WATCH THAT BOOT. If your desktop is getting a PCI Express/NVMe drive for the first time, verify with the motherboard or PC maker that the drive will be bootable. It's unlikely, but a BIOS upgrade may be required to get you there. (This is an issue with older motherboards, not current ones.) el3lnwiccuqxax5btzpq-pbifp1-07760bdf0-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwiccuqxax5bu23q-p2ez1a-7d289db29-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwixzp4swx5bs5pq-pnfw20-03cb87b70-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwixzp4swx5bsryq-p52tb9-f3dab0dd0-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwixzp4swx5bu35q-pdannf-fd1139023-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwixzp4swx5buxna-pyccr1-f710a073b-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, el3lnwky3wdkax5bsxbq-p3hn9l-a2a7437e4-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, Finally, on the speeds and feeds, this 2TB drive is rated at 1,200TB for write endurance. As it happens, that's precisely the same as the new Samsung 990 Pro 2TB. But it's also far from some other competing M.2 SSDs. If you're a custom PC builder with RGB-lighting fever, and have RGB-ified just about every inch and corner of your system, perk up: ADATA has brought pretty lights to the internal SSD final frontier. The XPG Spectrix S40G is the most flamboyant NVMe drive we've seen to date. With the S40G's fine 4K write speeds, top-notch sequential-read speeds, and respectable durability rating, ADATA makes having a top-of-the line, over-the-top SSD affordable and fun, in one fell swoop. Who It's For Most controllers these days are very efficient, but some, such as those used by Intel and Sandisk, are smarter about how they use cache and can sustain write performance with larger data sets.

An unapologetically bright RGB-lit PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, the S40G will bling up your PC if you're an enterprising builder. Its 4K read and write speeds should keep most gamers happy, too. Of course, to show off the lighting, you will need to have an open-frame rig, or one with a transparent-sided case. If you've already RGB'd your keyboard, mouse, video card, motherboard, case, and headphones, and are at a loss for what's left, the Spectrix S40G makes enough sense both in performance and looks to belong in any lighting-obsessed custom PC builder's arsenal.

PCI Express vs. SATA: The SSD Bus-Interface Issue

PCIe is also the foundation for the Thunderbolt interface, which is starting to pay dividends with external graphics cards for gaming, as well as external NVMe storage, which is nearly as fast as internal NVMe. Intel’s refusal to let Thunderbolt die was a very good thing, as many users are starting to discover. Even though Intel has shared the technology with the USB forum to make it easier to implement, it’s still rarer than one might hope. The NVMe, or Non-Volatile Memory Express interface, has been designed specifically with solid state drives in mind. In contrast, SATA, the previous interface in charge, was built to cater to most HDDs. The thought is, at the time, that no storage would ever need to exceed its lofty max bandwidth. To the surprise of a few, new storage mediums such as solid state absolutely blaze past SATA's max bandwidth, and so a new protocol in NVMe was born. Reduced operating temps are another clear benefit of this new drive. The old SN850 hit a toasty 77°C. The new drive hits just 58°C under sustained load. That's a very worthwhile improvement. Elsewhere, the gains are less obvious, albeit the SN850 was already a great drive. The 4K random access results are a little disappointing, showing little to no improvement. Likewise, don't expect big gains in system-wide measures of performance like PCMark 10. As for the actual flash memory used, it's SK Hynix's latest and very greatest 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. It's about as advanced as TLC memory currently gets, and SK Hynix claims a 40% performance boost over its old 128-layer chips. The net result is sequential read and write specs for this 2TB model of 7,000MB/s and 6,500MB/s respectively.

All of this leaves the minor matter of how this drive actually performs. When it comes to peak sequential throughput, the Platinum P41 is basically as fast as anything else out there, bar a few rounding errors. OK, the Samsung 990 Pro is a bit faster at 7,462MB/s for reads to the P41's 7,375MB/s. But, honestly, it's inconsequential. The same goes for writes, where almost all the top drives will do just under 6.9GB/s.clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604425669-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604427540-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604427617-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604427664-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604427922-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, Of course, to show off the lighting, you will need to have an open-frame rig, or one with a see-through case. If you've already RGB'd your keyboard, mouse, video card, motherboard, case, and headphones, and are at a loss for what's left, the Spectrix S40G makes enough sense both in performance and looks to belong in any lighting-obsessed custom PC builder's arsenal. South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix is a relative newcomer to the consumer solid-state drive market, but you would never know that based on its first offerings. The SK Hynix Platinum P41, a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, is its best yet. It dominated our PCMark 10 and 3DMark Storage benchmark testing, setting several new records in the process. The P41 supports 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption. SK Hynix provides a clone utility tool, the SK Hynix System Migration Utility, for its SSDs, in addition to Easy Drive Manager software, which lets you see detailed information on drive health, run diagnostics, and erase the drive. And the P41 can be had for a very reasonable price in its 1TB and 2TB capacities. Who It's For

gzfsozyccuqwcx5bs3dq-p2yzo8-69eb1f4d7-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfsozyccuqwcx5bs4qa-p299q7-a9521f4ee-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfsozyccuqwcx5bsyyq-pv69oz-aed1b09c6-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfsozyccuqwcx5bwfuq-pw4gfb-c2c42381f-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfstpqccuqvax5bssvq-p0x8hm-7a3d7367f-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfstpqccuqvax5bsxsq-p2oajs-b2e67f00b-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, gzfstpqccuqvax5bsy3a-pfuzjd-60f8ba5de-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net,Thedata bus, or pathway, over which your data travels to and from an M.2 drive is a whole other matter, which is where PCI Express and NVMe come in. We'll get to the significance of NVMe in a moment; first, let's discuss the key physical traits of an M.2 drive that you need to understand. (The video below is a good primer.) Although M.2 is commonly referred to as aninterface, that's not the whole story. M.2 is also ashapeorphysical form factor, and governs the keying that lets a drive fit onto a motherboard. clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604439174-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604441206-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604441267-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-90_ts-1604425484-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-90_ts-1604425610-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, To benefit fully from an NVMe SSD, you must be able to boot the operating system from it. That requires BIOS support. Sigh. Most older mainstream BIOS’s do not support booting from NVMe and most likely, never will. There’s simply no benefit to the vendors to add it, and a very real downside: You’re less likely to upgrade a system that’s been updated with NVMe, unless you play PC games or do something truly CPU-intensive, like editing 2160p (4K)/4320p(8K) video. Samsung