Western Digital Black SN850X is a good alternative that performs just as well as the Samsung.

thanks for the reply that i my current 1st choice apart from the 990 pro, just wondering if i should get a smaller boot drive and then a bigger storage drive for games and movie files, if know you dont need a separate drive for boot anymore but i am just used to it and if anything goes wrong and i have to start again and reinstall windows i dont lose all the other data as well.

Originally posted by Bryan999:

thanks for the reply that i my current 1st choice apart from the 990 pro, just wondering if i should get a smaller boot drive and then a bigger storage drive for games and movie files, if know you dont need a separate drive for boot anymore but i am just used to it and if anything goes wrong and i have to start again and reinstall windows i dont lose all the other data as well.

It’s up to you but if you partition your disk and have movies on it’s own partition, then reinstalling Windows won’t delete that data unless you ask the installer to wipe all partitions clean.

On the other hand, having more disks makes it a little bit easier.

so i need a fast small drive about 500gb any ideas, from what i have seen so far it seems the lower size drives tend to be lesser quality and either older or budget.

Fast, good price and great drive.
Crucial T705 1TB M.2 PCIe 5.0[www.scan.co.uk]

Bit slower still fast (not as) but cheaper.
Crucial P510 1TB M.2 PCIe 5.0[www.scan.co.uk]

Or a 2TB 2 quid over budget.
Crucial P510 2TB M.2 PCIe 5.0[www.scan.co.uk]

Originally posted by Bryan999:

so i need a fast small drive about 500gb any ideas, from what i have seen so far it seems the lower size drives tend to be lesser quality and either older or budget.

There is zero noticeable difference in windows or game performance between Pcie 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 drives.
That huge single speed number is for single file read speed what is irrelevant for most people anyway. The relevant speed of random read and writes is not advertised, ironically and not much different between nvme drives.

Also take a look at the Corsair MP600. Not much more than the Crucials wing0zero posted, and certainly within your budget.

Originally posted by C1REX:

There is zero noticeable difference in windows or game performance between Pcie 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 drives.
That huge single speed number is for single file read speed what is irrelevant for most people anyway. The relevant speed of random read and writes is not advertised, ironically and not much different between nvme drives.

970's and other older drives are still perfectly good for gaming, and generally cheaper than their 4.0 and 5.0 counterparts. You'll see virtually no difference when gaming.
I ran Cyberpunk (4K+Ray) off a Crucial MX500, and if there was a difference between it and my 990 pro, i could not see it. (Had to RMA the 990 pro, which is why i had to fall back on the MX)

thanks for the replies will have a look at them, which corsair mp600 did you mean there seems to be more than one version?

and which version of the Crucial MX500 are you referring to, thanks.

The SATA SSD, Crucial MX series, has been discontinued and if you find them, people are selling them around $800 - $1,200+.

Crucial has the SATA BX series which is trash and then they have their M.2 SSD P3-series.

Western Digital is okay but I am not letting this Win11 thing derail my own purchase of a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro, just need to update the firmware prior to updating Win11.

Perhaps I will pick a Crucial P3 instead but unsure of the rating vs Samsung 990 Pro.

Personally, unless it is a laptop, I would not recommend an M.2 SSD as a boot drive nor would I recommend using the OS drive for regular storage unless it is, again, on a laptop then you are mostly forced into Dynamic Disk/Storage.

Originally posted by Alice Liddell:

Perhaps I will pick a Crucial P3 instead but unsure of the rating vs Samsung 990 Pro.

I used to buy Samsung, RAM in DDR4 and M.2's but as of late they have been off their A game and Micron this round have the best DDR5 and the M.2 chips seem solid, they have had similar fab issues like Intel with bad yields and difficulties with EUV lithography which in turn has lost them a lot of customers this round also.

Not a fan of Samdung products. Though that's more for the bastards locking their phone loaders, and being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with their warranty customer service.

I prefer Silicon Power's SSDs.

are there any good fast m.2 drives for using as a boot gen 4 or above and reliable and is it true some drives do not work with certain mb or is that just something you read and is a myth.

There are different nvme form factors, but the 2280 size is pretty standard for motherboards.

For some motherboards, the m.2 slot will use one of the PCI-e channels, so you might not be able to use the drive and one of the PCI slots at the same time, so keep that in mind.

thinking 1tb for boot and then 2tb/4tb for games and storage of video files etc but would like to keep price for both drives under £200, was ok for the 2tb/4tb games and storage drive to be a sata ssd but these dont seem any cheaper than m.2 drives, which kind of drives are more reliable and will last longer.