Description
| Brand | ?Inland |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | ?Inland |
| Product Dimensions | ?13.21 x 1.91 x 10.16 cm; 18 Grams |
| Item part number | 1TB NVME PREM |
| Memory Storage Capacity | 1TB |
| Flash Memory Installed Size | 1TB |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 1TB |
| Hardware Interface | ?Solid State Drive |
| Compatible Devices | ?Laptop |
| Batteries Included | ?No |
| Batteries Required | ?No |
| Manufacturer | ?Inland |
| Item Weight | ?18 g |
JCro82 –
if youre on the fence on updatingupgrading to an NVMe m.2, do it as its completely worth it and you get to ditch any added cabling in your desktop.For me this was an upgradeupdate from the 960 EVO 500GB m.2 I bought a few years ago and at that time it cost more for just the 500GB. So far this drive runs faster in some of the tasks I use it for but in most cases is not fully noticeable. Now compared to your standard Sata based drive, it will be night and day. Also its hard to pass this much storage in this form factor and speed for this price and I have been getting the full advertised speeds.If you have a desktop or laptop and want to upgrade, Samsung is truly your best bet when it comes to Solid State drives they have one of the best warranties and are built to last.
Samuel M –
I recently put together a build with an AMD 3700, ASROCK Taichi, an ancient GPU, and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda. I had consistent boot issues after getting windows installed, there was boot failure from from the ASRROCK Bios that caused me to have to reformat my SSD and go back to the drawing board. After repeating this clean and reinstall process 3ish times I started troubleshooting. The first part I replaced was the SSD with this M2 HD. Everything was solved instantly, and it is the fastest boot time I have had in my life. If you have the capability for an M2 drive DO NOT skimp out and just get this one.
gman863 –
If your computer is critical to your work or play, its worth spending the money for a Samsung.If you compare the specs on this drive to others, the Samsung 970 is rated for twice the readwrite cycles and MTBF Mean Time Between Failures compared to other less expensive brands. Thats why it has a 5 year warranty.Ive been a computer tech for over ten years and have had to deal with almost every major hardware manufacturer. In the unlikely event you ever need customer service from Samsung, theyre incredible. No getting jerked around.Splurge a few bucks on buying this instead of going cheap. Youll be glad you did.
Anthony W –
The M.2 SSD drives are some of the most important components for making a PC Laptop feel fast and responsive. These are 5 times faster than the SSD drives 50 times faster than HDD and are designed for use with PCIe connector. Computers with this type of storage have improved Boot Time and are 10 times faster in loading heavy software, video games or thousands of complex files. Additionally, M.2 slots can access the PCIe bus which essentially means your SSD will run much faster than a SATA SSD the M.2 drives with a PCIe interface have increased performance and take advantage of NonVolatile Memory Express NVMe protocol which increases the performance and has a reduced latency. Now lets move on to the hero of our reviewThe Samsung 970 EVO Plus is an absolutely fantastic and a wildly fast NVMe M.2 drive.Its an excellent option for almost any user with a PC that supports PCI Express drives, the M.2 form factor, and the NVMe protocol and also a great option for the HighEnd enthusiasts, Gamers, Videographers, CG Artists, VFX Designers etc. looking for the best consumer grade performance. The 970 EVO Plus drive is offered in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and performance rises along with capacity, which is standard operating procedure for SSDs due to the parallelism in their design. Its speeds are beyond belief with a noticeable performance jump when using computer 3D modelling software, intensive CAD work or playing Counter Strike 1.6 funny guy.The speed, physical size, and capacity are impressive and the price while higher than 2.5inch SSDs are pretty reasonable for what you get in performance. In case you are going to install Window on this disk Make sure your system is using the UEFI platform rather than the old BIOS platform to take full advantage of the latest technology and all of its advantages.This means your System Drive will have a GPT Volume rather than an MBR Volume. GPT is more corruptionresilient and has better partition management. Its the newer and more reliable standard. You will have to boot into your UEFI interface, and Turn Off CSM likely under BOOT Options before installing Windows or directly afterwards as well as when you update your UEFIBIOS. Its good to doublecheck the CSM setting stays off whenever you add another storage drive as well.As a 3D Motion Designer, I am very pleased with its performance.I bought a 500GB version, it feels a bit small but thats enough if you want to install a bunch of software and not a lot of games in one go. Pros Fantastic Performance Fast PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 storage High Endurance Low Latency Up To 2TB Capacity Cons No complaints I have been using this M.2 NVME SSD for 1 year and there have been no issues at all. It has performed flawlessly.Highly recommended
BestBuyFan –
Best Buy Fan I came in completely overwhelmed with the fact that we couldnt figure out what was taking up so much memory on my sons gaming laptop. Best Buy was super helpful and figured out how to help. After fixing a few things I was advised to get the additional memory. It has made my life easier and my son happy It helped tremendously with his gaming situation Thank you Best Buy Very happy
Richard –
Its a good, fast solid state drive. Unfortunately, the previous one failed after a couple of years.Reports are that they run hot. I can verify that is true.The external test case I put the old one in to recover some files got too hot to touch very fast.I hope the new one works better. I was in a hurry or I would have purchased something different this time.This was the top rated drive when I purchased the original one. Samsung appears to have made a mistake with the design.
Ivan K –
There is not so much to say, 970 Evo plus is updated version of very good 970 Evo, which made it even more faster and a bit cooler. I would recommend to put some heatsink on it, but even without heatsink its not reaching critical tempsoverheating. This one does not support PCIE v4, but still have awesome performance for any tasks, since it has huge IOPS and WriteRead speed for smallrandom offsets and sequential writeread. Suits perfectly for literally everything even if it requires good IO, not just sequential data transfer games, virtual machines, CADs, as cache for more slow and huge HDDs
Phil P. –
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD range offers some of the currently fastest data transfer speeds on the planet of any SSD, if not THE fastest with the 970 Pro range. You need to ensure you have a mainboard which features a M.2 socket 3 slot, to install this SSD, which supports NVMe PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode to get the best out of it. Otherwise youll be using it in SATA PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode which is not nearly as fast at transferring data.Installing the SSD couldnt be simpler. For those who might need assistance there is a plethora of YouTube videos showing you how to do it. Samsung has its own software called Data Migration which is freely available to download and install NB it only works with Samsung SSDs Samsungs Data Migration software makes it very easy to transfer all your data from your old HDDSSD onto your new 970 EVO Plus SSD. The entire Windows 10 migration process took approx. 1520 minutes for me. Samsung also provides a NVMe driver specifically designed for this SSD, to ensure optimal performance and to maximize compatibility with your system. Samsung recommends to use the Samsung NVMe driver instead of the one Windows 10 installs through Windows updates. Ive installed Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.22280 1TB in an ASUS Z390Pro Gaming mainboard running an Intel i59600K with DDR4 2666MHz RAM. Windows 10 boots from cold to the desktop in approx. 810 seconds. Compare that with the Samsung 860 EVO SSD which did the same in approx. 3035 seconds using the same hardware. This SSD is amazingly quickThere are other M.2 SSDs currently available which boast speeds as fast or in ADatas case faster then the Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD and are quite a bit cheaper. However, when you get down to the nittygritty calculations of MPS, IOPS, and MTBF youll find this Samsung M.2 SSD is designed very well and will outlast the competition with double the projected lifespan and in some cases longer. So, its expensive but possibly worth the additional cost in my opinion. Samsung could make them slightly cheaper and then it would be perfect and great value.
CSXJoe –
Fast NVMe Drive. Cloned and upgraded my Acer AN51544 laptop installed in the 2nd M.2 slot and turned off the original Hynix SSD in the bios with no issues. Never have had a problem with Samsung SSDs and dont expect one with this NVMe drive. 5 year warranty. Got it on sale which made it even better.If youre going to load many large games I recommend going with the 1TB version but that one is approx. twice the price as of 31821. Recommended.
Stephanas –
If youre running a hard drive this m.2 nvme will drastically improve your system load times. Currently I havent notice as big of an improvement over load times compared to a Samsung SATA 860 evo. I believe that to be due to game developers not designing games with SSDs in mind. Hopefully with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X out on the market we will see future titles releasing with better m.2 supporttaking better advantage. Still worth the purchase with future proofing in mind.
AndrewD512 –
Have seen in the reviews that these can perform better than the 980 versions, so the higher price for the 980 doesnt seem worth it to me. The 500GB is single sided no big chips on the bottom some systems may have an issue with thickness of the M.2 card. Performance is fast as expected. Seems to run cool with heatsink attached on the MB. Had to be careful not to bend the module during installation. Installation was a breeze into MB, and cant fault the OS installation. Leaving part of it empty space to get 10 years of life as boot deviceswap drive. Overall very happy, and would purchase this or a 1TB depending upon needs and price.
Sim31 –
I was super excited to get this, Im a mostly hardcore gamer with a 144Hz Gsync that is sensitive to input delay and refresh rates. I expected my socks to be knocked off the first time my PC booted and I did some general task stuff. Honestly You can benchmark all you want, but there is 0 perceivable difference between an nvme and a Sata3 SSD outside of moving gigantic files.Your games will maybe load 1 second faster. OS maybe boots slightly faster, but who does thatThe only thing I can objectively tell is different is I can move and delete huge files instantly. Perhaps it is more effective for someone who is doing 4K video editing.If youre a gamer or just average user, just buy a regular SSD. Trust me.
BikeJunkie –
Recent purchase for a Dell 7040 SFF desktop PC. No issues, simple install. Drive is super fast Recommend updating your BIOS and drivers before you start the upgrade using the Dell Command Update application. Used Samsungs free data migration software, available for download from their site to migrate the mechanical drive to the SSD. Also, recommend installing the Samsung Magician software to optimize the drive and make sure the latest firmware is installed. Note You may need a screw for the motherboard standoff to secure the M.2 SSD. Luckily, I was able to take one from an old dell laptop that was no longer in use. The screw is really small.
Clark M. –
Ive looked at multiple SSDs of similar performance.I mostly chose the Samsung 970 EVO as Samsung has proprietary software that allow easy cloning of your old SSD onto the new Samsung SSD, so you dont have to reinstall everything.The new SSD cloning was simple, Windows 10 didnt even ask to reregister the key.Also used the Samsung Magician software in the past with another Samsung 840 EVO SATA and worked great.Boot speed of NVME SSDs compared to SATA SSD, are from 19 seconds to 17 seconds respectively in my case. Dont expect a huge difference with any NVME in speed.The only use case for speed is when you transfer large files between two or more NVME SSDs you will then see the 3500mbs speeds.
BC84 –
Dell G7 7700 RTX 2070 Max Performance.4x the read and write compared to the SSD that came with my laptop. I use it for video games. CoD Warzone, Diablo, No Mans Sky… very fast startups. Seamless transition from game to other applications using Alt Tab.Uses Samsung Magician software that has a lot of features to optimize your computer. Easy to use I love the optimize features.
Aneesh –
I bought this for my Alienware 17 R5 2018 since it had only 128GB SSD a 1 TB HDD.Now I have 1 TB SSD 1 TB HDD. So games are buttery smooth and fast. Loads have been cut down drastically. A great quality of life improvement ONLY if you game a lot. I didnt find a whole lot of difference in boot times and read write times dont matter much since I dont always copy paste heavy files. Installing games is a 1 time thing, so that doesnt really bother me.Super easy to transfer files using the Samsung software I downloaded from their website. It copied everything from my selected drives to the new Samsung SSD. Dont forget to take out the old SSD. Gave me a slight heart attack when I forgot to take the old one out.
Electroz –
Have one in my laptop for more than 4 years.Got 2 in my main rig for more than 1 year.Spec wise these are better than Base 980 over the board. These go on sale for close to AUD 100 most of the time making these great value for money.Most of my collegues run 970 evo plus 1 main 1 Game driveWe never had issues and do not know why people complain about drives getting brokenHave not observed too much temps but at the same time did not watch it actively.Well never had a hiccup until today since 2017 for the first drive so would say it is pretty good.
stevedaboss –
Super fast SSD for productivity and video editingI wanted to add this Samsumg SSD to my new Dell XPS 15 laptop computer. The factory SSD installed on the laptop was fairly quick, but the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is blazing fast No other SSD can compare. With 500MBs Seq. Read speeds and 2,300MBs Seq. Write speeds, it makes multitasking and video editing a breeze. On my laptop, the read speeds were well over 2 gbps My computer booted a lot faster, applications and programs loaded way quicker, and video post processing was almost 50 faster I was so amazed by the performance. The only downside for me would be the storage capacity. I wish I had a 500gb or 1tb SSD. My laptop only has one slot on the motherboard so if I want more storage, I would need an external harddrive or upgrade this SSD to a bigger capacity. However all in all, this is the best SSD on the market today
Fayaz –
Bought this SSD to upgrade my HP Pavilion desktop. Install was fairly easy, you will need a small screw to fasten and secure the SSD to the motherboard slot. After that I used Samsung migration program to move all my files from my HDD to the new SSD, that took about and 1hr to copy about 500gb. Once that was completed I disconnected the power from my old hard drive and that was it. My startupboot time went from previous 1.5min to 30sec. The only reason Im giving it a 4 star and not 5 is because I wish Samsung provided the screw that is needed to install this SSD.
Foochey –
I always prefer Samsung Nvme drives due to their performance. If you want PCIe 4.0 support, then get the 980 Pros, otherwise, these work just fine. In fact, I put two in a RAID0 config in an Asus Z590 mobo and was no difference at all in speeds comparing PCIe 3.0 to 4.0. Im pretty sure that it has something to do with the way that Intel has limited PCIe lanes compared to AMD, and which slots can actually use PCIe 4.0, even with an 11th Gen cpu. Very confusing to say the least and the mobo manual is no help. I concluded that the bottom two Nvme slots are confined to PCIe 3.0, which stinks for a new chipset.Overall, I use these in everything including my laptop and never have had a hiccup. Get them on sale and you cant beat them imo. Hope this helps.
RichardS842 –
Upgrading from a smaller Samsung SSD to the 2TB was super simple. Basically physically installed the new SSD in the open M.2 slot, downloaded the free Samsung Data Migration tool and used that to clone the Primary drive to the blank new SSD. Selected the clone to fill all the free space on the new SSD and the volume was expanded automatically. As the new SSD was in the 1 slot on my motherboard, on reboot Windows came up running on the new 2TB SSD. Windows Drive Manager had taken the older SSD offline due to a conflict in Drive IDs. Simple right click and made older SSD online and now there are two SSDs in the system. Samsung Magician software verified the new SSD is performing to the high speeds expected of these fast SSDs. Highly recommend Samsung SSDs as they work reliably, are high performance and 5 year warranty and are supported with the software tools to make them easy to install.
David –
I bought this to put in the second SSD slot in my XPS 15 9500 laptop. I tried a cheaper SSD which worked ok at first but then started giving me system errors. So I returned it and bought this one. It is working great and the read write speeds are 3000 which are faster than my C drive. The only downside is that the temp of the drive wont read in the Samsung Magician app unless it is initialized as an MBR drive. I dont want to use that type of drive so I initialized as GUID. The app will still see it and do readwrite test but some features of the app like temp monitoring wont work. But the readwrite drives are the same so I am happy. I hope Samsung fixes this someday so the app will work with both MBR and GUID file systems.
Michael –
I love this card so far. The benchmark says its more than 7x faster than my previous 2.5 SSD for readwrite, and for only 150.What brought me here to write the review though was Samsungs Data Migration tool. I was able to install this on my motherboard B450M DS3H WIFI then boot to my old drive. I installed Samsungs Data Migration tool, and it recognized the unpartitioned 970 evo.It was literally as simple as telling the tool to copy the data from my original drive to my new one, and that was it. About 20 minutes later, after the computer shut down automatically after the copy completed, I booted it back up and it automatically went to the new drive. Everything transferred over, no corruption at least nothing I noticed yet, and I didnt have to do any partitioning.This was the easiest swap Ive ever done. Well done Samsung.
Kums –
Here is the peak performance I could get with 10g file size and different block sizes. Ran on Ubuntu OS and at block level with direct IO to avoid any filesystem caching effect. In general benchmark tools will show boosted write performance than what drive can actually perform due to filesystem cache and particularly if data size is small. Below are the ballpark numbers.10g file size seq read write for different block sizes MBs4k 1255 1228k 2344 23364k 3071 758128k 3135 7611m 3142 761
StephenW47 –
I already have a PC with a Samsung 950 Pro SSD, so I knew what to expect when I chose the 970 EVO Plus from Samsungs current offerings. It was replacing an existing NVMe SSD Kingston HyperX Predator 240 GByte as that drive was now too small to allow me to do the necessary upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The 970 EVO Pro is faster than the Kingston, but not hugely so, probably because the PC is an older one that only has PCI Express v2.0 instead of v3.0 which would run the SSD at full speed. Unlike the Kingston SSD, the Samsung does not interfere with how my older BIOS boots I can boot from any drive on the motherboard or connected to my PCIe SATA card. The Kingston messed up the BIOS so that boot from other drives including my BluRay writer was only possible if they were on the PCIe card. I do have one gripe about the Samsung software unless a Samsung SSD is installed in the PC, it is impossible to get the Samsung SSD drivers to install. That meant I could not do my intended upgrade in place by backing up Windows 7 from the old SSD, swapping the SSDs and then restoring to the new SSD. Windows 7 on the new SSD would not boot without the Samsung drivers already installed. So I had to get a second PCIe M.2 card so that I could mount both SSDs in the PC at the same time, boot from the old SSD, and install the Samsung SSD drivers on Windows 7 before I copied it to the new SSD and removed the old one. After that, and doing the usual Windows boot repairs, Windows 7 booted on the new SSD and I was able to upgrade to Windows 10 in place. I have now been running Windows 10 on the new SSD for a week and the SSD is, as expected, very fast and causes no problems.
chronoscepter –
There is an adage that reads Always buy the best you will never be disappointed. That is certainly true here. Yes, the cost per GB is more than for rotating media. But the sheer advantage of using an NVMe storage device simply cannot be overstated. I got a 50x performance boost with this thing over a standard SATA magnetic drive. With more than a few applications running at once, Windows uses TONS of file IO even while youre not actually DOING anything with them. My system went from utterly unusable to faster than it was when new, so NVMe is definitely the way to go While NVMe is great, Samsung makes it truly awesome. They have the best chip set, are simply faster and definitely worth the extra money even though competing drives are cheaper and the 5yr warranty sealed the deal.
Izriel –
What more can I say then the summary title. I went from a standard 7200 RPM drive to this super fast M2 from Samsung. The boot up time went from 510 minutes I have a lot of application that I want on at startup less than a minute for windows to be up and the applications I have on to be loaded. The installation is incredibly easy if you have even the slightest of what the M2 slot looks like on your Motherboard.After getting the device installed I formatted it to NTFS on my old version of windows and reinstalled onto this box. Let me tell you from someone who reinstalls OS a few times a year on different boxes…the readwrite with this combod with installed Windows from an SD chip was crazy. I thought it was just the preinstallation that was completed with how fast it finished but it was the actual installation of windows…it took less than 10 minutes.Sorry for the rambling its very hard to put into words the amazing piece of hardware that is here. One thing I would recommend is spending the extra cash on the 1 terabyte if can swing the money, I thought I would just have my OS and my slower loading games on here but after experiencing the no load times I have already filled it with multiple games and am near filling it up…only wish my MOBO had a 2nd M2 Slot 1010 would get again.
midimuzikman –
Got this storage device for Windows operating system and some basic small footprint applications. After Windows 10 installation and updated to the latest version and some basic apps and the Samsung 3.3 driver installed I have 180GB free. Not done any benchmarking. Average idle temperature on the Windows 10 desktop is 38C40C in my pc case but it is installed between the GPU and the CPU. In general usage I could not tell the difference in readwrite speeds between this 250Gb drive and my 512GB 960 pro drive. Blends well with darker motherboard PCB.
klunkerbus –
I just built two Win10 PCs for home use with these M.2 drives used as the main storage. I could have probably gotten by with less, but I tend to use Samsung SSDs where I can and strive to overachieve on my PC builds so Im not spending more money downstream upgrading what might have been an initial bargain.Why Samsung For one thing, they seem to be the industry standard that everything gets compared to. Why not use the standard rather than something compared to it Im also used to checking on my SSDs periodically with Samsung Magician, so why not stick with what Im familiar withNo gripes on the SSDs, but I was reminded of how getting a new copy of the Samsung Magician software can be a pain. They STILL have a daily limit on how many people can download it. Whats up with that
DarioC –
Really REALLY fast. Like.. really. Jokes aside, I dont think theres any other brand that can beat the quality Samsung m.2 ssds have brought into the game. Can be a little pricy for some, yeah sure, but I can assure you, you will not find anything better as of the writing of this review than Samsungs drives. Getting a lower price could probably also means getting a lowerend, at least talking about drives. Just a very nice product, buy it.
Anonymous –
I have had this for 4 months now… The board has a faulty intel LAN port that ASUS has been aware of yet continues to ship boards. After extensive attempts with firmware and Driver updates still no luck. The only option is to send the board in for RMA for 6 months… because they know you wont do that and need a computer. Hey ASUS how about you send me a working board and Ill then send you the not working one you knowingly sold me so I can have a functioning PC while you fix your mistake. I have bought countless asus GPUs MoBOs screens… but this lan issue that has literally affected thousands of people has burned me on ASUS Im done. I will not buy any more or recommend your products. Cant believe they are still selling these every day I read a new tech support that has a button lan port on an ASUS MOBO.
RevDrHell –
I bought a laptop about 18 months with a 500GB HD and thought that would be my limit for space. I was looking to see if it was even possible to put a larger HD in and came across this type of storage, NVMe. And…. my laptop had a slot for it The thing is literally the size of a stick of gum, and can be put in as a slave in minutes. Samsung also has the software for cloning, so moving everything over, OS, hidden files, cat videos, and all the little stuff no one but the comptuter knows anything about. Took a few clicks, a few minutes and done. To make it the boot drive, i Just unplugged the origanl HD, and rebooted the laptop. Started up right away, super fast, Windows automatically changed it to the boot disk, since it was the only option, so i reconnected the original, restarted, and done. Super happy with the ease of install and speed of device.. highly recommended
kfliss –
Just got this installed last night and so far Im impressed. took about 5 minutes from windows install screen to desktop. installed various programs in seconds, GPU drivers took a few minutes but thats to be expected I think and it was still significantly faster than the previous SATA SSD that was installed. Previous SSD was a Samsung 840 Pro, boot time is about half with this 970 Evo NVMe. installed in a Asus ROG Strix X470F Gaming with Ryzen 7 2700X, installed under the integrated heatsinc, feels pretty warm to the touch but not hot. Highly recommend.note DISCONNECT ALL OTHER DRIVES TO INSTALL WINDOWS. Windows would no install unless this was the only drive connected to the board. one method people suggest online to get windows to install on this is to disable CSM in the BIOS settings and delete the secure boot keys, DO NOT DO THIS. I tried that method and had to manually reset my BIOS with the jumper pins to get it to do anything afterward. disconnecting my other drives got windows to install on the NVMe, plugged other drives back in after windows install and windows recognized them immediately as if they had never been disconnected and no issues.This review will be updated should I encounter any issues in the near future.
YogiB –
Scan Computers provided exemplary and fast service in initial phone assistance and dispatch of this SDD Hard drive.My estimation of enhanced Windows startup time, is approx. 6 x faster than a conventional platter disk drive.The sole, highly niggling point that I suffered however, is that zero mounting screws were provided. This type of SSD usually mounts to a slot on your motherboard, but is held in place by an almost microscopic crosshead screw.M.2 SSD screwstandoff kits are available on Amazon.When I contacted Scan, the operator suggested I contact my PC manufacturer as he seemed to think Scan did not hold stock of these screws.So, I did, and PC Specialist, Wakefield, as usual gave sparkling support. The screws arrived next day. Thanks, PC Specialist
Gonzalo R –
My start up is 4.7 seconds. Need I say more. You need more Okay Obviously there are other factors that affect this, But this SSD most definitely helps. Installing programs, copying files, uploading and downloading files have become a breeze with this SSD. Do I notice an astronomical difference between we 970 and the 970 No, but If you were upgrading from a SATA SSD or especially a mechanical hard drive to an NVMe, I would go for this one.
romr.ta.dz8jxtfmb –
As expected from similar Samsung products, performs as or close to as they describe. Bootup is now fast, programs open much quicker, and writes likewise fast. Just one quirk, and searching for an answer via Google shows it is common, is that write speeds, though being quick, are nowhere near their rated capacity. In fact, less than 14 of their rated speed. I blame mine on my setup at the moment oldish 2015 motherboard and no m.2 slot so have to fudge some things to get it to operate as my main system drive. Anyone looking for a good drive, I would unhesitatingly consider this drive.
tj75 –
After switching from a regular SSD to this, I will never be going back. After months of research about whether or not NVMe would be worth it I decided to just buy one. Im so happy I did. My computer is a lot snappier and overall seems to be performing better. Only issue I had probably user error was that I had to unplug my old SSD and HDD in order to install windows on the NVMe SSD. Other than that, setup was easy and samsung magician seems to be working great with it.
Legendteek –
Finally got an SSD to update my computer. Decided to go with an NVME since it was only slightly more than a SATA and offered higher speeds. I dont know why I waited this long.Easy install, and decently easy to clone HDD with third party software. Incredibly fast. My overall boot time getting into windows and all start up tasks complete went from about 3 minutes to a blistering 10 seconds with an i7 9700k. Im looking forward to buying another one of these as a boot drive for my home network server.
Gordy –
I purchased this SSD from Best Buy. The purchase experience was exceptional, as they price matched with no hassle. The Samsung came with the software needed to set up the drivers and to transfer the data from my current hard drive. Also were instructions on going into the BIOS to change boot order. The only thing that was an issue was the screw that was needed to hold down the SSD. It is needed to not only secure it, but to complete the circuit. My mother board did not supply one, so I removed a similar one from my WIFI card and went to a local hardware store where they were able to match the screw and washer. After that, everything went smoothly.
Gared R. –
It was this or another version from the same manufacturer. This was apparently the more updated version and cheaper for the same size and faster. I tried it, and I was not disappointed. I replaced a stock 256GB NVME stick in the laptop I had purchased. I made sure to run numerous benchmarks from different suppliers multiple times and compared the stock vs this one. This one was roughly double the seek times. I was very OCD about making sure this was definitely faster because I am the type of person that would actually stay up all night running it over and over in my head why I wasted the money on the upgrade and how I should have saved my money, and because its electronic I am stuck with it. But I am here to tell you and I rejoice Because there was marked improvement on bench marks Windows booted up the same amount of time it seemed and software loaded the same to my naked eye. But as long as the bench mark scores showed there was a difference that was enough for me, and I assure you it will be enough for you too
Jake –
One of my drives went bad so perfect excuse to replace with something a little different. Coming from a traditional SSD so speed is improved but not hugely so, if youre coming from a regular hard drive itll be a huge improvement. Amazingly speedy startup with this set as the boot drive. Power off to desktop in 5 seconds in Windows 10. Noticed some improved load times in games and when exporting batches of photos from editing software.Installation is a little different but still simple so good to look up a video if youre unfamiliar, and make sure you have the correct portright amount of space available. Samsung has some guidessoftware on migrating data and changing your boot drive online to make shuffling stuff around. Overall great value especially if you snag it on sale.
Mark H –
Im not going to bore you with diskmark scores, chip specs or game load times because they are all improved with the EVO over Samsungs standard offerings. What I want to focus on is reliability, perceived value and Samsung Magician, which is a big differentiator for me. Ive been a user of Samsung and WD drives for many, many years and never hesitate to recommend either. Both brands have been rock solid and strong performers. Where Samsung provides extra value in my mind is with bundled software. Samsungs data migration software, NVMe driver, timely SSD firmware updates and Magician SSD tool software are second to none. So with the 970 you are getting rock solid reliability, solid performance and a strong set of software tools to go with the hardware. The 970 is quite frankly the best drive out there right now from a price to performance perspective and Micro Center has the best pricing in town. Catch this drive when its on sale and its a nobrainer, BUY IT NOW.
Coffeex –
for the price, it is expensive compared to an SSD of about 500gb.TLDR this m.2 970 EVO, windows loads in 5 seconds. from login screen to desktop screen, 1.4 seconds. also, Help at the bottom of this review, its important to go into bios. find this info at the bottom.a typical mechanical HDD at 7200 RPM is barely 150mbsec speedsa typical SSD is about 500mbsec speedsthis m.2 is a blazing 2.5gbsec to 3gbsec. ive tested it, its fast.i had an 7200 RPM HDD with my PC, it slowed down a lot. windows took over 2 minutes to load, and log into windows. sometimes longer on my 12 core CPU, 24GB ram, 3000 mhz, RX580.this m.2 970 EVO, windows loads in 5 seconds. from login screen to desktop screen, 1.4 seconds.PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, you must go into bios and do a safety erase on this before you can install windows. its some kind of security thing. look it up. knocking down one star because of over a day of this simple issue.
RayH –
Bought this to upgrade my 512GB 960 EVO M.2..The speed is definitely faster in benching..It was a simple transfer of data swap the drives and off it went..Samsung always produce great quality and very reliable products and this is no different…I have been using Samsung SSD drives for a long time and fitted them in customer pcs and laptops too.. Never had a problem with any..I would recommend you buy this for your upgrade..
Voiceguy –
I had high hopes for this, but after comparing it to an old Sandisk Ultra 120GB SSD i only saved myself 1 second on boot up times and 1.5 seconds on shutdown using the latest Windows 10 64bit. Opening programs etc not much difference. Considering all the hype maybe i just expected too much, but considering the price and the heat it generates too hot to touch Think ill stick to standard SSDs until something better comes along. I was hoping Windows 10 would boot up and shutdown in a few seconds and programs to open almost instantly but sadly not. Yes im using Samsung Magician to check the drive and connection and its in a full speed slot and the drive is healthy and has the latest firmware. Generation 3 PCIE tried both x4 and x16 and also a PCIE adapter to see if it was faster than the onboard x4 M2 slot but no difference…
VideoJockey –
This is the second EVO Plus 1TB Ive bought. Both were installed in AMD x370 motherboards for desktop PCs we put together ourselves, and so far its been running fantastic. My first one has been running for almost a year.There are a couple of cheaper drive options now with performance very close to this one, so I only discounted my value rating 1tick for that reason. Prices of this drive have come down slightly since introduction though.If you have a PCI 4.0 enabled motherboard you might get faster performance with a PCI 4.0 drive. I dont know if youd notice the difference in realworld usage though.The one thing I wish was that the NVMe drive manufacturers would include some of the tiny screws used to mount them, in case youre missing the one you need.Im very impressed with Samsung drives so far though. Ive had no issues.Make sure to use a drive slot with all four PCI lanes available to get maximum performance.
Scharabi –
Great product. Does the job. Fast. Reason why I only gave it 3 starts for Easy to Install is because the Samsung Magician Software for cloning SSDs is crap. It didnt recognise the attached USB drive for cloning. Having read various forums, the solution was to use free cloning software by a company called Macrium. Macrium was amazing easy to use, recognised the Samsung SSD and made a perfect copy of the bootable drive. I bought several USB enclosures for the Samsung SSD and had to return as they did not recognise the drive. Finally, I bought the Adwits enclosure which recognised the Samsung SSD immediately in Windows. So would suggest you buyAdwits USB 3.1 UASP TypeC to NVMe M.2 HighPerformance PCIe SSD Adapter, Portable HDD Enclosure Case for Samsung, Kingston, ADATA, DREVO and More NVM to go with this drive.
MillennialMayhem –
I put the OSwindows 10 on this item and boot speed was drastically increased from a standard hard drive. The only thing I didnt know was my motherboard z170 has the screws inside a thumb screw, so I couldnt figure out how to properly screw it in because it has to be straight to fit properly. But that was my fault, and after figuring it out using Samsung magician to optimize the drive for the best speeds. The only thing I would change if I had my choice is to get the 1TB next time Hope this helps If you cant screw it in to your motherboard because its bent try to get the screws out of inside of the place holders inside you hard drive. Then it will lay on top of your place holder and the screw goes back into your placeholder and it should be plugged in and straight.
Scott –
This purchase was part of a project to replace my 256 GB C drive with a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD I already owned. Then add this new 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD on my Alienware 15 R3. I cloned the 256 GB drive to the reformatted 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD. I placed this 2TB drive in the bay where the 1TB was. I formatted the 2TB drive and Ive had no issues so far since the install. The 256GB drive was also reformatted and placed in the enclosure to create an external drive.
JAY S. –
These m.2 drives are pretty much stateoftheart. Installing them requires cloning your OS on it and getting it to boot and then resizing it. Many things can make the process a pain. For one, the ole m.2 was under the heat sink fan that sits on top of the CPU. I had to remove the fan in order to get access to the motherboard. I had some old heat compound that I used up when replacing the heat sink onto the CPU. My cloning didnt fully work because I could only boot it from the BIOS selection, which is a pain. I used a third party bootpartition program to solve that issue. But my difficulties had nothing to do with the drive itself and would have occurred no matter who manufactured it.
Wardo3640 –
This device is exactly as advertised. It works, and it works well. I am impressed with Samsungs drive durability and reliability. The previous drive that I replaced was a 950 pro. This 2TB model 970 EVO Plus should perform the same. The drive was installed in the m.2 slot on my motherboard. I did have problems installing the drive under my bios Rampage V Edition 10 mobo, this was by no means the fault of the drive I purchased. The bios would not see the drive for some odd reason. Eventually, I had to restore an old bios I had saved in one of the bios configuration profiles and the motherboard saw the drive just fine. I would recommend saving a bios profile if you can in your bios before yanking the old drive for replacement. I installed heat sinks on the drive as I had done on the 950 Pro it replaced. With the drives sunk as they are, the temps on a CrystalMark bench were 68 deg.C on the old one and 72 deg. C on the new one. In my case, the new one runs 4 deg. C warmer. So, it does get hot but not much hotter than the previous version. Final thoughts, these drives are some of the best out there. No matter which model you decide on you may run into problems and chances are just as in my case, it is not the drives fault.
teela1125125 –
I am actually quite impressed with the quality and with the readwrite speeds on this SSD. great in value and not so harsh on the wallet. It helps me immensely as I and a Dj on twitch and I have A LOT of music in mp3 format which my Serato DVS plays the mp3s through a vinyl control emulation through noise mapping. I previously would have problems with mp3stracks not fully loading during my dj sets which makes serato freeze and I am stuck standing there looking like a fool. With this new SSD I have not had any further issues with this hence the faster readwrite speeds. I put it through quite a bit of a work out since I dj anywhere from 820 hours at a time playing different songs every 24 minutes which is a lot of read and write as I edit a lot of the music on the fly… djing every 23 days it does not get a whole lot of time to rest but it has not been very hot either.. 30c86f is about the average heat that I end up with even after many hours of use. All in the end, great quality and I will be purchasing another for more music use in the future… Besides any product like this that has a manufacture warranty of 5 years or over, That is definitely a product worth my earnings.
Daniel –
I bought this to replace a Samsung 256Gb ATA SSD in my laptop. I used my backup software to clone the original drive, but when I installed the M.2 drive, it would not boot. Rather than fiddle with it, I used the software to install the M.2 drive as a new drive, the took my backup and restored the system that way.I didnt fault the M.2 drive as my laptops BIOS did not recognize it as a hard drive when I had it in an enclosure.So far the M.2 SSD is blazing fast compared to the older 256Gb SSD and the machine boots in seconds. Backups are extremely fast with the USB 3.2 Samsung T7 external SSD.If I continue to have good results with this drive, I will consider getting the 1Tb version for my desktop since these SSDs seem to improve the overall performance of older computers.
NotDub –
First thing to know about this SSD drive is that it is the M.2 form factor. This is different from the more common 2.5 form factor for traditional SSD drives…and only more recent computers will have the M.2 interface for this SSD drive. So before you purchase it for an existing computer, make sure your computer supports the M.2 form factor for SSD drives. If so, then I would highly recommend this one. This is the 970 EVO Plus model, and it is noticeably faster than the regular 970 EVO I have one of these in another identical laptop. Both are super fast and work perfectly, so either one will be fine, but the PLUS is faster. Make sure to follow manufacturer install instructions as there are various bios settings that maximize the speed and effectiveness of the drive. Overall I would not hesitate to purchase again
AndyK58 –
Sturdy build quality, not afraid of the hinges wearing down or the base falling apart. The Ryzen coupled with the rtx2080 make games look beautiful and run with decent fps, although I can see why FPS players may opt for a screen with a faster response time. For casual players its negligible and if youre not playing an FPS or racing game I wouldnt worry. The colours can be fine tuned as can the sound presets, and both are acceptable to make games and movies come to life. Its a must to buy a big SSD 1TB Samsung evo runs smooth as butter if you plan to have a lot of games installing it is incredibly easy if you crack open the case easily enough tough case so this might prove as difficult for you as it did for me, I ended up dinging little marks in the malleable plastic. The only gripe would be the heatingfans perhaps more vents on the bottom would have been wiser Basically it runs loud when stressed and not the most comfortable thing to have on your thighs due to the heat, but if you play with headphones on a flat cold surface then it isnt a problem whatsoever. Great price and great value in the current market, glad I bought this instead of the new 3060 laptops as they will be throttled by the heating, whereas this 2060 isnt.
DJNerd –
I have 2 of these in my PC build. I hope that speaks to my confidence in the products that Samsung puts out. The installation is straight forward and I can say with confidence that for whatever your storage needs, these hard drives work reliable and quickly. One of my favorite parts of this product is Samsungs magician software. Using this, you can easily check how much storage is left not the hard drive and all kinds of other information to help you determine the drives health, including the drive temperature. As someone who has had drives go bad in the past, this software is a lifesaver Hopefully with this software, you can predict any issues you will have.
Donald –
I purchased the 2TB m.2 Evo Plus SSD from BH. It finally arrived, or so I thought. The drive came in a factory sealed box with antitheft stickers on the top and bottom flap of the retail box and it appeared not tampered with to my untrained eye. However, after breaking the to seal and opening the box, my heart sank to find everything in the box except for the hard drive itself. I have sent an inquiry to BH and am hoping to get what I ordered, but unsure how many days to work toward a resolution. Ive been passed along to several departments at Samsung, none of whom could help. I was finally given an email address that is supposed to be for Samsung memory leadership team, and also sent them an email. At this point I have no drive and a ton of hassle. Im shocked at the poor quality control at the factory and even more disappointed at further delays getting my laptop up and running. I am sincerely disappointed by Samsung.
Lian –
I bought this SSD because my desktop was being extremely slow during boots 1 min 15 sec when it was new to 5 minutes after almost 2 years even with fast startup with just one 7200rpm HDD. This SSD was pricey even with discount but Ive read that NVMe SSDs are much faster than SATA SSDs so I bought it anyway.The installation was easy, and after installing Windows on it, the boot time significantly improved. My desktop now boots in 20 seconds and opening programs are instantaneous as well. I installed some games on it and the loading times are night and day the game in particular is Horizon Zero Dawn. I also ran some benchmarks on UserBenchmark and found that my GTX 1080 was being bottlenecked by the speed of my HDD when playing games. It was something I did not expect and was happy to learn that.For average people on a budget, I would just recommend getting the Samsung EVO 860 SATA SSD since the boot speeds and game loading speeds are only 110 seconds difference even though on paper, the NVMe is up to 6 times faster than SATA at most so you get more storage out of your money with the SATA SSDs.
Timmytwoshoes –
Total nightmare to install on a Dell Inspiron 14 laptop. Samsung software only works if it senses a Samsung drive. I mounted the Ssmsung drive in a USB enclosure to clone my existing drive. WRONG it now identifies as the enclosure name and the Samsung software cannot work as it does not recognize the drive as Samsung. Stupid way to do things Samsung. It makes upgrading to your drive very difficult and your cloning software useless. Had to find a third party cloning program. Tried 3 of them until the last one worked. Wasted many hours to get it to work. Documentation is horrible and the software worse. However, once I got it to work…..WOW What a difference from the Dell NVME 128gb drive. Way, way faster. Proven by benchmarking program. Very happy with the performance. Makes a big difference. SAMSUNG please make it easier for customers to migrate their data.
Vally –
This product took away 24 hours from my life and crushed my windows, 2 stars for didnt burn my laptop, and poor work under the RST driver.I have absolutely new laptop dell G7 7700 with 2m.2. So this one was added just like the second for games and videos. I didnt want to take away my second m.2 and change the location of the window. RAID is the present and future technology when you use 2 m.2, so no ACHI anyway, but I honestly tried and got a blue screen sure, but I found this out after I got it.History. At first, it was installed under the RST driver. The system saw it and I add it via partition. Samsung driver couldnt find the disk and didnt install it because it doesnt work with RAID mode and works only with ACHI. So Magician showed issues with driver and didnt show temperature, health, speed, migration. So you dont have full opinions to monitor your super expensive disk.After 2 hours of reading the community, I tried to change RAID to ACHI via safe boot, when the safe boot was off finally got a blue screen. I get back to Raid.I also tried to set the Samsung driver manually and crushed the windows factory win10.Anyway, it was reinstalled Samsung technical support also advised it. No normal work with factory Win10, The same with Win Home that was downloaded via Support Assistant right from the laptop. Hours of dancing and nerving what will be next… But No result3 windows reinstalling. No dancing anymore, Ill not give a try ACHI anymore I decided to exchange it for an American brand disk and was super surprised. You can find my review, that It perfectly fits RAID mode without dancing and making any setting….just set, install, relax.
Matt –
The drive itself is great. Runs quick, not too hot, and has tons of space. I would rate it five stars. Little pricey, but until it becomes the absolute standard, honestly not too bad. Remember when a 2tb hard drive cost almost 300 dollars I rememberAnyhow, the only reason this drive gets 4 stars instead of five is the instructionssoftware youre supposed to be able to use to migrate your existing OS to the new drive. It hung up and ended up corrupting the data it was trying to move from one to another, so I ended up doing a fresh windows install anyway after waiting 45 minutes for it to do its thing before it crashed.So I implore you back up your data I had, its not my first rodeo and just do a fresh install instead of trying to use the software. Youll save yourself a headache and be up in running in no time.Side note youll need your own M.2 screw, because its not included. I wish manufacturers would start including the screw to hold the drive down, because digging through boxes of mobo boxes looking for them is a time waster and a half.
Jander00890 –
Product was in stock and staff was friendly, courteous, and helpful. Its an M.2 drive. Not much to say. It works flawlessly. Extremely fast compared to a 2.5 SSD. Already had a 500GB installed but ran out of space, so I upgraded. Just wish I had more slots so I could use the one I replaced also. If you have slots available I highly recommend going this route vs SSD for additional storage. Load times are significantly faster. Just make sure what type of slot you have, because there are two types, and they are not interchangeable.
Juwels –
I was using a normal ssd and recently purchased this to upgrade. The boot time of my pc is way quicker now. I wish i would have timed my old ssd to post the actual boot times and compare them but I did not. Any who it is noticeable though with the m.2 nvme storage. It was also very easy to copy the items on my old ssd to my new one using the samsung data migration tool. After that reformating my old ssd was easy as well and you can either get rid of it or use it for additional storage. In my case i kept it and gave it a new driver name.
Mau T –
My favorite addition to my PC to this date. I was unsure on which one to get but what sold me on this product is the ease of migrating my files from my old drive. Samsung has a great software called Samsung Magician and is great at data migration. It was so easy to deal with and there was no cussing or splitting hairs involved in transferring my old pcs HDD. Installing was quite easy and gaming performance is amazing. I absolutely whole heartedly recommend this product.
Anonymous –
I did not get the performance boost I was looking for and it disabled my primary drive initially. After moving my SATA cable to another open connector on the motherboard both drives worked. Copying files from my primary drive to this M.2 drive was disappointingly slow windows explorer draganddrop. I am not seeing noticeable speed improvements in my build times on this new drive. I have not tried to resolve the issue yet but so far not what I expected. Likely it is my H97PLUS ASUS motherboard that is not allowing it to perform like it should.
Silas –
All I can say is wow I returned an ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 500GB for this one and am so glad I did. All PCIE NVME drives are not created equal and benchmarks dont mean anything because they are synthetic and the drives are built to show the best performance on the benchmarks, which can be a far cry from how they actually perform. First the XPG SX8200 Pro website only gives you the best specs from the 1TB drive and its nearly impossible to find the slower performance information of the 512GB and 256GB drive on their website should be a big hint to performance since they dont easily publish it, or list the smaller drive specs on the main page. Second, the bench marks were pretty close on cyrstal diskmark, but when I was actually testing 9GB file copies to and from the XPG, it was often below 600MBs even as low as 150MBs steadily. It did perform better at times, but it was so spotty and nowhere near the benchmarks on a regular basis, I either got a dud or its just not as good as the specs are in real world performance. Yeah, it was about 30 cheaper than the the new Samsung EVO PLUS 970, but in the end, the price difference was waaaaay overshadowed by the real world performance.So, when I got the 500GB Samsung EVO PLUS 970, I popped it in the same slot that the ADATA was just in and not only did it surpass the specs of the CrystalDisk Mark bench, but the real world file copies using the same file as before, were steadily around 2000MBs. Not as fast as the benchmark, but leaps and bounds better than the ADATA and the other PCIE NVME drives Ive had the ability to test with. Also, those speeds stayed constant for the entire file copy, where most other drives fluctuate up and down. I know that even larger file copies will eventually slow down when the cache runs out, but thats the same for all PCIe NVME drives that are using TLC or anything other than MLC flash. And, Samsung is upfront with not just the benchmark readwrite performance of the drives when using TurboBoost with the cache, but also the performance speeds you can expect when the cache runs out. No other manufacturer is showing that and that shows Samsungs confidence int their drives.This drive blew me away, so much, I just ordered another one. I honestly dont think other similar drives are even in the ballpark on performance The WD N750 might be the closest, but its still not on the level of this drive in REALWORLD performance for file copies. If youre considering saving a few bucks on a cheaper PCIe NVME drive, Id highly suggest you do your own large file copies and see if your cheaper drive really handles how it says it will based off of the superficial benchmark tests. Otherwise, save yourself the disappointment and just get the Samsung EVO PLUS to begin with and youll be happy that you did.
Bomber53 –
I added this to the MSI computer I purchased. I use the MSI main drive for almost exclusively software loads and use this drive for strictly data, pictures, PDFs, and movies. I split the drives into a C and D drive. I did this based on experiences with my last PC. I only had a 1TB on my last PC and could not believe how the software loads grew in size. I love the access speed on this drive compared to my old disc drive.
ONeill –
System Alienware A51M laptopFor everyone looking to upgrade or change to a good dependable drive, this is a great option with great speeds for everyday use and gaming. For those that have seen the review where the hard drive is not recognized, stay calm that just means that your system was preset with Raid and yes an option is to enable in bios and then have to reinstall the OS but… you can do it through the command line without having to reinstall OS. open CMD as admin typebcdeitset safeboot hit enter if successful, restart and then when bios pop up select achi and apply then when system restarts in safe mode open cmd again and typebcdeditdeletevalue safeboot hit enter and restart and you should be good to go worked on my system and should be the same for any dell or Win10 system. Second and third image show that samsung magician is recognizing the drive as an NVME
MrByte –
I bought this .M2 drive to replace current .M2 drive that came with the PC from Dell XPS 8930SE, Original drive was only 255GB in size I wanted a bit bigger as a boot partition. Installed the Samsung, used RDrive imaging software to clone old drive to new drive. Took about 8 minutes to do so, boot time improved tremendously over the old .m2. The only issue I had with this drive over the old one is heat…at idled the old drive felt warm to touch, but the Samsung felt Hot, burning hot to touch. So make sure you do not have a graphics card next to it or anything blowing hot air on it, this will throttle the drive. Other than thats Im happy with the purchase. See how long it will last….
Mike C. –
I wanted to upgrade to a SSD over a mechanical drive on my main PC, after upgrading my laptop HDD to SSD. When I purchased the one for my laptop, I chose the Samsung Evo due to great reviews for the drive and its performance. I read that my MOBO could support m.2 NVME drives and therefore wanted to see what Samsung had to offer, due to the success of my laptop upgrade. Once I found that Samsung made their own NVME drives, I researched how well this drive was and have no regrets with my purchase.I had to purchase from CCL after some fantastic previous service.Installation of the drive was a doddle, a few technical glitches with keeping my HDD installed meant that booted to Windows, but with a quick remove of the drive solved this issue.
AutomationStation –
I have used Samsung 970 EVO M.2 drives almost exclusively for last couple of years in over 40 computer builds. Very reliable and fast. Ideally if installing Windows 10, you need to download and install Samsungs NVME Driver which you can do after you install Windows 10 which is better than the default Windows driver. Also I would suggest downloading and installing the Samsung Magician Software… this checks that you are running the latest firmware for the M.2 drive and gives you an easy way to OverProvision the drive. This should make the drive last even longer. Highly recommend.
RobertM61 –
Replaced my 500GB Samsung SSD with this beast and happy with the results. Cloned the OS using Samsung Magician and have had no problems at all. Its fast and my boot speed has increased as you would expect. The biggest advantage is not having sata cables to cable manage which helps keep your build looking clean. Another advantage is the 1TB of space which keeps all my favourites games in one place and leaves plenty of room for other applications that you want to have quick access to. I also have 3TB HDD for all my movies, music and photos. Cons Runs warm and in my system idles around 37 Celsius and can get warmer when utilising it. However, it never gets high enough where it effects performance. If it wasnt for this small issue, I would have given 5 stars.
Peter M. –
I really, really wanted to get this drive to work for me. After my jaw hit the floor while monitoring temperature under stress during burnin, I purchased a heat sink with fan for this drive. That only took 4C off the top end, getting it down to 80C. So I decided to back off of the extreme tests and focus on actual usage tests. This is a build machine, so I ran a full software build for my company on the NVMe compared to a 2.5 SSD. The NVMe wasnt faster, but did suffer a temperature swing of 2030C, while the 2.5 SSD barely registered a 4C swing. This is a really wellventilated case with good airflow across both drives. Bottom line this thing gets hotter faster than my CPU ever does. Drives arent supposed to do that. Given that the drive is rated max 70C, I returned it. Even then, a 40 to 50 degree C temperature swing for any component is going to wipe out its MTBF. The chips on this drive are simply not designed to get the heat off of them fast enough. Simple tests showed that it heats up about 1.5 times faster than it cools down with a dedicated heatsink and fan. Its probably worse for the naked chip. I think these drives are the future, but the manufacturers need to seriously pay attention to heat management issues. Id be curious to see what numbers are like for smaller 500G drives, or other manufacturers. Perhaps this is a storage density issue I expect Ill be purchasing these drives in my next build, after theyve ironed out the heat management. They are crazyeasy to install, take up very little space, and are very fast. They just need to run cooler with smoother temperature curves.
Joseph –
Bottom line up front, I am happy with my purchase of this item as well as the buying experience through BH. I would do both again.Ive used BH a lot in the past for photography purchases. This was one of a few recent PC component purchases through them and Im pleased with the outcome. Shipping was fast and pricing was actually very competitive and, in a few cases, lower than more traditional PC component sources.This memory was part of a custom system build designed to optimize performance using Adobe Premiere Pro for a non professional but heavy user read Im not getting paid to producevideos and I dont have a monetized YouTube channel, but I do create a lot of content with effects that require a lot of CPU horsepower to process in a reasonable amount of time.. I used a500GB for the OS and application installs. I used a 1TB for scratch files and working storage on the PC. Installation was easy and without issue. Performance is very good. From someone who grew up on platter drives, M.2 internal SSD is a pleasure to use and lowers anxiety of physical drive failures exponentially.
ever06 –
I had never used an M2 SSD. I had always considered it a luxury but after seeing the price and specs i couldnt pass up the offer. To say it is fast is a lie. This thing is beyond fast. replacing my 7200rpm HDD with this was like going from VHS to Bluray. Everything feels instant, copying is immediate, and you forget the computer is on because there is no noise.The biggest issue is it will spoil you. After using this and then using regular HDDs at work feels so slow now. You feel like you might as well be using Windows 95.Heck even using SDD hard drives feels laggy.Highly recommend the product, just remember it will make everything else feel much slower.I love this tech never going to use win on a old school HDD ever again.
Rhondy –
Hey all, bought this for my Aspire 7 laptop I got in August. Called Samsung because the drive wasnt being recognized by their software and they were absolutely no help. Best Buy was no help either. After googling so many articles online… I found out that I had to go into the bios, press CTRL S and then change to ACHI mode. After that, I was able to download the Samsung drivers and the Samsung magician program and migration programs worked.Speeds are as expected. Runs hot in my opinion. To make installation easier, I suggest buying a m.2 enclosure so that you can clone your current drive to this one.
Larry M. –
This is replacing an 860 EVO 250Gb sata SSD. The difference in speed and storage space is huge. My overall build is as follows. Motherboard MSI X370 Gaming M7 ACK CPU Ryzen 5 1600 GPU MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER RAm G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 16GB 2 x 8GB SSD SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2280 1TB So far this system does everything I ask of it without issue. Im a light casual gamer and plan on upgrading to a 2060 super eventually. I play WOW, Diablo 3, and Skyrim with this set up. On Skyrim Special edition I have to play at low settings with this GPU. Thats why Im planning on the upgrade. Other than that Im satisfied with this system. The SSD was a huge upgrade in speed and storage space. Now I can get more games and possibly Adobe Creative Suite. If you have any concerns about this drive, no worries. Its money well spent.
James –
The Samsung 970 EVO plus actually outperforms the 960 pro. Plug and play, drivers arent really necessary after win 8.1 but I installed them anyhow with a very small performance gain. The magician software is good for migrating and initial set up however after Im done I uninstall it. Needless process to be running. Every now and then Ill load it to check for firmware updates then uninstall it again. The only thing the beats a Samsung are the intel 900 and 905 series due to the Q14K performance. Intel is where my OS is installed and most apps. Games etc all get installed to Samsung NVME drives and storage is 4×2.5 EVOS in raid0 mostly media. Everything however is backed up on a top tier NAS.
FloridaGuy –
I installed this in a Dell Inspiron 15 3583, and its very fast. From power on, it takes about 3 seconds to get the Dell logo on screen, and then another 2 seconds to get to the Windows 10 lock screen. According to Samsungs Magician version 6.0.0, the benchmarked read speed was 3470 MBs, and the write speed was 3285 MBs.However, I was disappointed by the apparent lack of support for this product in Samsungs curernt software, at least on my new Dell laptop. Their version 3.2 drivers wouldnt install on my machine, and most of the features in Samsungs magician software didnt work, with an explanation that the selected SSD didnt support that feature. And for some reason, the Samsung Magician 6.0.0 identifies the SSD as just a Samsung SSD 970, although Windows 10 knows its a Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TBOn balance, if I knew then what I know now, I would have bought a somewhat slower but cheaper SSD.
Annabelle –
My SSHD in my Tower PC started to show signs it was going to fail so I decided to completely rebuild with new components Motherboard, SSD, CPU, RAM and fans. The only thing I have kept are my graphics and sound cards.With a new CPU, RAM and this M.2 Solid State Drive I have lightning fast speeds. So fast that my eyes and brain cant keep up with the page transitions. I did tweak the page filing system to allow more access for the RAM you can double RAM size, see Youtube. The downside is you lose some space on the SSD, but I only use mine to run the PC with Installed programs.I have several professional music programs which took a good long while to load and would often crash. Not anymore They load within 23 seconds and are stable.Overall, I think SSDs with non moving parts are definitely the way forward and Samsung are a trustworthy and reliable brand. If M.2 is new to you dont be afraid. This is my first build with this type of storage and it literally is Plug and Play, just like fitting a new HDD. Just be aware of the different socket type on the motherboard. Mine is Mtype 2280. Also my mobo wont allow SATA sockets 5 amp 6 to be used if M.2 is installed. This is fine for me as I only need 14 so check your manual.I am very happy lightning fast speeds and also space saving. Some people have said it can run very hot but no problems for me, my new CPU temps are keeping me alert
Reilly H. –
I had an initially poor experience with my first Samsung SSD back in 2014. But after that I took a chance and bought a few more over the years, and every one after that one ill fated model which I still have and actually still works, but was just massively disappointing in performance all worked reliably and were hard to beat for the performance. These newer NVMe SSDs from Samsung are just crazy fast. Ive had the pleasure or displeasure of working with other brand NVMe SSDs and those were barely any faster than the SATA SSDs these were meant to replace. So I appreciate how fast these Evos are.
LMRN –
Exactly what I needed speed and storage space. I needed to upgrade the storage space on my Dell XPS 9500 I bought it with only a 256GB SSD. The SK Hynix m.2 SSD it came with was already fast, but this Samsung drive greatly outperforms it. Much faster read and write speeds and greater capacity for a great price. I obviously wouldnt mind if it was cheaper, but you really do get what you pay for.You really cant go wrong with any of the Samsung SSDs, especially when they go on sale. Theres a reason why theyre constantly at the top of review lists. If youre planning to pick up one of the new XPS laptops or honestly any new upgradeable laptop, just get it with the lowest drive configuration and upgrade it yourself its easy, cheaper, and you get an even faster laptop out of it. Tons of youtube videos out there on how to install these if youre unfamiliar super easy, barely an inconvenience
ImpliedConsent –
This will probably be the last review on a pci3 backbone for me. Pci4 is around the corner. Regardless, my experience is with this drive is from the standpoint of a fresh install.If you need to replace or better, add your m.2 nvme storage, get this. I picked up the 500GB version, replacing a bricked Toshiba OEM 128GB nvme on my ASUS ROG laptop.Its easy if you have a laptop that gives you access to the drives. My ROG does. It was no harder than unscrewing screws, popping outin the module and start your OS install method I used a usb w10 iso.You could tell immediately that the drive was fast during the install. Did a little benchmark with Samsung Magician… the results speak for themselves. See image.
Thomas –
I was running short on remaining space on my C drive. Not drastically short, but I could see the writing on the wall. Plus, with being home bound, I was determined to organize all my music, video, and picture files.My C drive is a 1TB 970 EVO Pro and I had room for two more M2 form drives on the motherboard. I had planned to just add another 1TB 970 EVO Pro 350 but decided instead for the 2TB EVO Plus 430 still wicked fast and leaves me with no excuses to not enjoy a spacious, uncluttered storage system.Now, Ive taken all the data storage off of my C drive now 540 GB free leaving plenty of room for future applications, templates, plugins, and fonts. Keeping all my active data on the new B drive 1.5 TB free got it all set up to make house keeping a lot easier. And my D now 2.5 TB free is focused on archives and backups and not babysitting any clutter files.I put my order over the phone. Didnt have to wait long, confirmed my questions with a real person, and paid with Payboo so I basically got a 10 discount tax free. Got it like 5 days later and now living the good life. Life is too short to be waiting on file transfers
Ax10mx97 –
My original Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe stopped working one day out of no where after extensive troubleshooting. While my RMA is in progress, I went in and purchased this NVMe M.2 and it is working again. I was able to recover my data and offloaded it onto this new drive from my NAS and I am back up and running. I decided on this EVO plus model and I do not nee much of a difference in terms of performance as they are almost identical with the EVO plus being slightly faster.Would my experience dissuade me from purchasing Samsung storage drives Absolutely not. These drives have very good warranty. Always remember to back up your data
Anonymous –
Originally purchased this after purchasing a competitors SSD drive, Western Digital SN550. The SN550 had weird compatibility issues with the laptop this was being installed in and Windows would crash during the install process. The Samsung allowed Windows to install perfectly without error. Being able to install Windows in about 5 minutes is an incredible sight to behold. Drives firmware was also the latest so need to upgrade that. Samsung has almost been perfect reliability for me and I should have stuck with it vs going with a cheaper drive initially. You get what you pay for as they say.
EVGA1660Ti –
Blazing fast, but kinda blazing hot, too These things, and seemingly, this one especially, run hot. My mobo has an NVME SSD heatsink, and even with that, my SSD almost hits 70C during extended, high volume readwrite periods. In normal use it runs a bit less than 50C, which I think is just fine. Definite, noticeable improvement in readwrite performance compared to my last, nonNVME SSD, recommend if you have a mobo with an NVME heatsink and good case air flow.
Anonymous –
Got the 1000GB m2 2280 at 199. on sale to extend the free slot in a lenovo thinkpad x1 gen 2. The boards had to be single sided, so it was this or the WD SN750 1000GB.After installation the storage device was recognized without any problems. Samsung Magician benchmarks on the 970 EVO Plus 1000GB compared to the 2016 960 EVO 500GB currently fit into my desktop, show no noticeable difference in read performance. In write performance the 970 EVO nearly reaches the performance ceiling and beats the 960 EVO by twice the rate.Read Seq Write Seq Read Random Write Random970 EVO Plus 1000GB3387 3259 289062 454589960 EVO 500GB3344 1783 275146 140380 The write performance difference might be noticeable for use cases where significant amounts of data are written i.e. video editing software or multithreaded services.For most of us regular consumer users, you will be getting more value with a good 2GB SSD 2.5 SATA3 or a cheaper m2 with slower write speeds. Program load times will be negligibly different when compared to a mechanical disk.
MarkA –
When it comes to hard drives there is a lot of misconception for a consumer who is not tech savvy. Most people do not know what the difference between a SSD, M.2, and HDD are. Well, I got this for you and I will explain. So HDD Hard Disk Drive is one of the first drives to be created for storage properties. The way they work is kind of like a record player, there are black disks inside the case that spin and get read by needles on a stick. The faster the disks spin the faster the information is read or written depending on what you are trying to do at the time. Back around 34 years ago the standard speed was 7200 rotations per minute RPM, but some cheaper computers shipped with 5400 RPM. Gamers who wanted to have a faster hard drive to have games loaded faster and games installed faster before SSD was available would opt for a 10,000 RPM HDD. Along came SSD, and by no means was it cheap, but, it had speeds of 10X faster than a 7200 RPM HDD. This made it very popular for gamers and high end video and photography editors. But, as all technology does, it got cheaper over time and now it is hard to find a laptop that does not ship with a 256gb or higher SSD . The way they were able to speed up the technology was to remove the spinning disks and went for a computer chip instead. It is essentially like RAM in terms of being read. Shortly after SSD came M.2 and this really only changed the way it was physically plugged into a computer, which is through a PCIE slot. But this increased the readwrite speeds as well. This hard drive I was able to use for the past two weeks is phenomenal. This boasts readwrite speeds up to 35003300 MBs, compared to a HDD of 350 MBs with 7200 RPM. It can have up to 1TB of storage on a chip that is not much larger than a flash drive. and comes with an unheard of 5 Year Warranty. And to top it off it comes with a free software that gives userfriendly resources to let you know if there is something wrong, or, just give you information you might need or want. In conclusion, for those of you that are looking for a hard drive that is not only reliable, fast, compact, and coming from a reputable brand, but something you will know to be your first choice, then choose this 970 Evo Plus hard drive. For the picture below, I took out some possibly sensitive information that pertained to my unit.
Jongri –
Upgraded my MSI GT76 Titan DT039 notebooks 3 PCIe 3.0 slots w 3x 2TB Samsung EVO PLUS NVME M.2 SSDs in RAID0 to have a 5.588 TB system drive. Unfortunately, the notebooks BIOS uses Intel Rapid Storage Technology to set up RAID array so the performance merely matches the performance specs of a single 2TB 970 EVO PLUS. I thought combining all 3 2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS into a RAID0 array would improve performance over a single 2TB 970 EVO PLUS but it didnt on my notebook. However, Im glad I did it bc now I have installed all my pc games, movies, videos pictures still have over 5.072 TB of unused drive space to spare. The only thing that surprises me is that the latest version of Samsung Magician doesnt recognize the 3x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS in RAID0 and refers to them as RAID0 Volume Unable to detect drive not supported but I can still run Samsung Magician performance benchmark on them in RAID0 array. Perhaps the performance will improve once MSI provides driver update to the notebooks Intel Rapid Storage Technology but either way Im still pleased w these 3x 2TB 970 EVO PLUS in RAID0 array.
Paul F. –
Theres not much to say. Its a very good NVME drive. It installed very easily like all M.2 drives do. Its lightning fast. In fact its the fastest thing in my current computer. Its so fast I dont notice the speed difference because everything else has to catch up to it. I didnt even buy it for my current computer I bought it for my next computer. I just got it early because it was on sale and installed it in my current computer because why not I have an extra M.2 slot. I would recommend that you should make sure you can actually utilize the full potential of this drive before buying it. A lot of computers arent going to need to ever push this thing to its full potential. You may be able to save money going with a cheaper Drive. However, its still very affordable for the performance and far more futureproof. Of course its not pcie 4.0 compatible but I have a strong feeling everything else, as far as components are concerned, are going to be playing catchup to the solid state drive for many more years to come anyways so that is not really a big deal.
Mark –
Pros Use one of these bad boys for a boot drive and theres no point having a sleep mode the boot times are so quick you may as well power down when you walk away from your PC. Also the necessary mounting screws are supplied with your motherboard I feel this shouldnt need mentioning in the 21st century, but here we are.Cons Not the cheapest way to store 250GB. The design of the internal cardboardplastic housing meant exposing the drive to get to the documentation. Less stable or luckily individuals may find themselves dropping an expensive piece of computer hardware at this stage please be ware.
Osmin –
It has the readwrite speed to almost max out the PCIe 3.0 x4 on my ASUS motherboard. Unless you are planning to upgrade to a PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 motherboard, that should arrive at the end of 2021 with Intel Alder Lake CPUs, and scrapping your existing motherboard, then this is the best choice to keep your existing motherboard running near its full potential. I tested my Samsung 980 Pro on my ASUS PCIe 3.0 motherboard and the Windows 10 OS reported around 3,335 MBps sequential readwrite speed because the rest of the system cant keep up with it. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus reported by Windows 10 OS is around 3,2293,034 MBps sequential readwrite speed and you can wait for faster SSDs to come out that will be suitable for PCIe 5.0.
Gregory H –
I installed this drive on my main desktop, running a 1950x thread ripper with 32GB RAM in a ASUS Zenith Extreme. Not the most recent of systems but its still keeping up with all that I throw at it. Anyhow when I first got the system a couple years back I tried to install an older generation of this very drive. At that time I had issues with Windows 10 BSOD and all sorts of other issues, I swapped that drive for a 860GB SSD and all was nominal. I decided to try this drive out again and picked this one up at Micro Center a couple weeks back. It has worked as advertised no issues at all on this system and overall the computer is certainly quicker for most things Have not had any issues performance or stability wise. Highly reccomend it
LJP2020 –
I use this as the boot drive in my recently built PC Ryzen 3700x, 32gb 3200mhz, Sapphire Pulse 5700xt. This moves an incredible amount of data. Once my computer passes bios, screen blinks and its the Windows login splash page. Video games also have very few, if any, loading screens.Even though my motherboard supports PCIE 4.0, the value was too great. PCIE 4.0 nvme drives are still much more expensive. I can sacrifice a few seconds on larger file transfers 10gb if need be. And I do mean seconds.
ComputerBoy –
I have MSI Z97 MPower Max AC motherboard with Intel i7. This item was on sale and I bought it on a whim. I already have one terabyte solidstate Samsung drive so my system was running well already but I wanted to see if this could run faster. On their support website, you can download the migration program which will clone your original hard drive onto this memory card. It works quite well and when I booted up, it saved me about a few seconds since it was already fast working with a solidstate drive.The only problem I had was that I use Symantec Veritas System Recovery program to backup my hard drive. The program does not recognize this drive and no matter what settings I tried at the bios page, it still didnt work. Otherwise, everything else works fine and nothing had to be reactivated since it got moved to this new drive so I ended up using the one terabyte SSD as a system drive and use this one not as a data drive but as a temporary drive for temporary files and swap files.So it works very well especially if you are upgrading from a regular hard drive. You will not have to suffer through half a minute bootup of Windows 10 no longer. It is easy to install unfortunately, the manual was so small that I almost had to use a magnifying glass to read it. You have to have some experience in putting together a computer to install this someone who is a beginner will need help.
managauge –
Solid PCIE SSD. Comes with a cooling pad. No trouble installing. Makes for an excellent gamedrive in 2021. Actual inusage storage space is 931 Gigabytes. Reason why is below.It is worth mentioning however that the drive is advertised as 1TB in that it has 1012 bytes of writable data on it. This is because the advertiser uses the international system of units to define what a Terabyte is.Your computer does not however speak in powers of 10, it speaks in powers of 2. Meaning that a Terabyte to a computer is not 1012 bytes, but it is rather 1,099,511,628,000 bytes.
Rex –
I use my Lenovo laptop for photo editing, and Raw images take up a lot of space. Even though I have highcapacity external drives, I needed a large internal secondary drive for when I traveled. I researched options and the fastest and easiest choice was to install a Samsung NVMe drive. It literally took 15 minutes to install with no special tools. I moved all of my data and picture files there so I kept only programs and operating system on my C drive to improve speed. The SSD was even on sale so it was the best investment Ive made in my computer since buying it.
Ismail –
I bought two 970 EVO PLUS 2TB units and they only give write speeds of 800 MBs on both my Orico and JEYI Thunderbolt 3 external housings with my 2019 iMac iMac 19 under MacOS and Windows 10. Read speeds are around 2800 MBs.This compares with well over 2300 MBs write with my WD SN750 2TB drive three times faster Black Magic Disk Speed TestI ran Samsungs Magician software and checked my 970 EVO plus drives have the latest firmware and apparently everything is fine.If you are using a Mac buy something else like the WD SN750.
Nathan –
Theres not much to say about this product other than that Samsung, in my opinion, is the leading contender for nvme and ssd in general purely for reliability and overall performance.There are periodically better speeds with other products but realizing this speed in actual usage is very unlikely to be perceptible unless you are transferring a large volume of data.Overall Ive been using Samsung ssds the past few years and I dont regret it one bit. Friends often inquire what brand to use and I always recommend Samsung. Especially for a mainOS drive. Be sure to still do your homework on benchtests and overall reviews. If youre simply looking for a somewhat faster storage option for less money you may be better off with a different brand.
JonG –
installed 3 2tb samsung evo plus in raid0 in my msi gt76 titan dt039 4k notebooks as 6tb system drive. i love having one large 6tb nvme ssd in raid0 as my system drive. using msi gt76 titan notebooks intel rapid storage software set the 3 2tb samsung evo plus in raid0 array. not as fast as a single 2tb samsung 970 evo plus would be but close enough having a large system drive is nice. 3x 2tb in raid0 still gets over 3400 mbsec read over 3000 mbsec write. love these even though samsung magician only recognizes them as raid0 drives w no smart support but does support running disk performance benchmark.
Fuse –
Installed this in my Intel NUC 8259U, 500GB storage and extremely fast. To be honest, if youre using your machine primarily for browsing, word, excel etc, then youre better off saving your money and buying a 2.5 SSD as this wont give you much benefit if any. However, if you are working on large photos and video editing, then this will benefit you.I had a 2,5 SSD before this and I have noticed a slight improvement in boot up time, but its not significant and would not be something that would drive me to get an M.2 over a standard SSD.Im primarliy a software developer and to be honest I havent notice any improvement from the work I do, but when viewing large RAW photos and editing them, and when I work on the odd video I do notice an improvement. I can imagine if you do this for your main job, this is where you will benefit massively.Overall, I got this because I just wanted to save space inside the NUC and maybe add another 2.5 drive later on to my NUC.One thing I have noticed is that the HDD LED on my NUC is flashing quite a lot even when Im not working on it and no applications open, Im assuming this is the OS doing background stuff and not the drive. Ill keep an eye on this to make sure its not developing into a drive fault. Will update the review if it is.
Rsblessed –
where can we see the compatability information im using a fairly new dell g5 15 se 5505, with a ryzen 9 4900h. it currently has a 1tb ssd and an empty slot for a 2nd ssd. i would rather upgrade the machine by putting this in that vacant slot instead of adding a 2nd dell ssd. it calls for a m.2 pcie nvme class 40 2280, which i see this is except the class 40 part i am not sure about. does that automatically mean that i can use this one in my machine
BobbyG –
Easy to install like all m.2, but I chose this one for it being such a great buy for the price, speed, and storage size. Call me a Samsung kinda guy, but their drives have YET to let me down. All of my comparative tests show above average performance and the drives perform as advertised. I stand by my choice. This drive is right where it belongs in an HEDT setup, in a budget gaming rig, or even in a regular old budget build. It gives you the edge, loading speeds, and general performance that makes any computing experience in todays day worth the money spent. It is worth the money.
Rayviator –
This is the best NVME SSD you can buy from a brickandmortar store. If you want the best, you found it Ive ready plenty of other reviews and watch videos on NVME SSD comparisons and there is no comparison to the rest. If its on sale, its a no brainer to get this. Im currently using it as a boot drive for Windows 10 pro. If you want to use this for other things like storing programs, files, and games, you should probably go for the larger 1TB option so it lasts longer.Likes Easy to install blazing readwrite speedsDislikes Nonsale price is steepOh, by the way You wont regret buying this series of NVME drive
Perry –
Using this as a dedicated games drive on a Windows 10 PC. Love it.In fact, I plan to upgrade to a 2TB once prices drop a bit, as the 4.0 drives are still a tad more expensive than Id like to spend, especially considering the 4th gen tech hasnt been fully leveraged yet and may not be for several more years.Ive watched a few vids comparing 3.0 to 4.0, and the speedstimings are very close for most common use cases. Since storage only gets cheaper over time, this is a great way to save a few bucks.If youre looking for a fast, dependable PCIe 3.0 NVMe, you cant go wrong with the 970 EVO Plus. I dig it.
Ersatz –
My laptop doesnt have a new enough cpu to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 stuff that has come out more recently, so this is the top of the pile. Great speed and reliability and performs better in almost every category compared to other similar options. Though the differences are pretty minor between this and say, the WD black equivalent. Basically, go with the one thats on sale. All things being equal, this one wins out though, even over the pro equivalent from Samsung, oddly.Samsung partition magic did a great job of cloning the old SSD onto this one.
Bob –
On the advice of a knowledgeable friend, I did some research and then bought the 1TB 970 EVO Plus NVMe drive.Im excited because Im upgrading my computer with a new mobo that supports PCIe 4.0, and this drive is supposed to benefit from it. Im sure that it being many times faster than the SSD on my current computer should make a difference in loading the OS and other programs on it.Im sure the CPU will play a hand in that as well, but with a faster drive, everything has to be better.I bought it over the Pro version just due to price and my usage. It has MLC, which stores 2 bits in each cell, rather than TLC that stores 3 bits in each cell. That makes it faster, but more important to me, it makes it more likely to last for the long run. In essence, its life expectancy should make buying it less expensive than the TLC versions available.
niners400 –
Let me start with this is a very fast SSD. Install into the computer was easy. I had problems with copping the original drive to the new drive. I downloaded Samsung Magician and could not find the cloning program in it anywhere. I did not see anywhere in the directions that I needed Samsung data migration program. I downloaded Samsung data migration program and ran it to copy the drive. Checked the Samsung Magician Drive info and it said that the volume could not be found. Copied it again and it said the same thing. Found out that the drive was set to offline so I changed it to online and it worked fine.
Pennimf –
Have used Samsung SSDs with confidence for years. The 970 EVO Plus keeps the faith as a startup drive in a PC upgraded new motherboard using a previous case. PC boots in less than 10 seconds. Every program seems to load faster which is pleasing. Just wish Samsung provided NVMe screws for the motherboard with the product as could not find a NVMe with the motherboard packaged accessories. Recommended buy as a main OS drive.
mkhaku –
I have a PlayStation 4 the original not the pro and as such it has a regular drive not the SSD. Now honestly the PS4 is a great system and is fast and good with storage. But I never realized how much better could be with the Samsung 907 EVO plus M2 drive. Everything ever since has improve which is a bit mind boggling. Obviously storage is expected with 250GB but also performance, speed and gaming experience was so much better. And its quite easy to replace and set up, there are many YouTube videos out there to replace your hard drive with and SSD that have detailed step by step instructions. I would highly recommend this product to everyone not only those who want to improve gaming experience like I did but also for those who want to improve their experience on a computer.
Julian –
I purchased this 1TB NVMe M.2 internal SSD to replace my 500GB 960EVO, which was my C drive and was getting full. Installation is a snap, just plug it into the motherboards M.2 socket I have 2, so I installed it into the second socket and screw it down. I booted to Windows 10 and ran Acronis TrueImage 2020 and used the Clone Disk tool. I selected the Manual Mode for the clone operation, selected my original 960EVO SSD the current C drive as the source and the new 970EVO SSD as the destination. Manual Mode with its default options resizes the data partition to fill all available space on the destination drive, which was exactly what I wanted, so I let TrueImage do its thing. The computer rebooted, did the clone operation, and restarted… Booting correctly from the new 1TB 970EVO SSD The original C drive appeared as a regular hard drive. I installed Samsung Magician to update the firmware on the new drive, but it was already using the current firmware. My original SSD benchmarked at just over 500MBs. The new SSD benchmarked at over 3000MBs My computer boots to the Windows desktop in about 6 seconds. Im loving the new speed. I wish I could afford the 2TB version, but thats out of my reach at the moment.
Tina M –
My computer came with a 250GB SATA SSD and wanted to double the capacity and use the old SSD in my laptop. Fortunately, my motherboard has a M.2 PCI slot, the screw and spacer for this type of memory card. The card was vey easy to fit but after fitting it, only this card was showing up in my Bios. The new drive was disabling my other drives. After reading other customers reviews, I realized the M.2 slot shares with two of my SATA ports. I have six SATA ports so I move my current drives to other ports and all was well. I downloaded the latest Samsung NVMe driver otherwise the card uses the windows driver, Samsung Magician and Data Migration software. Cloning my new drive was very easy using the Data Migration software. I selected the Over Provisioning in the Magician software as this helps with performance and life span. I used the recommended settings for this.This Samsung MZV7S500BW 970 EVO Plus 500 GB Solid State Drive is about seven times faster that my old Samsung SATA SSD.
Matthew P –
The first paragraph of this review is specific to Macbook purposes. Skip if this isnt relevant to your situation.I only bought one because I had to the Macbook Air 20132017 dont use 2.5 SATA, so if you want to upgrade one youll need an M.2 drive like this and a thirdparty adapter bracket. I used this drive, fearing that the NVMe controller might be a problem, but happily it isnt. On a 2017 Macbook Air 13 it worked fine without any messing about. Older Macbooks might struggle because the builtin Internet Recovery service doesnt have NVMe support, so if thats the case make sure you have USB installation media for High Sierra before you begin.Now some general points to put this SSD in context compared to other SSDs yes, it has ridiculously fast data transfer speeds. No, it doesnt matter to 99 of people. It can do sustained sequential reads around the 2.1GBs mark, which is ridiculous. It uses 4 lanes of a PCIexpress bus, which is massive overkill for normal domestic use.A previous reviewer discussing the 960 EVO mentioned that he noticed an improvement in largefile CAD work but saw absolutely no improvement in gaming and normal computer use scenarios, and I have to agree. If youre shuffling around very large files routinely copying and editing video, for example this drive will benefit you over a normal 2.5 SATA drive.If youre playing games, doing Twitch streaming or using Photoshop, or just bimbling around the internet with a few tabs open while listening to music dont kid yourself. Dont waste your money. A regular 2.5 SATA drive like the 850 EVO or Crucial MX500 will be just as good. Its actually quite annoying that M.2 drives are becoming the default choice for so many platforms and users given how overpriced they are, costing significantly more per gigabyte but offering no perceptible improvement for most users.
Nibbles37 –
For the price, they could have included a set of the common screw sizes needed for this thing as my motherboard did not come with one. Luckily I had an old crashed laptop hard drive that I took apart that used the same itty bitty screw size. Needless to say I would have returned it on principal had I not found one. Obviously this is not Best Buys fault and its majorly cheap of Samsung to not include it.That aside, this thing is blazing fast, and makes my computer feel like its from the future. 10 out of 10.
Bender953 –
I havent given much thought to trying a m2 drive before as my standard ssd drives were working fine. After a startup hiccup I debated replacing my main drive. After doing some initial research online I discovered the substantial speed increase of the M2 drives. Samsung rated well in my searches and I have had good luck with their previous ssd 2.5 drives. Installation was fairly easy using the screw in spacer supplied with my motherboard. Set up was flawless and acted just like install of any other style drive. I used the supplied drive tester software that came inn the package and verified a large difference in speed vs my other drives. I am very pleased and recommend this drive
Serge Belolipetski –
Being a big fan of Samsung drives, I purchased this to replace 500GB stock drive in my MacBook Air 11 i7 2015, and now Im very happy with plenty of space in my small, but very powerful pocket machine I compose and arrange a lot of music in Logic and Live not just in my studio, but also on the road, yet edit occasional video in FinalCut Pro X, so I desperately needed to expand disk space. Along with the upgrade, I got 3x write speed boost roughly coming from 450MBs to 1350MBs, while read score remained the same at 1350MBs. Sure, it doesnt hit a roof comparing to how this drive may excel in MacBook Pro 15 2015 I tested that too, and got about 2600 MBs readwrite, all due to hardware differences in the machines, as MacBook Air 11 may only negotiate on 2x speed of PCIe, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this drive for the small machines like mine to get more space, especially if you in love with MacBook Air. Of course, to make the transition youll need to buy an adapter to fit into the Mac it costs 16, yet an enclosure for this type of drive to clone data from your computer using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Overall, very positive experience.
Gaelforce –
I purchased this product as backup external drive for my iMac. The SSD was installed in a Thunderbolt 3 capable metal enclosure and connected to my computer in less than 5 minutes. After formatting the transfer speeds between the iMac s SSD and the Thunderbolt 3 drive was nothing short of spectacular. A 6 GB video file transferred in 56 seconds Transferring the same file to a USB 3.0 external drive took 35 seconds. The five year warranty will certainly cover the lifespan of this drive for my use. I could not be happier with the overall result with this DIY project.
ac19189 –
Samsung is just the best when it comes to hard drives. I have so many hard drives that have failed on me but have yet to have anything samsung fail once. This NVME is awesome both in performance and quality.Samsung offers a free tool to clone a hard drive to the new samsung drive so you can replace your boot drive in a few clicks.This replaced my hard drive in my laptop which was a 5200RPM drive and took my boot time from five minutes to ten seconds. Yes you did read that correctly my laptops bottleneck was my hard drive and this NVME kicked my old drive out of the car at full speed.
Vkar07 –
Had been using the Samsung Evo Plus 970 NVMe 250GB SSD for the past month. Got it to add as a boot drive for my new PC build. The box came packaged well, and doesnt have any chance of slipping from its slot while shipping. For the first week, havent finished the build yet, so started using the EVO Plus using the external Samsung X5 SSD shell, by replacing the existing hardrive that came with the package. The speeds are much better on the Evo Plus, compared to the default drive that is in the X5 with speeds over 30 to the default drive. When testing the readspeeds, it was over 2GBPS, which is the highest I had seen on all the SSD devices that I have including the NVMe SSDs. Tested the speeds with Macbook Pro 15 with TBT3 and Alienware M15 with TBT3. Mac harddrive is over 20 slower than the Evo Plus 970 NVMe SSD. With Alienware M15, the write speeds of Alienware default NVMe drive is over 600Mbps for a 16GB file while the Evo Plus stayed at around 400Mbps. But the Read speeds for the same file is over 2.6Gbps for 970 Evo Plus, but around 1.7Gbps for the default NVME on M15but also to consider is that the 970 Evo Plus is connected via TBT3 whereas the internal drive is connected to the motherboard directly, so expect that the 970 Evo Plus will have probably higher speeds when replaced the existing NVMe on M15. When plugged into desktop, on MSI Z370A Pro, was able to get seq read speeds almost reaching 3000Mbps and seq write speeds around 2400Mbps, which is awesome as a basic boot drive and to have games load from the drive. I also have 2 secondary drives that use Samsung 860 QVO which have good speeds for data storage and read. Only thing I missed out on when getting the drive is that I didnt consider the size of games, so since I have only 250GB drive, restricted, but planning on upgrading the motherboard to be able to get two NVMe ports to allow plugging in another 970 EVO Plus The harddrive helps with quick and fast boot of the desktop, with under 2 seconds to boot and had no issues playing AAA games on high settingsConfig is i78700K and 16GB 3000MHZ RAM and 2070 RTX Pros Fast Read speeds and Write speeds Cons Could have some better heat sink to prevent it getting a bit hot, but going to get a new MOBO with heatsink to prevent this
number1115243 –
First, just a heads up that I purchased this product from Amazon, not Best Buy, but it is the exact same product, but Amazon keeps taking down my reviews for no reason, so here I am.Lets start at the prologue and Chapter 1 why i bought thisI purchased this 1TB drive to use as a USB 3 gen 2 external SSD, and i know in a couple months I wanted to change the enclosure to a USB 4 one in a few months time.USB 4s PCIE lanes are limited to 3000MBs read and write speed.So, I wanted something that was faster than this, but nothing faster was needed, so I only needed a PCIE 3 SSD.Seeing that this drive can write at 3300 and read at 3500, this was more than enough for the interface I use.Chapter 2 what storage is thisThere are different types of layers for storage layers,SLCMLCTLCQLCPLCS For Single 1 bitM For Multi 2 bitT For Triple 3 bitQ For Quad 4 bitP For Penta 5 bitMore layers means more storage density but slower speeds and less endurance.Samsung 970 Evo Plus is a TRIPLE LEVEL CELL drive, meaning that the drive is based on three bits per cell.However, all drives have a set of SLC blocks, or a formula that will write just one bit per cell until all the cells are full before writing to three bits per cell.Samsung 970 Evo Plus has between 4 to 78GB of single level cell SLC cache, before the drive slows down for TLC.Chapter 3 Testing for Thunderbolt and PCIE3 BoardsTesting reveals that the drive writes however many number of GB of SLC cache there is at 2950MBs, before the drive slows down to 1700MBs for tlc.The slowest 0.1 is at 1490MBs.For the 1TB and 2TB versions , this is BY FAR the FASTEST ENDURANCE DRIVE there is. NOTHING beats the Samsung 970 Evo Plus at TLC endurance, and anything that is faster than 970 at endurance is MLC, such as the 970 Pro. But that drive is 1.7 times the speed, and there is no way anyone is spending that much more for just 300MBs more.This means that using this for a USB 4 or Thunderbolt 3 4 SSD enclosure would give you the best endurance for the value.The Samsung X5, for reference, slows down to 1200MBs after 48GB of cache.Chapter 4 Testing for USB 3 gen 2 and 2x2Now for the USB 3 gen 2 enclosure.I used this with a Plugable USB 3 gen 2 NVMe enclosure, and seeing from a Samsung T7 that I have used before, and from testers on the internet, I was expecting about 1050MBs read and write via CrystalDiskMark 8.Slotting the drive in and plugging into my phone fir the first time, it said i have to format the drive. This was expected, since there is no format by default. I gave the drive exFAT format for use, since I use more than just Windows 10 computers, and the limit for file size is higher than the capacity of this drive.Testing for pure speed, I got a speed record of 1068MBs read and 1051MBs write, but the average is about 1050 and 1025.When I transferred a set of 45GB files in series, I was able to obtain a speed of 585MBs write and 825MBs read on average.The drive did not ever slow down, even after transferring 200GB worth of files, as expected, and i suspect it would never slow down here as the TLC speed is too fast for the interface which maxes out at 1250MBsHowever, when i copied files in parallel two or three lanes of data transfers, I was able to get a mammoth 970MBs write at any moment, and there were still no slowdowns.Compared to the Samsung T7, i was able to get 515MBs write and 680MBs read in series, and 775MBs write in parallel, but only for 22GB 42GB if you compare the 1TB version. After that, the T7 throttles to 250MBs, and this drive with USB enclosure would be 2.3X faster in series and 3.9X faster in parallel.This drive is 21 faster on reads, 13 faster in series, 25 faster in parallel, and faster in endurance. Yes, this drive has infinite endurance , just like the SanDisk Extreme Pro NVME USB 3.2 SSD.Chapter 5 the verdictSo, unless you have a PCIE 4 board, this is by far the best drive there is out there, except the 250 and 500GB versions continue to chapter 6 for warnings. Nothing beats this drive at endurance, and this drive is limited by the PCIE 3 interface, so if you dont have a PCIE 4 board, this is the fastest drive that money can buy.Not only is this from a Tier 1 brand, but it is also reasonably priced, and offers a 2TB model.Chapter 6 warnings1 Dont get the 250 or 500GB version, as the SLC cache is smaller, just 4 to 12GB for the 250GB version, and 4 to 22GB for the 500GB version.Also, the TLC speeds throttled speeds are ONLY 400MBS FOR 250GB and ONLY 900MBS FOR 500GB AFTER SLC CACHE. THESE DRIVES ARE USELESS BECAUSE OF THESE THROTTLED SPEEDS.2 Careful not to bend the SSD. It is very fragile, and could be damaged with the slightest pressure. Be careful when lowering the SSD into the screw so you dont bend the drive and break it as a result.3 Use exFAT if you intend to use this as an external SSD, otherwise you will not be able to use this drive outside of Windows PCs.End
CORE –
Purchased a while back BIOS would not recognize. After installing Windows 10 on an old drive, was able to activate the drive. Tried to transfer Windows 10 to SSD broke Windows 10. New 2019 Asrock Pro nada. Once migrated the SSD spits constant errors. Even files and folders crash. Called and emailed Samsung ten times over the past year and nada. The drive is trash. Support is more trash. Complete waste of money, and now that I need to expand memory again, I have no idea if I should roll the dice on potential trash. I recommend that you run away from this little treasure, so you dont get bamboozled.
JavMan –
This internal drive has made my audio engineering a lot easier. As Im using Pro Tools and is better to have all the work program, wave, recoding, etc… in the internal drive while working on it. This internal drive gives me 1TB of space which is now allowing me the option to do more recordings and have other non audio related programs and work also stored in my Lenovo Laptop, as everything is store in the internal drive and I even have a lot of free space to do more. I gave it only 4 stars because I did found it a bit expensive, if not probably would have give it a 5 stars.
Anonymous –
I was running low on space for my pc so I decided to make an upgrade. I went down to micro center with some friends to just browse. I settled on this because it was cheap 80 dollars, 500gb which is what I needed, and I was told it was extremely fast by every source I looked at. My only trouble with it was a small amount of trouble imaging my old hard drive. Afterwards though, I managed to download apex legends 50 ish go in about 3 minutes. I have already recommended this product to several friends and family members. I hope you all find this useful.
btb2k –
If your computer or Laptop supports NVMe storage this is a nobrainer Just get itSamsung makes the most reliable NVMe drives and my experience with this one is no different than that. I basically upgradedreplaced the Intel Optane drive my PC given that it supported NVMe and once I put it in and moved windows to it WOW Why even waste time with Optane LOLComputer turns on and boots all the way to the desktop on Windows 10 in under 10 secondsIf your PC does support PCIe storageNVMe in the M.2 slot and your PC does not detect it note that on some computers that do have Optane, like mine, once you upgrade you may have to reconfigure settings in the BIOS to turn RAID off and turn AHCI on to get it to recognize this drive in the BIOS. This can be tricky to work through as Windows may not boot after you change this setting. There are guides online that walk through this or simply askhire Best Buy to help you.Outside of that, I highly recommend this drive, itll make your computer feel like a TOTALLY different machine.
artfd –
I recently got a Thinkpad workstation direct from Lenovo. It had a 512 GB Samsung NVMe in it, and I wanted 2TB. This 970 EVO PLUS 2TB worked as well as the OEM item. I already had Win10 Pro running on the smaller drive. I updated the NVMe driver to the recommended Samsung driver. Then I downloaded the Samsung cloning tool, called Samsung Data Migration. It cloned the OEM partitions to the new NVMe in about 10 minutes. I swapped out the OEM chip to store on the shelf moved the new 2TB drive to the first spot inside the workstation. Booted up even faster than the OEM NVMe did. I will be storing my library of family history and genealogy books on this drive, along with 1000s of scanned documents photos, plus videos and gigabytes of Microsoft OneNote files.
Randog1953 –
I bought the HP Omen which has a 256G drive slot. I want a larger drive so I purchased the 1TB. The Omen mother board has only one slot which has the operating system on. I had to have the operating system copied Cloned to the new drive. If you have a mother board with two slots, you can simply add the new drive leaving the operating system on the first, original, drive. Use a small magnetic screw driver to install the new drive. VERY SMALL SCREW Or pay Geek Squad to install it. In my case, having on drive slot I paid someone to clone and install it. The drive is very fast No need to compact the the drive
SeanPR –
I got this to replace another M.2 SSD in my Powerspec G315 computer. I had assumed the original M.2 SSD was taking advantage of PCI 2GBs speeds, but it was only using SATA3 speeds of 500MBs max. Using Samsungs cloning software I cloned my original SSD C drive with Windows, and installed with zero problems after rebooting. Samsung drives have always been great with speed and endurance. This one is keeping with that trend and has been reaching 3GBs speeds during transfers. Highly recommend especially for an OS drive replacement.
JohnG –
I bought this to replace the OptaneSSD combo drive that came with my new HP Envy laptop. Not because it was defective, but rather to keep the original Windows installation for the laptop, WRT warranty considerations if needed.This 500 GB EVO SSD is a perfect home for the Kubuntu 20.10 Linux that currently powers the laptop. The drive boots fast, is very responsive, and provides ample space for what I currently have on the HP.This SSD is an excellent value, and provides a great basis for a very fine computing experience.
Thomas –
I have 16 of these inside my Mac Pro 2019. They work as extremely fast RAID0 drives. I have them installed on PCIe cards, each one holding four sticks. I have 8 sticks striped as a 16TB RAID0 array on two Sonnet 16 lane PCIe M2 carrier cards. Then I do the other eight sticks as a second 16TB RAID0 array on two Accelsior 8lane PCIe cards. Every day I am constantly shuttling terabytes of data with such incredible speed. Love them. For what its worth, I have another 4 of their 1TB Pro blades on a 5th PCIe card as a 4TB volume where I do my most intensive work since the Pro blades use 2bit MLC which is faster and higher endurance and more expensive. But these blade have very good endurance or a 3bit TLC blade. You can save a little money uy buying cheaper 4bit QLC memory, but it is often far slower for big write jobs as the advertised speeds assume smaller writes that exploit the 1bit SLC cache.
PCguruDave –
I am a long time PC veteran, and been working with computers since the late 80s. I was building, tweaking, overclocking and modding computers a long time. I initially had my doubts on this Samsung 970 EVO Plus, but pulled the trigger anyways.My WD Black m.2 and others where just fast enough for me, gaming and work, but when I put this M.2 in my AMD3, 550m Board, loaded Windows 10 pro, away we went.Let me tell you, for the price point, this is well worth it. Noticeably quicker response times than previous 3rd gen, and even most 4gen modules. I would buy it again, no problem.
Phil P. –
Installed this SSD in an ASUS Z390PRO Gaming mainboard, running an Intel i59600K CPU, on the NVMe compatible M.22 slot PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, the one underneath the chipset heatsinks. Downloaded and installed Samsung Support Tools software Data Migration to clone my existing Windows 10 installation onto the new Samsung 970 SSD. The whole process took approx. 25 minutes, from unboxing the Samsung 970 SSD to having my existing installation of Windows 10 booting from it. A very easy, efficient and successful process indeed, facilitated by the Samsung software.The speed of my system running the Samsung 970 SSD is quite unbelieveable, compared to the SSD I was running before, which was a Samsung 960 EVO 500GB SATA SSD. It was very fast then but now it is twice as fast or more using this 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD. Windows 10 boots to the desktop from a cold start in approx. 67 seconds. You hardly have time to blink after clicking an icon to open a program e.g. MS Word or Mozilla Firefox before it appears. The data transfer rate of this SSD is superfast and thats where your quite large amount of cash is being spent on. It features the latest in SSD technology and the 970 EVO Plus is faster than anything else on the planet at the moment, apart from the Samsung 970 EVO Pro M.2 SSD its bigger brother. For this extreme level of performace, value for money kind of gets thrown out of the window. So, my advice and conclusion is if you can afford it then your money will be well spent on this SSD.
Planetxcrisis –
I bought this as an addition to my gaming pc. I dont know much about computers and I ran into a bit of trouble trying to install it. First, I didnt have the spacer for the motherboard and I didnt have the screw to hold the drive to the motherboard. Which was supposed to be left with the motherboard when it was installed when I had the pc built. I had to buy the spacer and the screw from Amazon. It was 3.99. No big deal. After getting the screw I installed it fairly easy. Second, after physically installing it I had to format the disk and partition the disk. I downloaded the software from Samsung which was easy enough. But navigation the menu options to format and partition it was a lil rough. After watching 5 or 6 YouTube videos on the process I felt confident enough to give it a go. Successful on the first try. Im supremely happy with the performance thus far. Aside from the minor mishaps which had nothing to do with the drive it was an easy install. I recommend anyone who has a lil bit of computer know how to buy this drive. And if you dont, a local compter tech or geeksquad could handle it for you relatively cheap.
AZPhotoGuy –
Easily installed this memory board. Had to perform one step to get the laptop to recognize it. I cant remember what it was but it is easily found via a Google search. Once the laptop recognized it the board has worked flawlessly. I have a 1 TB SSD as my main drive and this 500 GB boarddrive. This is my main work storage. All of my photo work is done on files reside on this board.Also, having two SSD drivesboards greatly reduces the heat, amount of time the fan runs and the startup and loading of files into apps like Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar etc.
PyroFireZeroX –
The 500 GB NMVEM . too is the best in that to solidstate drive in existence. Well maybe not in existence because there are things like Sabor rent and stuff like that. But it gets the job done it makes games play fast its Apple secret behind how fast everything moves in our reliable everything is on a Mac. M.2 were hard drives thats been apples secret from the beginning of the MacBook Pro. And now that we got him at all Windows machines all of our games are better all of our operating system runs smoother and you know what thats all because of these hard drives I mean a whopping 3000 MB per second benchmark for write speed and a 2800 read
RPeters –
A very solid solid state drive and a great price. Anyone building a gaming rig or those that just want faster readwrite operations, should definitely invest in one of these. The installation was effortless and the computer picked the drive up right away. If you are looking for bootup speed, I highly recommend reading up on HOW to get the drive to be the primary boot for your system before you start. It can be a little bit of a process. All in all, fantastic drive
GodfatherJPA –
We upgraded by sons Dell gaming PC with the 500GB Samsung 970 EVO SSD. Along with a RAM upgrade HyperX Fury, he went from 2 minute boot times to 20 second boot timesThe drive was super easy to install, but note it does NOT come with the screw needed to attach the top of the drive in the PC case. I ordered an installation kit for a few bucks that included the screw and a heat sink, but you will need that part if it is not already in your PC.We paired this SSD with a 3TB standard drive to hold all his media and files. After installing the drive and updating drivers to see if, we created a boot USB drive and reinstalled Windows clean on this drive, then reinstalled files on the data drive.A very worthy upgrade for the price and easy to install. Upgrade your RAM while you have the PC open as well and enjoy the rewards.
Sahil –
i bought the 2tb version. the 970 evo plus is fast. got 3000 mbps read and write performance on my laptop. i dont think i need to say anything else because samsung ssds already have a reputation for being the best ones out there.however, i do feel like the pricing on these drives is a little high. normally, i wouldnt spend upwards of 300 on a 2tb nvme ssd, but then again, thats the price to get the bestinclass storage. fyi competitors usually cost a hundred bucks cheaper for the same storage option. theyre great budget options, but wont be as fast as samsung.
Anonymous –
I never really bought into the hype of m.2 NVME drives, until I found the 970 EVO for a smoking deal, and decided to give it a try.The best example I can give is the game Star Citizen. When the game was loaded on a Seagate Barricuda 7200rpm drive, it would take 23 minutes to load the game, and 57 minutes to load into a server.Loading the game onto a Toshiba SSD, it reduced times by 30 seconds1 minute.Loading the game onto this NVME… Holy moly… Booting the game takes 30 seconds, and loading into the universe takes 45 seconds. Its incredibleI also do lots of CAD work, mainly on Autodesk Inventor Pro 2020. Loading a project from the HDD would take 1.52 minutes, but from the NVME Almost instant.I officially have bought into the hype. Im currently looking into converting all my storage into NVME, and will more than likely be exclusively using the 970 EVO.
Nassim –
Going from a standard mechanical hard drive to a nice compact SSD was amazing by leaps and bounds…. once I heard about these NVMe SSDs I was intrigued by not only the speed and size which is about the size of a stick of gum but by the fact that there are no moving parts and no Sata or other electrical cables that connect to this device….it simply plugs into a slot on the front of the motherboard pending you have a motherboard that supports this type of drive wich most made in the last several years do. Once in place the speed is amazing and again being that they have no moving parts or electrical connections to it I have no fear of a failure or losing my data like you would when a mechanical HHD would fail…. now the question is whether you need the NVMe SSD or just a standard SSD…. both are great but again a normal SSD is larger, and needs to be connected via cables and is nowhere near as fast as the NVMe SSD, as a normal SSD has a read writespeed of about 500 to 700mb while the NVMe has a read writespeed of up to 3500mb And another great thing is the cost is not much more than a SSD. So clearly the NVMe drive is superior to an SSD, the question now becomes if you should get one….if you have to get a new SSD whether you need a new one or are just upgrading to larger storage space AND your motherboard supports it then I would highly recommend the NVMe over an SSD. But if you have to buy another motherboard to support the NVMe then it really depends if you want to pay the cost of the NVMe and a motherboard and also having to change out the motherboard and all your perinials to get it to work. Simply put, SSDs are great but NVMes are even better…..
MelB –
Using SSDs and PCIs in laptops has been great for speed and reliability compared to the old mechanical hard drives. But due to their expense, they usually dont have enough storage for me. Since Ive been using my home PC since 1987 not the same one Ive accumulated a lot of files that I dont want to get rid of or store on an external drive. So when I bought my last laptop I had them replace the 250GB storage with this 1TB. Its been great from day one.
FieldTech2020 –
I am surprised myself at my own lack of indecision regarding this purchase. I have daydreamed about installing a 1TB Nvme M.2 for as long as they have been introduced to us. First, I do not perform workloads of any kind on this PC, I added this 970 Evo Plus 1TB strictly for the thrill and hopeful increase of performance in basic media PC usage. Yes I am a gamer, I knew from research that M.2 has its charm but it will not turn a mediocre gaming experince into a new experience, rather various games will load content faster and Im assuming here but as a result of this purchase I am the first one to load into every single game lobby, above mentioned is essentially the only noticeable differences I can observe. Yes write times are a bit faster than my Samsung Evo 250GB SSD, no it is not an incredible new experience in PC operation for me . Moral of the story is after many, many hours of using this M.2 SSD I still cannot justify the 200 dollar price tag I paid, I just cant. In fact I am not positive that the Nvme hasnt actually had a negative effect on my gaming performance. I have a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB 2400Mhz ram and over 2TB storage on my PC and even still I have to wait for simple user interface features in game to load, it is dissapointing. Before this M.2 install, being honest here, I did not have to wait on these load times for the user interface in game , it is just strange. I am no expert so grunts and rolled eyes are understood, maybe I did something wrong but how hard should it be to install a 200 dollar M.2 SSD and just let it rock I shouldnt have to rely on any software in this case to get that price tags value, in my opinion. Granted my motherboard is one of the most sensitive, issue laiden motherboard I have ever owned but the M.2 slot is on the board so it should work without fault. If you are a gamer and or just using a PC for basic media performance please think twice before emptying the pockets on account of that pie in the sky. Get the best deal and expect a few basic performance increases but dont expect this thing to completely blow away your preexisting Sata SSD performance in average every day use .
UnusualJ –
This thing is fast Copying Modern Warfare from the half terabyte to the full terabyte took moments. It seriously copied so fast I didnt even have time to get a glass of water and drink the whole glass of cold water comfortably before it was done. It was so nice. I cant wait to upgrade the half terabyte to a larger one still. Samsung even has a proprietary software to set it all up and benchmark and health check your hardware.
Yoda –
Samsung SSDs are simply the best combination of speed and reliability.FYI The 970 EVO Plus may require a drive, available from Samsung to work correctly.The regular EVO drives do not require drivers, in most instances. The Plus version is a special version.If an adapter is required for use, the Plus version may not work. For example, this drive is seen in a 2013 MacBook Air with adapter but does not boot.
ToneEQ –
Until I bought these i had only ever used a Samsung Pro 850 256GB SSD restricted to SATA3 transfer speed.Wanted 1 x 1 TB but I thought to myself as the motherboard has 2 m.2 slots why not get 2 x 512GB and put them in RAID 0 Installed in seconds with screws included with motherboard, no power or data cables which is great for airflow and cable management. Initiated Intel Rapid Storage Technology in BIOS and created array within a minute, a quick reboot later and it was showing as one large drive. Surprisingly Windows 10 release 2004 didnt even need the RAID drivers to detect the drives and only took around 10 minutes to install.Performance, Windows 10 boots in less than 10 seconds without BIOS or Windows fast boot on. ATTO show max transfer rate on 128KB and above and some games load 10 times faster than a SATA3 SSD.
Mike –
This was the perfect drive to pair with the i910850K. Win10 Pro was a three minute install and boots in 10 seconds from button press to desktop. Depending upon mainboard capabilities, you can easily get 20Gbps transfer speed like I do. Thermal variance range is kind of crazy if the heat isnt properly managed, simply installing a game or program can send your temp soaring from 30c up past 70c but properly managed, its well worth the money. Just buy it already. You wont be sorry.
Aflatoon –
I wanted to use the 970 Evo Plus in the desktop I had assembled 5 years ago. The 2015 ASUS A88XPro motherboard is first rate, but does not have a slot for this kind of SSD drive. So I first had to install the drive in an RIITOP NVMe PCIe Adapter M.2 M Key SSD to PCI Express 16x Converter Card with Heatsink.The ASUS, however, did not detect the Evo Plus, but Windows OS instantly did. I updated the bios from the ASUS website, but the new bios also did not recognize the EVO.In the meantime I continue to use the EVO for saving data files. It is incredibly fast writing and retrieving files of any size. Excellent.ASUS is a great company. I have their excellent laptops. And I hope that when ASUS engineers eventually find the time to update the bios for ASUS A88XPro I might be able to use the SSD as the main drive in my desktop.
Phil D –
The Samsung 970 PRO is the highestperforming NANDbased solid state drive Ive tested.Its an excellent option for almost any user with a PC that supports PCI Express drives, the M.2 form factor, and the NVMe protocol and also a great option for the HighEnd enthusiasts, Gamers, Videographers, CG Artists, VFX Designers etc. looking for the best consumer grade performance. The 970 PRO drive is offered in 512GB and 1TB capacities. Its speeds are beyond belief with a noticeable performance jump when using computer 3D modelling software, intensive CAD work or playing Counter Strike 1.6 funny guy.The speed, physical size, and capacity are impressive and the price while higher than 2.5inch SSDs are pretty reasonable for what you get in performance. In case you are going to install Window on this disk Make sure your system is using the UEFI platform rather than the old BIOS platform to take full advantage of the latest technology and all of its advantages.This means your System Drive will have a GPT Volume rather than an MBR Volume. GPT is more corruptionresilient and has better partition management. Its the newer and more reliable standard. You will have to boot into your UEFI interface, and Turn Off CSM likely under BOOT Options before installing Windows or directly afterwards as well as when you update your UEFIBIOS. Its good to doublecheck the CSM setting stays off whenever you add another storage drive as well. Pros Fantastic Performance Fast PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 storage High Endurance Low Latency AES 256bit hardwarebased encryption engine 5year warranty Cons No complaints Overall, the Samsung SSD 970 Pro is a strong performer in terms of throughput and latency, with a variety of workloads.As a 3D Motion Designer, I am very pleased with its performance.Highly recommended
Sam W. –
The product photos made it look far bigger than it is. I was shocked to see this thing is like 2 inches long. Coming from a classic 2.5 SSD to this is incredible. Its crazy how far the technology has gone. Since its so small, however, it was a little difficult to install. This was also my first time ever installing a drive with this form factor, so it couldve just been me being stupid, but the included instructions were a little underwhelming for a firsttimer. I wouldve liked a bit more detail and, well, instructions on how to install it properly. Once I figured out how to get my hands in there enough to install the drive, thats where my struggling ended. Windows recognized the drive immediately, no problems. I used the Samsung data migration tool to clone my boot drive over to it, which was incredibly easy, and that was the end of it. Its worked great ever since.
Danny –
I was not even aware of M.2 drives until a few months ago. I use a PC for audio recording. Much of what I do involves creating soundtracks for clients. This also requires me to have a rather extensive sound library to pull sounds and instruments from. For the last couple of years I have been housing my sounds on a 1Gb SSD. Even with a SSD I was experiencing some very slow load times when using certain sounds. I installed this M.2 drive and it has been a game changer What would sometimes take 12 minutes to load will now load in around 5 seconds. If you need a drive to do your heavy lifting….. you need this one It was money well spent.
KDog –
1TB of very fast NVMe M.2 drive makes for a system that boots quickly and runs very fast. Performance thats impossible with oldschool spinning platters. Samsungs DriveMagician ensures the latest firmware and drive metrics are always just a click away. Installed this in an Alienware Aurora R7 replacing a Samsung EVO Pro 512GB drive and this is as fast or faster and twice the size.
Michael Y –
I really wanted an Inland 2TB model at a really good promo price, but it sold out before I made it to the store. I didnt want to leave without an SSD, so I decided to look at this Samsung.I still cant really believe how fast this drive is. Ive only had it for a few months, but it seems to be doing a top notch job. All of my Steam games are on this drive now and titles load up in no time. My only gripe is the price tag, but you do get a substantial warranty on top of numerous and consistent positive reviews. If you have the dough, get this drive.
Oleh R. –
I jumped on the m.2 bandwagon after waiting a considerable time for an appropriately sized drive to be on sale so I could run a sufficiently sized stand alone drive. I have just started using this drive so I cant say anything about reliability. Reading speeds for video games is marginally increased. I have read reviews and apparently using m.2 drives for stand alone purposes wears them out faster so I figured its a safe bet to buy a 2tb hdd as a backup which is an added cost if you do the same thing. Most of my long bootup times are usually due to bios instead of long windows loading times so the fact that windows takes 5seconds to boot as opposed to 12 minutes is not a big deal to me. Overall I WOULD RECOMMEND FOR A LAPTOP user since Ive sure a lot of power is saved by not having to spin up a drive. I WOULDNT RECOMMEND FOR A DESKTOP user since size isnt an issue and the increased speed isnt that big of a deal for day to day regular use to justify the price. Ill probably end up throwing this into my laptop instead to justify the purchase of it and end up using the backup hdd I got in my desktop as my main drive for it.
4North –
I spend tons of time online looking for the perfect deal when it comes to tech. I have found this to be IMO the best value when factoring in priceperformance. If you cant afford the overpriced top of the line tech, but also dont want to buy a cheap knock off that wont last as long or perform as well, then this is the drive that you are looking for.The 500 GB is plenty of room to store your OS on, a couple of your favorite games, software for making music, movies, art, photos, etc. you can store movies, music and other media on a less expensive or preexisting HDD as the speed of this drive for those types of files isnt really necessaryI bought one of these for myself last year and just bought another one for my son to upgrade his computer this Christmas. I would highly recommend this to anyone. It is also simple to install as it is easily accessible on the motherboard and basically only requires unscrewing one screw, sliding it into place, and then tightening the screw back in.Youre going to have to migrate your OS from whatever drive it is currently on to this drive, but there are YouTube videos that will walk you through it and while I dont remember which one I used at this point there is also free software out there that will be helpful to the migration process.
CAPTCOLBS –
You cant beat NVME solid state drives I have four of these now and I will never go back to SATA solid states or God forbid, mechanical drives These have made work and gaming so much faster and you pair this up with a fast motherboard and processor you have an awesome machine Even if you store bought your computer, grab one of these, clone your hard drive, and see the lightning speed difference This is the 2021s and you need this to avoid further urges of throwing something at your homework computer monitor
martin.m –
I use this as my boot drive on my new computer. And I knew it would be a drastic improvement for my 2.5 SSD but let me tell you. This thing is wonderfully fast and everything on it its just so crisp and ready for you. it is absolutely mindblowing that Ive waited this long to get it. The cost really isnt that high compared to when SSDs first came out and when m.2s first came out. I most definitely think its worth it and would buy another one if I felt like I could use it right now. If youre on the fence about it and you can do it, just get it. There will be no regrets
ParS –
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250 GBThe Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250 GB has been an interesting review. I have been using the little drive as a super fast USBC portable drive. This VNAND Drive really is the ultimate performance champ. The physical drive Design is no larger than a stick of gum, yet has an amazing speed and storage capacity. Since it is a solid state memory storage with no moving parts, the durability is also very high. The enclosure I used is an aluminum enclosure I can hide my pocket or bad. The enclosure I am using allows me to use this drive on both OSX and Windows. I have not had any errors or slowdowns with this drive and it has performed stable and trouble free. I use is mostly to transfer large video files for editing and works flawlessly. The Samsung Magician software was helpful in getting my firmware updated and allows me to see my other internal SSD drives on my computer at the same time. I have only used about half of the 256GB of the drive yet it has shown no slowdowns or delays. Although the drive can achieve sequential readwrite speeds up to 3,5003,300 MBs, my USBC portable system has only allowed me to get slightly over 1100MBs. This is not the drives fault, it is the way I am using the drive. Overall I love this drive for the small size and slim slender profile. I would highly recommend it.
Sarahprincess –
When I got this SSD, I thought for setup in my laptop but I wanted to test it out. I got a enclosure and installed it. The only problem I faced was instructions. They are very vague when it comes to how to install or download the software. Finally we figured to download the Samsung magician software after calling Samsung. And it worked. Even though Samsung magician is hard to understand with no instructions in the manual. It took us a while to set the SSD with the software. But once it was installed, it worked with amazing speed. I think 250 GB is perfect for my use. I made partitions on Samsung magician for my kids photos and business. Still tons of space. It is Fast, affordable and amazing. I never thought of its speed will be that awesome. I use this SSD as my home based business. Since I spend doing 98 of my work on laptop. This 970 evo plus SSD saved my life. Thank you Samsung. I am always impressed with your technological innovations.
Spectre765 –
The hardware is fast, but you should buy this M.2 for the absolutely awesome software. Samsungs Magician cloned my 256 GB SATA SSD to this 500 GB M.2 in less than 10 minutes. No fooling with partitions, no problems with making it bootable, no work at all. The software did it all automatically. I removed my old drive and restarted the computer. Everything worked the first time. Amazing.Dont worry if Windows 10 doesnt recognize the new drive. Just download and run the software. It will be taken care of. Wow.The price was 80. Worth every dime.
BlackCatOne –
I have a Dell G7 gaming laptop I purchased in 2018. Only had a 128 GB SATA C drive. Was running out of room and replaced with this 1 TB NVMe drive. I was able to do a full clone of the old drive using the Adonis OEM cloning software provided with a Sabrent external SSD enclosure for MVNe. It took about 2030 seconds to clone the 90GB, using USB type 2. Have been using with Python, Tensorflow and Pycharm with no issues at all. Was hesitant to try to clone the SSD, they wanted to clone the OS only and reinstall all the other software, which was a nogo for me. I am confident that with the right cloning software Adonis OEM and the Sabrent enclosure you can do it. The total for the external enclosure and 1TB drive was about 275, which made the computer usable again. All left to do is replace the nasty 1TB 5400 RPM drive with a SATA SSD. I do notice that it is faster on bootup and software load on the C drive. SATA drives are around 500 MBS and the MVNe can run around 3500 MBD. There are cheaper MVNe SSD than the Samsung but my experience is it is pretty fast and works with no issues, so for a developer like me it is a good investment in size and speed.
Tony –
These Samsung M.2 drives are incredibly fast. At least 4x faster than a traditional SSD. Games load up very quickly, no lag due to hard drive seeks, never had a problem with one, and theres really not much better right now to get the best performance out of your PC. If you havent tried one of these, I guarantee youll be happy with them. Plus, you dont have to worry about SATA cables, placement of internal drives, etc. Just plug it into you M.2 port on the motherboard and go.
Jamez S –
in short, it is indeed very fast even on budget modern laptops. to get it working you will need several steps though, be prepared, this may not be plugnplay. and if you set everything right youll have just a bit over 200 gigabytes its 230 out of the box and then you do the 10OP.firstly I wish Samsung or Stationery Packs would include the m2 little screw. S puts bunch of unnecessary papers, A can throw in lots of packing material, and noone adds that little pennyworth screw, not to say a basic screwdriver like one very successful Swedish retailer, uhborrowing the missing screw from another laptop part and my hardware installation is done in two minutes.then checking the BIOS bingo, nvme there is.then downloading Samsung driver from their website.then populating, or whats it called, the drive, in the Device Manager. formatting for further bootable use.running speed tests with downloaded Magician.running Samsung software migration utility, some 10 minutes for copying 100gb from SATA SSD.reserving 10 for Over Positioning. checking speeds again.changing boot priority in BIOS.and it works. Windows starts in under 10 seconds. all settings and programs work fine. the SATA drive shall become a media storage. this NVME could do even faster on all 4 PCI lanes, I know I think it is very similar to what I have in x1.but I have one little screw missing on my laptops cover, used it for fixing this ssd to the motherboard
Kevin –
First new PC build after decades of nonSSD drives. Was blown away by the speed of the M.2. Benchmarks are nice and this one scores well, but theyre sort of abstract. Consider instead that when I installed windows 10 from a USB stick, from the time I entered the license key to installation complete was around 90 seconds. That is crazy. Apps and Games just popup without any perceivable load time. Awesome. So yeah, guess Im happy.
Shay –
Its probably overkill for me. The great majority of things I do are word processing and web surfing. Its great for that. The most disk intensive thing I do is running Win 10 in a virtual machine. This drive has greatly improved the performance of that. The reviews seem to make this the best drive out there. It works great for me, and I have had no problems. Still, Id probably be just as happy if Id spent less on a different drive.
Miatamike1 –
This NVMe m.2 storage device provides amazing disk access speeds. It completely changed the character of my laptop versus the 1TB 5400 rpm rotatingmedia SATA bootdrive that came with the system. It was definitely worth the price and effort to migrate the unit to this component as the new bootdrive.One additional advantage is the dramatically reduced power consumption versus a rotatingmedia drive. It substantially extended the time my laptop would run on battery.Not inexpensive, but definitely worth it
Grandpa –
My 500 MB SSD C drive was getting full. Discovered I had 2 slots for M.2 drives. So I decided on adding the 1TB M.2 drive rather than replacing the existing SSD. Downloaded the Samsung software to transfer everything from the old SSD to the new M.2 including Windows 10 OS. After the M.2 was loaded I made it the bootable C drive and the old SSD the D drive. Everything works as should. Boot up is much faster and programs load faster. Isnt technology great
Russ –
Samsungs 970 EVO Plus replaced the everpopular 970 EVO as its mainstream NVMe SSD for tech enthusiasts, hardcore gamers, and professionals. Samsung equipped the SSD with V5 flash, which provides a nice bump in performance up to 3.5 GBs of sequential read throughput. The drive also boasts hardware encryption support, a fiveyear warranty, and up to 1,200 TBW of endurance. Overall, the 970 EVO Plus is one of the fastest SSDs weve tested, so it easily gains our recommendation.
Emil K –
The Samsung EVO 970 Plus is absolutely amazing BUT, THERE ARE SOME THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR.1 Samsung NVMe drives have had a firmware update. Before this update, the drives would sometimes cause kernel panics. The update fixes this issue. So, make sure you update the NVMe firmware if it isnt already. This brings me to the second point.2 It seems several people have been unlucky and received older SSDs pre firmware update. I bought mine in November 2020, and was lucky to have received an SSD produced in October 2020 1 month ago. Newer batches already have the firmware update, so you dont have to worry about updating the firmware if youre not comfortable doing so.3 Some people have claimed very slow speeds. This is not down to the SSD, but down the to computer youre using it in or enclosure you put it in. I am using mine in the Asus ROG STRIX ARION enclosure which uses USB 3.2 Gen2 TypeC. This allows for speeds up to 10 Gbps 1250MBs. For me, this is plenty, but by far not the maximum speed possible from this SSD. For external use with higher speeds, you will need an enclosure that supports USB 3.2 Gen2x2 or Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are expensive though. But if time is money, then its money well spent as you can reach near maximum speeds for this SSD 2800MBs.4 and of course, check that you receive a genuine product Several customers have surprisingly been receiving empty boxes.1010 would recommend
BossZR1 –
I have owned samsung drives for the past 4 12 5 years. I bought 2 of these for a recent build and they work flawlessly. I upgraded from 2 sata samsung evo drives that still work to this day Im using those as storage and the 2 1tb m2 drives for games. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a new m2 drive. Just make sure you motherboard has the capability to install them. Plus NO WIRES since they install directly into the m2 slots on your motherboards. Great drives.
Rich –
i bought this ssd for two reasons 1. i had an excellent experience with a similar drive in my hp laptop. 2. i was not happy with another ssd i bought for my dell xps 8900 desktop.before installing, i contacted samsung to make sure it should work, and i was assured that it would. i used the samsung data migration tool to clone my hard drive, and then added the magician software.everything seemed fine, but the ssd would not initialize, and it never did, so i returned it.
Jemlnlx –
After researching quite a bit on m.2 replacements for the 1 TB Hybrid HDD 2.5 on my Alienware m17, I settled on the Samsung 970. I saw that it had great reviews with excellent readwrite speeds. Even though I had space for the original 1TB Hybrid HDD and two 2 m.2 drives, I wanted only to have the m.2 drive in there for now. I wanted all the contents to transfer over to the m.2 including the OS so that it can boot from that drive. After watching a few migrationcloning tutorials, I decided on using the Macrium Relfect Free software as opposed to the Samsung Migration software. The Macrium was free, simple and reliable. I installed the Samsung m.2 in the m.2 slot and it was immediately recognized by the pc. as an unallocated drive At this point, there is no need to format the m.2 drive as Macrium will format it later during the cloning process. I used the Macrium Reflect software to clone the ENTIRE 1 TB Hybrid HDDs contents onto the Samsung m.2. FYI drag over the C drive last as it will autofit the available space to the new drive. Took about 1.5 hours since this was a fairly new pc and I dont have much on there maybe about 100 GB. After the clone was complete, I shut down the laptop and physically removed the 1 TB Hybrid HDD. I restarted the laptop and it recognized and booted up from the Samsung m.2 without me having to adjustinterfere with the BIOS settings. I was a little unsure about messing around the BIOS settings so I was glad that I didnt have to fiddle around the boot orderoptions. I restarted it a few times since without any issues. The m.2 is partitioned just as the prior Hybrid HDD was. I would highly recommend this m.2 drive. Speeds are super fast and install was easy. Just make sure your pcs motherboard is compatible. For example, the m.2 slot on my PC was marked …M.2 2280 NVMe PCIE3x4 only.
Samuel –
The drive is running extremely hot under normal workloads like working on PDFs etc. The previous 970 EVO ran 10C cooler.This is a product that was released into the market early, without much testing and improvement.I suggest staying away from this unless you have some serious cooling power but in a laptop its not possible. I use a very expensive workstation laptop with good thermals and its running at 55C constantly when the 970 EVO used to run at 45C for similar workload.Other reviewers have mentioned this too, so I would stay away from this product.The 970 EVO I had failed within 10 months. Samsungs quality all round has come down, and this is the last Samsung drive I am purchasing. Going to return it.
Phil –
Bought this to replace a 512gb WD drive that was installed as OEM in my Lenovo X1 Yoga laptop. At these speeds I dont notice any difference but needed the extra capacity. Other SSDs of similar specs are less expensive but this has an excellent reputation which makes up for the additional costs. Clonezilla successfully cloned the drive, however, all the free space followed the recovery partition so I ended up installing Windows 10 from scratch. Windows activated itself without any problems.
TheCatsback04 –
The M.2 is fast…like super fast I use it as my main boot drive and for my gaming World of WarCraft. My PC takes exactly 8 seconds from start to windows is ready to surf and game with.I did my own math, and according to software analysis of this drive and a Maxtor SSD, The Samsung 970 Plus M.2 is 6 times faster 600 faster, and 17 times faster yes, folks That translates to 1700 faster than the standard mechanical HDD drive. It took exactly 8 minutes to clone my windows backup from the older SDD drive into this M.2 drive. THATS SCREAMIN Fast…like hair on fire SCREAMIN It took 8 hours to clone the same backed up system from my old WD HDD drive on a ten year old base Dell computer.100 bucks spent on a hard drive that is rated for over a million hours of computing use is more than future proofed…I think. It was well worth the investment, and Bestbuy had it on saleGo for it You WILL NOT regret it Boot, windows and gaming is absolutely solid.I would not recommend placing it in the M.2 slot closest to the GPU. It will run at high 40s to 50 Celsius on the Asus Tuf Gaming x570 and 370 board. In the second slot furthest from the GPU, it runs normal temp at a constant even while gaming for hours. It also helps that on the Asus boards, there is a single slot with a heat sink. Go for that, and no problem either way.Hope this is helpful.
lpinnell –
This is my second Samsung 970, but this time is the 970 model. It works very well with my motherboard. It is a 2280 size, which is a standard size M.2. I have two M.2 ports on my motherboard. This is technically an upgrade to the original Samsung 970 nonplus 512 gb that I already have.The steps I followed to install a second Samsung M.2 drive1. As instructed by Samsung, installed the Samsung Magician sw and the Samsung Migration sw on the original SSD.2. Installed the new SSD in the second M.2 port3. Ran the migration sw to copy my windows installation from the original drive to the new drive, took 10 minutes at SSD speeds.4. Restarted windows from the original drive5. Opened Disk Management, and as expected, saw the new drive show as offline. Rightclicked on the words offline and selected online.6. Went into BIOS and changed my boot disk from the old disk to the new disk7. Rebooted Windows from the new drive, doneNow the new disk is C and the old disk became the next available drive letter on my PC.
Erick B –
I came from a Macbook Pro 15.4 with 16GB of Ram and 512GB SSD. I noticed that my Mac wasnt cutting it when editing photos using Affinity Photo suite. It would take up to about 1 minute to develop a RAW image. In August, I purchased a Dell XPS 15 i7, 16GB Ram and 512GB Toshiba SSD from Micro center. I upgraded to 32GB of crucial Ram and now I have finally upgraded the SSD to the Samsung EVO plus 1T. The speeds are through the roof and Im not exaggerating either.NOTE Dell users must download the Samsung Migrate and Magician software. Also, in order to fix the detection issues you must got into the BIOS and switch from RAPID to AHCI and boot in safe mode. Once in safe mode you need to open the command prompt and exit safe mode. you will get an error but all you need to do is restart the system and now you can install the Samsung EVO plus driver. You should be up and running. Also, I change my Thermal Manager setting to Ultra performance, using the Dell power manager. this gave me slightly higher speeds.
Mark –
I installed four of these on simple PCIe 3 adapter cards StarTech in a 2019 Mac Pro. These are the fastest SSD drives I have tested 3GBs slightly faster than native apple SSDs and a lot cheaper per MB. Four way SoftRAID RAID 0 throughput peaks at about 14GBs see screenshot. One problem however is the lack of a Samsung utility to update firmware on MacOs. Some of the drives drives I purchased came with older firmware and were very unreliable. I needed to update the drives to the current firmware 2B2QEXM7 very important to solve this problem. The only way to update them however was to install them in a Windows machine Bootcamp does not work. I spent a lot of time with Samsung support but in the end they said they do not support MacOS so take your chances and have access to a Windows machine if you need to update firmware. If Samsung would provide tools for use with Apple I would rate this 6 stars
ALEX B. –
This SSD works well as the root filesystem device on my Linux desktop. I just happened to have one spare PCIe x4 slot on my ancient ASUS M4A89TD PRO USB3 motherboard, so with the help of R24SF PCIe x4 to M.2 cable I was able to install it and place next to the case fan. Old BIOS doesnt recognize NVME drives as a boot devices, however thankfully I can keep my boot partition on a separate drive and still have the root filesystem on SSD. Even with the fan, temperature, as reported by nvmecli, reaches 60C under load, so it would be a bad idea to keep it buried between board without airflow coming from somewhere.
Kookiedo –
Works great. Cloned the drive from a smaller NVMe SSD. Had a very difficult time forcing in the Samsung drivers. It didnt go in easy. Apparently Asus does not play well with the Samsung line of drives. Wish I knew that before hand, but it all worked out in the end and am happy with the performance. BTW, in an Asus FX505GT gaming laptop. Going to put the old drive in a USB enclosure for backup op drive. Wouldnt recommend it for an Asus mobo owner. The drivers are very difficult to install.
Bruce –
Ive been using a 960 EVO system drive and a WD HDD for the data drive. I got the 970 EVO Plus to replace half the stuff on the WD drive, which now just contains pictures, videos, archives, etc… things that dont need the speed.I left the 960 EVO as the system drive. I ran Samsung Magician benchmark tests on both SSDs. My results are as followsSequential MBs Read960 EVO 2987970 EVO Plus 3408 14 higherSequential MBs Write960 EVO 1706970 EVO Plus 3199 88 higherRandom IOPS Read960 EVO 269,042970 EVO Plus 278,076 3 higherRandom IOPS Write960 EVO 211,914970 EVO Plus 223,876 6 higherObviously the Sequential Write test shows a major difference and I cant say how accurate that is maybe something in Windows was interfering on the C drive when I ran it.As for temperature, the 970 EVO is definitely hotter. The day I installed and ran these tests turned out to be an abnormally hot day. My system is air cooled by one front and one rear fan. In general, the 970 EVO Plus runs about 10 C hotter than the 960 EVO. Ive been watching them and the 970 seems to be about 30 after boot whereas the 960 comes up at around 22. Normal idle system is about 33 970 and 23 960. Ive seen the 970 get up to about 45. When I ran the Samsung Magician benchmark, the 970 got to about 65. I spent some time getting my fan control improved to keep things in check.As for system improvement, where I see it on loading things like Firefox and Thunderbird where large data files now reside on SSD vs HD.
Craig N –
I have a new model motherboard that allows for flash boot. I installed the NVMe module in about a minute and spent about 15 minutes figuring out how to boot from it. You have to have it formatted first turns out. Once done I transferred my platter boot drive contents to the NvMe and set my motherboard for fast boot. Does it ever. I am up and at the login screen in less than 45 seconds. Programs which had startup lag are now nonexistent. This addition to my business computer saved me an entire 36 hours annually in wait time between boottime and program startup lag. It paid for itself and I am so happy to have this modification available.
Joseph W. –
Please remember that installing this into your system will not be a significant speed upgrade unless your motherboard can handle it. If your motherboards M.2 port only has x2 PCIe lanes then it will only be able to utilize 13 the speed that the drive supports. In this case youd need a PCIe x4 adapter and an open PCIe 3.0 port. If youre unsure if your motherboard has these, ask someone who would know. Youre paying for speed, you should make sure you can utilize it.
AlanD –
I purchased the Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB NVMe for my PC to use as the OS Windows 10 x64 and applications drive. This drive is incredibly quick and Windows now boots up to the desktop before the animated boot logo even appears thats how quick it isCompared to a mechanical hard disk the difference in performance is astronomical and you will never look back. Its also considerably faster than a SATA SSD drive. Compared to another NVMe disk you may struggle to see much difference in everyday use unless you are using the disk very heavily such as for sustained data transfers and high random IO.I was a little disappointed when I benchmarked the disk on my PC because the numbers came back lower than Samsungs advertised speeds the speeds are still insane though so I am definitely not complaining. However, it appears that other users have managed to get close to the maximum speeds of the disk without issue. Im currently running an ASUS X299 board and apparently Im not alone with users getting less than advertised speeds with their X299 boards. This looks like a firmware issue with my motherboard so hopefully this will get fixed by ASUS.The 970 Pro is Samsungs flagship NVMe disk and is a lot more expensive than the 970 EVO, as is always the way. If you have done any research into comparing the two you will see that the performance between them is very similar. The 970 Pro does use a different type of NAND which doubles the endurance rating TeraBytes Written of the drive but other than that I dont think most users will be able to tell the difference between them in every day use.Pros Incredibly fast 5 year warranty Works with Samsung Magician the OEM drives dont High TBW endurance ratingNeutral Requires a NVMe slot which older systems dont have you can purchase a PCI Express adapter for the majority of PCs though.Cons Expensive Negligible differences in performance when compared to the 970 EVO and similar performing drives from other manufacturers
Anonymous –
Installed on a Gigabyte H97D3H motherboard in a desktop built about 5 years ago. The desktop was originally built with a Samsung SSD and the M.2 SSD was installed solely to take advantage of the M.2 slot on the motherboard. It is used solely as a backup hard drive. The actual installation took about 2 minutes not including the time to shut down and open the computer. The motherboard came with its own hold down screw as none is provided by Samsung. So far, it has worked flawlessly.
Britt –
I wanted to buy a drive that I could install internally for my MacBook. I was interested in this drive because it was on sale and a huge price difference than other drives on the market. Although it was a great price what the techs didnt tell me is that I needed to buy an adapter as well. If I wouldve known I would have bought one at the same time as my purchase. So I had to order one and wait longer to use my MacBook. It was only 20 bucks and with the price of the drive and amount of storage I got a pretty sweet deal.
Dave –
I wanted this unit to be able to rebuild my Windows 10 laptop without losing my system drive and apps just in case. After determining that this drive was compatible with my Acer Aspire laptop, and would possibly be faster by at least 3X, I tried it.The tricky part was that the Windows 10 image that I was using would not install to this drive because it was formatted with a MBR.However, I was successful when I launched the image from a USB stick and chose to repair Windows, even though there was no Windows present. However, the Troubleshoot option allowed me to go to a command line prompt from which I could convert this drive to the proper type of boot instead of MBR. Windows then installed quickly and cleanly.As a bonus, disk benchmarking showed that it is indeed 34X faster that the previous 860EVO drive. And, its faster in the real world too.
Johnny –
Excellent nand stroage of 1 Terabyte. actually it shows 930GB if you format it. it support pice 3.0, compatible with nvme pcie 4.0 but dont hope that it will out perform 3.0 because it wont. for 4.0 fastest and latest standard you will need a newer samsung or any nvme namd storage that is designed not compatible but meant for pcie 4.0.it is very fast, I have testes massive mods and games of 100 Gigabytes and there is no delay .this nand storage should not require any drivers on Windows 10.
CAMY –
Was able to get these on sale last month. Ive used Samsung storage for years now and they are just reliable compared to other competitors that Ive tried where I have had failures resulting in lost of data. Yes you do pay more, but I have yet to need to replace anything so far. Amortized over many years I get out of these. Its worth the extra money spent. At this point in time were seeing diminishing returns as far as price to performance. So the extra fancier newer models probably arent worth the extra marketing hype. TLDR these are worth it. If you can get them on sale like I did. Even better.
CapnStevo –
Although it runs warmer than an HDD, which I can feel the difference, it is so much faster. With Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit, it fires up and ready to use in about 40 seconds. I will later add a heatsink, which is not necessary, but may help sustain longer life of the drive. The actual label is a heatsink by itself. I will still add an HDD for most game and other storage, but I definitely like the fast boot up to full function. Check on which games are dependent on large boot up or change of level to put on the SDD, and store the rest on the HDD. The five year manufacturer warranty is a nice factor also. My Motherboard is a few years old, but I was surprised to see it supp orted the NVMe M.2 format whic is the fast speed. I have a second PCIe port for MVMe, but it only runs at half the speed. If I want to run another OS, WIN 7 64 Bit, I will have to change out the drive each time for the amazing speed. Maybe on the next MOBO, I will find one with two 4X slots. Awesome drive.
HarrisonG9 –
Great upgrade from my 500MBs Samsung SATA SSD which I now use for extra storage. Noticeable improvement to boot time and general use on Windows. Loading screens are pretty much non existent now on most games when installed on this SSD. Make sure to run a benchmark to check read write speeds are over 3000Mbs. I had to enable x4 mode in BIOS configuration as it was only running at 1500MBs. Motherboard standoff and screw is not included so If you threw out your motherboard box with the extra screws make sure to purchase these at the same time Woops
FormerDJICustomer –
People dont do the math on these devices. This is going to be dead after 600 TB of writes as the manufacturer indicated. At the speeds this is capable of, you could burn through the entire lifetime of this device in 2 days of fullspeed writing. Imagine using this in a data server, transferring data between drives. It would be junk within a week.If all youre using this for is writing letters to grandma, and doing a few spreadsheets here and there, expect it to last years. If youre going to punish it with data, get something other than an NVMe device.
RomieHomie –
This NVMe drive is fast and has a decent amount of storage SSD cost are getting really high thanks chia. This drive is only PCI express gen 3. I didnt feel like spending another 200 to get a gen 4 drive. This NVMe speed up my load times, and now I can use my previous drive 1 TB Sata ssd as a Data drive. Games and programs load up very quickly. This was a great purchase. Get one of these quickly as the silicon shortage is going to raise prices for these quite soon.
SimonCharles L. –
Would definitely recommend this driver to anyone looking for a fast and reliable m.2 nvme storage device. I already had a 970 Pro 512 GB but wanted to add more space as game installs take more and more space these days. I know I paid a premium price for Samsung drives while other brands were more affordable, but I have been using my 970 Pro 512 GB as my OSprograms drive for years now and even carried it over to my new PC and it still performs like brand new with 100 remaining life HW info report. It only just recently got dethroned as the fastest drive in my system by this 970 EVO Plus 2TB, quite unbelievable really. I know I will have peace of mind with the reliability of Samsung drives as I now have 3 Samsung drives in my system 970 Pro 512 GB, 970 Evo Plus 2 TB and 860 Evo 1 TB. I read cons about the drive getting hot but unless you have a tiny closed up case with no airflow you will be fine. Remember these run hotter than standard Sata drives as they are close to the motherboard and get the GPU and CPU hot air blasted on them all day long.
A Google User –
I wish I had seen the benchmark performance reviews for Samsung 970 EVO Plus before I got my previous gen 2TB M.2 cheap Crucial MX500 last month but as I recall, it was not in stock at that time…Very happy I got this now on special Excellent performance, but ESSENTIAL to use a BIG heatsink this SSD runs very hot.Mounting it inside a small external USB3 casing was probably not my brightest idea.Runs fine if I sit that external casing on a big metal heatsink though.Unlike my old 2.5 external HDD which runs ok on normal USB3 port,this SSD is only worth running as an external drive if you have a thunderbolt powered USB3.1 or better port to make use of the available bandwidth.No thunderbolt Then just use it as an internal M.2 mounted drive… With a big heatsink and good airflow.
cranker2k –
This is my second 1TB 970 EVO Plus. First was used in a gaming laptop two years back and it was solid, with consistent performance for both read and write. This time around bought a new gaming PC which comes with a failed SSD. I immediately buy this locally as I can trust it to work well with consistently performance. Of course it didnt disappoint. Highly recommend to spend a bit more and get this better and reliable SSD for your SYSTEM drive.
SAULBASS –
Was waiting for a motherboard and cpu to come in before buying the rest of my parts and ended up having them delivered early. I picked this up based on the reviews on PC part picker and several other sites and surprisingly found Best Buy had the best price. I placed the order through the app and picked up at the store an hour later. My pc was up and running that same day. This was my first nvme drive so I was really surprised with the ease of install and the performance. I was looking to mirror my current Windows install but opted for a clean install which only took a few minutes. Highly recommend
Dogdogdogdog –
Great SSD. Ive used Samsung SSDs in all my laptops, desktops and even servers I also recommend Samsung SSDs to my family when theyre seeking a new hard drive. I havent had any issues with the brand regarding storage in the past few years Ive been using them and speeds are fast.Dislikes None that I can think ofLikes Software is good, good price, performance is on par, no issues with installing. Plug and play
AlanO55 –
After years of suffering with slow boot times and waiting an age for larger games to startup such as DayZ, Space Engineers and No Mans Sky, I decided to spend some cash and get myself this SSD. Installing the device onto the motherboard was easy although my motherboard only detected it once I applied new firmware and fiddled with my Bios PCI settings. Once up and running I was able to install Windows 10 in about 20 minutes and everything is now working lightning fast. An excellent purchase for an ageing pc. Thanks PBTech
BenS842 –
This little unit has it all, speed and reliability at a fantastic price. While this isnt the cheapest M.2 available it is worth that little bit extra as youll notice the difference. I have now upgraded all of my systems Desktops Laptop to use this 970 Evo as the main bootable drive and it hasnt let me down once. ReadWrite performance is great Solid temperature under sustained loads without throttling Quality build If youre currently using SATA drives to bootOperating System from then dont hesitate, do yourself a favor and get one of these little unit as it will change your experience.
Tito –
My computer is fairly new, with latest processor and motherboard. I added more RAM, but I only observed minimal improvement in the performance. I never thought my SSD could be the bottleneck. After I added the Samsung 970 EVO plus M2 drive, the performance improved significantly, the sep up was extremely easy. My computer boots way too fast, programs open lot quicker now, and switching programs are almost instantaneous. Just to experiment, I cut down the RAM to half size, and I did not notice any performance degradation. This is amazing. I will go ahead and switch harddrives in my other laptops with the Samsung 970 EVO plus. I would surely recommend this to anyone who wants to improve their laptop or desktop performance.