Question 1

Is this drive/card only one slot wide, or does it use 2-card spaces as do some graphics/video cards? I really need the X8 slots for other cards.

Accepted Answer

This an m.2 it doesn't use any pic-e slots unless you put it in an adaptor. However you should keep in mind it does use pic-e "lanes" and your motherboard may not support enough pci-e to run this with multiple pci-e cards. This card will require either a pci-e 3.0 x4 slot and an adaptor or the m.2 slot on your motherboard must be supported at pci-e 3.0 x4 with your other pci-e slots in use. You can determine this usually with your motherboard manual.

Question 2

Intel 750 Series 2.5" 1.2TB or this (960 PRO M.2 1TB)?

Accepted Answer

Depends, look at your motherboard and see what your compatibility is with m.2 vs PCIe. Your motherboard might require that you have an open PCIe lane (for bandwidth purposes) to get the most out of the M.2. Refer to the manual that came with your MOBO. With respect to the Intel, if you are like me, you won't be able to use the intel drive because you are using the PCIe slot already (my MOBO only has one PCIe x4 lane). If speed is all you are concerned about, make sure your CPU can take full advantage of each drive - if it can, the 960 PRO is faster, I believe Samsung: Max Seq. Read: 3500MBps Write: 2100MBps (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147597) Intel: Max seq. Read: 2500MBps Write: 1200MBps (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167363) Of course, that isn't the full story... but again, compatibility may make the decision for you.

Question 3

Is the 960 Pro compatible with the ASROCK EP2C612D16C-4L?

Accepted Answer

That motherboard supports NVMe booting. By no means should it not be able to support this 960. The only question that could concern you is what format you'll be running it in, as that will determine how many PCIe lanes this will utilize from your CPU, and will limit other PCIe controller boards you might be adding.

Question 4

is this a type m ssd?

Accepted Answer

Not sure what type m is but I had to figure out if M.2 or NVme. This requires a special slot in the mother board to plug in, so if the motherboard supports m.2 you should be good.

Question 5

Does Samsung sell any USB external enclosures for NVMe M-keyed SSDs? Their Samsung SSD Data Migration guide mentions "You may need a separate M.2 PCIe/USB converter (connector) to connect an NVMe SSD." Has anybody found one working with M-keyed NVMe?

Accepted Answer

I am not aware of any such enclosure, and please note that it would not make much sense to put a 960 Pro in such an enclosure.  USB3.0 would slow the data transfer rate to 640 MB/s. whereas the 960 pro plugged into a 4x PCIe M.2 slot can run at 3500 MB/s so you would be better off just buying a lower cost SATA card or drive and plugging that into a USB enclosure.  Hope that helps.

Question 6

I am going to build a new system and want to get an M.2 drive.  Should I use the drive for just data (games) or would it be okay to put Windows on the drive as well?  Would I take a performance hit by having the OS and my games on the same drive?

Accepted Answer

You may want to put the OS on the M.2 drive, as your machine will boot up faster.  You will likely need to change some BIOS settings to enable the M.2 drive to boot, but most new motherboards have instructions for how to do this.  Windows 10 does have the appropriate driver built in to support the 960 pro, so once you get the BIOS set, the windows installer will find the drive and install the OS.   I don't run games, but I do intensive video editing and conversion which uses 100% processing power and reads/writes the disk continuously. Disk access with these M.2 SSD never shows anything waiting in a queue, so I believe you would never see any speed advantage to using a separate drive for your games.

Question 7

Is the 960 Pro compatible with the GA-Z77X-UD3H?

Accepted Answer

Check your motherboard specs to see if  your board has a M.2 slot and it has to be NVMe compatible.

Question 8

Is this compatible with the Lenovo Yoga 910?

Accepted Answer

I haven't received it yet, they said they didn't get the shipment in.

Question 9

Can this harddrive be installed on Macbook Pro mid 2014?

Accepted Answer

No. There is no m.2 slot in that macbook pro.

Question 10

Is this compatible with Alienware 17.3 R4?

Accepted Answer

Does that support NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4?  You should check your manual for the motherboard. Or just google it.

Questions & Answers