SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 500GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7E500BW

Pros: The 970 EVO matched a 960 Pro for sequential reads and was ~20% faster in sequential writes. That's amazing, considering the price difference between the two drives. There are other NVMe drives with the same performance but they either cost significantly more or do not come with Samsung's excellent support software, warrant, and endurance rating. Samsung Magician makes firmware updates and drive-optimization dead-simple without being a resource hog. The endurance rating of the 970 EVO is also excellent; you'll need to step up in price by quite a bit to get better.

Cons: It used to be that there was Samsung and then everybody else. Now competitors offer similar or even slightly higher performance for less money. If you are on a budget, WD, Crucial, etc. have equally speedy drives that are less expensive. None, however, have support software even close to Samsung's class. Nor are the warranties or endurance ratings as good.

Overall Review: I opted for the EVO 970 to get a fast drive that (1) was easy to manage and update, (2) had an excellent warranty, and (3) had a high endurance rating. If you are not going to be hammering on the drive daily, a less expensive option from a competitor could be a good call. If support and reliability factor in, the EVO is a great compromise without breaking the bank to enterprise drive levels.

Pros: Worked. I mean M.2 is the future, this "stick" of memory is a freegin TB and it is barely longer then a USB thumb drive and thinner then my MoBo. To install, you just slide the contactors into place in the socket on the MoBo and put in a tiny retaining screw. Yes, if you are unfamiliar with these they plug into the mobo like a ram stick(sort of) there is no cables etc. They are also stupid fast. Seriously, like instantaneous data fast. What SSD speed did vs old school "spinning disc" HDD, these M.2 do to "old school" SSD. Data transfer is so fast, the rest of the hardware is still catching up(feels that way anyway) If your MoBo/rig supports this, you should be buying one, you will never look back.

Cons: Uh, I wish the pro's were priced at Evo price point? I dunno whats not to love here? if you showed this to a computer geek in the 90's and told them what it was and how much memory it held, they would put you in the loony bin. Pretty sure some time traveler brought these back from the year 2350 or something.

Overall Review: Do you have an M.2 socket? No? You bought the wrong MoBo! Yes you do? Why are you still reading this, just add it to your cart. or the pro version if you need it to be even faster because your time machine broke down.

Pros: SSD was easy to install and fast, as advertised. It functioned perfectly under average usage, right up until it didn't.

Cons: After 1.5 years of average use and varying between 40-60% disk space used, the SSD started causing disk errors, forcing occasional reboot. Soon thereafter, the SSD threw S.M.A.R.T. disk-check errors in BIOS, then failed. About 95% of the data was recoverable by booting with a USB drive and using data recovery tools, but the SSD was no longer usable as a drive in Windows.

Overall Review: I knew that SSDs have a shorter lifespan than HDDs, but 1.5 years is unacceptably short. Have a daily backup plan in place.

Pros: Guys it's fast. I haven't used something that makes interface so fast. Did I mention it was fast? I thought it was a gimmick. I can boot my system in 5 secs and shut down is 2sec, yes full boot up and system turn off. I have this bad boy paired with 32gb of 3200 DDR4 RAM, i7-8700k, and an EVGA z370 micro atx mobo. I was between this drive and the 'MyDigitalSSD BPX 480gb.' I chose this SSD due to a slightly lower price for my new rig (due to sale) but the performance from benchmarks didn't seem to make that much of a difference (wouldn't surprise me if it's the same chip maker). I didn't benchmark this personally, but you can see some of the other reviews and I believe it's spot on. I mean I was able to install windows 10 in less than 5 mins, and install office in about the same amount of time. I have never see this level of speed/performance, even with traditional ssd's. It's like showing a cave man an ipod nano from 2005, it blew my mind.

Cons: I really don't have any, nor do I have some cheeky comment to put here.

Overall Review: I have a few games on this main drive and boy do they fly. If you're considering this type of memory and have a NVMe port, get one, don't even think about it, order 10, I don't care just get one. I haven't had such a profound performance change before trying one of these types of drives. 10/10 would buy again.

Pros: Love this drive! Fast and endurance is better than any other 2tb NVME out there. Don’t get conned with another nvme brand such as intel 600p where the drive is toast after 100 writes. Using this drive 970evo 2tb along with a 960evo 1tb for storage. Have an intel 905p 960gb optane as my boot drive and for applications that need fast access (can rewrite that drive a ridiculous 19,791 times). Also Newegg was very generous they just dropped the price by $50 and sent me a gift card for the difference.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Can’t wait until hard drives go the way of VHS tapes

Pros: I purchased the 2TB version... performance is nuts... (remember to go to the Samsung site and download the NVMe drivers to get the proper numbers stated in the item description) This is my first system that I've had the honor of having a M.2 2280 SSD chip... let along an SSD drive in-general... My last PC had a traditional 7200RPM 1.5TB drive... and well... forget that! Window's loads in seconds, basic workload applications like Office/Photoshop and games load instantly... it's ridiculous this thing even exists.

Cons: Only con I have (and will not drop an egg) is the lack of documentation indicating the NVMe driver is even needed... it doesn't install itself and the provided drivers with whichever board you choose to go with will not have the sufficient bandwidth you're looking for in your product... :) Here's the link, not sure if Newegg allows linking other sites but this is souly for the 970 EVO https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evo/

Overall Review: Intel i7-9700K (OC'd @ 4.6GHz) Corsair H100i RGB Platinum (Cooler) MSI MAG z390 Tomahawk (Motherboard) 4x16GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 2666MHz (64GB of RAM) Samsung 970 EVO SSD M.2 2280 (2TB) Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 2070 Extreme 8GB GDDR6 EVGA SuperNova 1000 P2 (1000W Fully Modular) Corsair Crystal Series 570X (Case)

Pros: Lightning Fast! boot time about 10 seconds. Read 3524, write 2501 (Samsung Magician). Recognized by mobo upon install, just had to install NVMe driver.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Just one of these makes our old RAID arrays seem pathetically slow. Load windows with mobo set to UEFI, not legacy BIOS.

Pros: Compact, fast and plenty of storage.

Cons: It doesn't come in pair, that be sweet, but wishful thinking.

Overall Review: Plan on picking up a second drive pretty soon, hopefully there will be a special on Black Friday.