Answer

I don't think so, but I was not able to find any actual specs on the hard drive compatibility of the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. It seems to be technology from about 2013, and it is not likely that it has an M.2 slot, so you won't be able to use it. If you are going to need a laptop, you will need one with a M.2 slot and also an SSD slot for your data. You will run the operating system on the M.2 and all of your Data on your SSD. You could use an USB3 external drive instead of an SSD, but the USB3 will really slow down your data speed.

Question 6

Does it run hot? Should I get an MSI motherboard with thermal casing for the M.2 SSDs?

Accepted Answer

Good question. I haven't touched mine to see how hot it gets. Remember, no moving parts so much less likely to be any kind of a problem unless you have your board loaded up with several gamer, whacked out, video cards above it. Lays flat to board with a few spacers where it screws down. I wouldn't worry about it. I have a single GTX 1070 on an Asus board.
The drive is horribly fast, well beyond anything else close to it. almost instant boost time. Bios takes longer than os to load. Games load instantly, you'll be in the top 5 to log into each game.

Question 7

I have an MSI Krait Z97 motherboard. Will I be able to get full speeds from this drive? Here is a link to the motherboard I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA85V5728959&cm_re=msi_krait_z97-_-13-130-801-_-Product

Accepted Answer

Yes, that motherboard has the necessary M.2 slot required to take full advantage of this SSD.  I am also using a similar MSI motherboard and have verified the drive is attaining the correct speeds through benchmarks.

Question 8

Does this include a free copy of Watch Dogs 2? 
If so, will the key be delivered upon ordering, or not until the drive ships (Dec 13)?

Accepted Answer

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us in regards to your question.  Please contact our customer service department for assistance at 800-390-1119.

Thank you, 
Newegg Support

Question 9

I have a drive like this in my laptop as my C: drive; thus the operating system is on it.  Is there any way to mirror my current drive to this one?

Accepted Answer

Is your current drive your boot drive, or is your M.2 your current boot drive?

When you say mirror, I assume that you want to set up a RAID 1 mirrored pair. Whether or not you can do that is dependent on your computer, specifically on the chip set that is used. Steps to figure this out:

1. Figure out which motherboard you have, both manufacturer and model. This should be displayed briefly on power up.
2. Look up that motherboard in a web browser or on the manufacturer's site (NewEgg work well for this for that matter).
3. Check out which chipset you have, and check the specifications to see what type of RAID that chipset/mobo is capable of.
4. Then use your web browser to find comments and articles on how to set up an M.2 RAID array (or M.2/SSD RAID) array.
5. It is usually foolish to set up a RAID array with different types of hard drive/SSD. Performance can really suck. You need a matched pair to do RAID right.

Hope this helps.

Question 10

When I purchased my Samsung 840 Evo (Sata III) it included the Samsung migration software so you can clone your existing boot drive over.  Does this have the same thing?

Accepted Answer

Hello, you can download the Data Migration Tool from Samsung's web site. Brows to the page for the 960 EVO. At the bottom of the page you will see "available downloads". Click on "More software", and you will see the Data Migration Tool. Just choose your language, and download.

Questions & Answers