Samsung MZ-V6E500BW 960 Evo 500GB M.2 SSD
Discover the next advance in PC performance with our high-performance, highly reliable 960 EVO Series NVMe M.2 SSDs. The combination of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) with a new Polaris controller outperforms our SATA SSDs with exceptionally fast read/write speeds, and Samsung TurboWrite technology accelerates write speeds even further. Samsung's Magician software solution provides advanced functionality for you to manage, monitor and maintain your drive. TurboWrite Technology Samsung's intelligent TurboWrite technology helps to maximize your computing ability, accelerating write speeds above and beyond the already exceptionally fast speeds of NVMe. Dynamic Thermal Guard This constantly monitors and works to maintain ideal temperatures to protect the integrity of your data and safeguard from overheating. When temperatures rise above an optimal threshold, the Dynamic Thermal Guard automatically throttles them down to protect data while maintaining responsiveness. Professional-Quality Drive Management With the newly upgraded Samsung Magician software solution, you get advanced functionality to manage, monitor and maintain your 960 EVO. Magician provides personalized firmware checking and additional functions tailored for inpidual drives. It even updates the firmware automatically to make sure that the drive's performance stays up to date. V-NAND Technology Samsung's proprietary V-NAND flash memory helps to overcome the limitations of conventional planar NAND architecture. It stacks 48 cell layers vertically over one another rather than trying to fit itself onto a fixed horizontal space, in order to provide high density and performance with a small footprint.
Discover the next advance in PC performance with our high-performance, highly reliable 960 EVO Series NVMe M.2 SSDs. The combination of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) with a new Polaris controller outperforms our SATA SSDs with exceptionally fast read/write speeds, and Samsung TurboWrite technology accelerates write speeds even further. Samsung's Magician software solution provides advanced functionality for you to manage, monitor and maintain your drive. TurboWrite Technology Samsung's intelligent TurboWrite technology helps to maximize your computing ability, accelerating write speeds above and beyond the already exceptionally fast speeds of NVMe. Dynamic Thermal Guard This constantly monitors and works to maintain ideal temperatures to protect the integrity of your data and safeguard from overheating. When temperatures rise above an optimal threshold, the Dynamic Thermal Guard automatically throttles them down to protect data while maintaining responsiveness. Professional-Quality Drive Management With the newly upgraded Samsung Magician software solution, you get advanced functionality to manage, monitor and maintain your 960 EVO. Magician provides personalized firmware checking and additional functions tailored for inpidual drives. It even updates the firmware automatically to make sure that the drive's performance stays up to date. V-NAND Technology Samsung's proprietary V-NAND flash memory helps to overcome the limitations of conventional planar NAND architecture. It stacks 48 cell layers vertically over one another rather than trying to fit itself onto a fixed horizontal space, in order to provide high density and performance with a small footprint.
Discover the next advance in PC performance with our high-performance, highly reliable 960 EVO Series NVMe M.2 SSDs. The combination of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) with a new Polaris controller outperforms our SATA SSDs with exceptionally fast read/write speeds, and Samsung TurboWrite technology accelerates write speeds even further. Samsung's Magician software solution provides advanced functionality for you to manage, monitor and maintain your drive. TurboWrite Technology Samsung's intelligent TurboWrite technology helps to maximize your computing ability, accelerating write speeds above and beyond the already exceptionally fast speeds of NVMe. Dynamic Thermal Guard This constantly monitors and works to maintain ideal temperatures to protect the integrity of your data and safeguard from overheating. When temperatures rise above an optimal threshold, the Dynamic Thermal Guard automatically throttles them down to protect data while maintaining responsiveness. Professional-Quality Drive Management With the newly upgraded Samsung Magician software solution, you get advanced functionality to manage, monitor and maintain your 960 EVO. Magician provides personalized firmware checking and additional functions tailored for inpidual drives. It even updates the firmware automatically to make sure that the drive's performance stays up to date. V-NAND Technology Samsung's proprietary V-NAND flash memory helps to overcome the limitations of conventional planar NAND architecture. It stacks 48 cell layers vertically over one another rather than trying to fit itself onto a fixed horizontal space, in order to provide high density and performance with a small footprint.
Discover the next advance in PC performance with our high-performance, highly reliable 960 EVO Series NVMe M.2 SSDs. The combination of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) with a new Polaris controller outperforms our SATA SSDs with exceptionally fast read/write speeds, and Samsung TurboWrite technology accelerates write speeds even further. Samsung's Magician software solution provides advanced functionality for you to manage, monitor and maintain your drive. TurboWrite Technology Samsung's intelligent TurboWrite technology helps to maximize your computing ability, accelerating write speeds above and beyond the already exceptionally fast speeds of NVMe. Dynamic Thermal Guard This constantly monitors and works to maintain ideal temperatures to protect the integrity of your data and safeguard from overheating. When temperatures rise above an optimal threshold, the Dynamic Thermal Guard automatically throttles them down to protect data while maintaining responsiveness. Professional-Quality Drive Management With the newly upgraded Samsung Magician software solution, you get advanced functionality to manage, monitor and maintain your 960 EVO. Magician provides personalized firmware checking and additional functions tailored for inpidual drives. It even updates the firmware automatically to make sure that the drive's performance stays up to date. V-NAND Technology Samsung's proprietary V-NAND flash memory helps to overcome the limitations of conventional planar NAND architecture. It stacks 48 cell layers vertically over one another rather than trying to fit itself onto a fixed horizontal space, in order to provide high density and performance with a small footprint.
in 3 offers
The lowest price for Samsung MZ-V6E500BW 960 Evo 500GB M.2 SSD right now is $176.55 at eBay.com.au, compared across 3 retailers.
The all-time low was $101.74 on 6 May 2025 — today's price is 74% above the lowest ever. It has been notably cheaper before — worth setting a price alert.
Prices last updated 22 Oct 2026.
Last updated at 22/10/2026 09:22:29
Samsung 960 EVO Series - 500GB NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E500BW)
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
Samsung 960 Evo 500gb Nvme M.2 Pcie Ssd Solid State Drive Mz-v6e500
Delivery $115.60
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
Samsung 960 Evo Series 500 Gb Pc Ie Nv Me M.2 Internal Ssd (Mz V6 E500 Bw)
Delivery between 28–31 Oct $29
originally posted on newegg.com
My Pc tower is an old CMStacker that i bought in mid-2000. Nestled away behind my home entertainment center in my living room. Installing this new style of SSD to your motherboard is not easy. Location for it on my motherboard is underneath the PCI-E x1 slot where my Audigy soundcard is slotted. Screw used to fasten is extremely small. Tried fastening it three times with only removing my soundcard until i gave up. The angle with limited hand space and small screw made it impossible. Doesnt help when you slot in this SSD it doesnt lay flush to your motherboard. It angles up at roughly a 30 degree angle. Requiring one hand to hold it down while the other hand fastens the screw. Eventually i gave up and laid my Pc tower down on its side. Took a few attempts/minutes but ... MoreMy Pc tower is an old CMStacker that i bought in mid-2000. Nestled away behind my home entertainment center in my living room. Installing this new style of SSD to your motherboard is not easy. Location for it on my motherboard is underneath the PCI-E x1 slot where my Audigy soundcard is slotted. Screw used to fasten is extremely small. Tried fastening it three times with only removing my soundcard until i gave up. The angle with limited hand space and small screw made it impossible. Doesnt help when you slot in this SSD it doesnt lay flush to your motherboard. It angles up at roughly a 30 degree angle. Requiring one hand to hold it down while the other hand fastens the screw. Eventually i gave up and laid my Pc tower down on its side. Took a few attempts/minutes but the screw finally took to the thread. ****Ideal installation should be done outside your case giving yourself room to navigate hands positioning. Prior or after mounting your CPU with the heatsink. ****Additionally make sure your motherboard manufacturer supplied the screw. If they didnt, call them to get the size and or to order it from them. For in my search the screw size my MSI motherboard used was completely different than the size google searches supplied.
originally posted on neweggbusiness.com
- I recently built a new system and decided to go with the 500gb NVMe as my main OS drive. - The OS boots about the same speed as a regular SSD, maybe a second or two fast but it's not terribly noticeable (I also have 2x RAID array's in my setup so the POST process takes a couple seconds longer anyways). - In my setup I have this NVMe as my OS drive, a 850 2.5" as a High I/O game drive and 2x WD 1TB in RAID 0 as a Low I/O game drive. I put a few games on the NVMe drive but only the ones I play a lot while I prioritize everything else on the other 2 volumes. Even though this is a EVO drive, it loads games insanely fast. I had some games (Stellaris, HOI4, EFT) that were heavily modded and they load in seconds, literally seconds. I used to run them on a 4x WD 1TB Raid ... More- I recently built a new system and decided to go with the 500gb NVMe as my main OS drive. - The OS boots about the same speed as a regular SSD, maybe a second or two fast but it's not terribly noticeable (I also have 2x RAID array's in my setup so the POST process takes a couple seconds longer anyways). - In my setup I have this NVMe as my OS drive, a 850 2.5" as a High I/O game drive and 2x WD 1TB in RAID 0 as a Low I/O game drive. I put a few games on the NVMe drive but only the ones I play a lot while I prioritize everything else on the other 2 volumes. Even though this is a EVO drive, it loads games insanely fast. I had some games (Stellaris, HOI4, EFT) that were heavily modded and they load in seconds, literally seconds. I used to run them on a 4x WD 1TB Raid 0 (SSD like speeds but with HDD). And there is just no comparison to even the EVO NVMe. - Build: - MSI Z270 Pro Carbon Gaming - Intel i7-7700K - Corsair Hydro Series H115i - G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (16gb x2) @ 3200mhz - ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme Core 11GB GDDR5X 352-bit - Samsung 960 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe (OS Drive, Win 10 x64) - HGST DeskStar 0S04005 4TB 7200RPM 128mb x3 in RAID 5 (primary data drive) - SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III 3D NAND (High I/O games drive) - WD Black Series WD1003FZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB x2 in RAID 0 (Low I/O games drive) - LG 34UC79G-B 34" Ultrawide 2560 x 1080 @ 144hz - Toshiba 32L2400U 32" 1920 x 1080 @ 60hz
originally posted on newegg.com
If you want to mount this drive in your M.2 slot, ensure that: 1) You have your own mounting screw already since no screw comes with the SSD. 2) That your M.2 slot is properly wired for PCIe 3.0 X4. Dell XPS 8900 isn't. Magician software will tell you how many channels of PCIe are connected. I had to add a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe 3.0 X4 plug-in card for $18 because Dell screws up. But still a great deal. DO NOT use your SSD as your Windows swap device. You could eat it alive if you do a lot of swapping. Leave a rotating hard drive in your system for that. Or install enough RAM and eschew swapping altogether. Nobody tells you that when you clone your existing Windows 10 drive to your new SSD with the Samsung utility (and likely others as well) that it copies an ... MoreIf you want to mount this drive in your M.2 slot, ensure that: 1) You have your own mounting screw already since no screw comes with the SSD. 2) That your M.2 slot is properly wired for PCIe 3.0 X4. Dell XPS 8900 isn't. Magician software will tell you how many channels of PCIe are connected. I had to add a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe 3.0 X4 plug-in card for $18 because Dell screws up. But still a great deal. DO NOT use your SSD as your Windows swap device. You could eat it alive if you do a lot of swapping. Leave a rotating hard drive in your system for that. Or install enough RAM and eschew swapping altogether. Nobody tells you that when you clone your existing Windows 10 drive to your new SSD with the Samsung utility (and likely others as well) that it copies an internal serial number to the SSD and when you boot with your new SSD and your old hard drive both in the system (because you want to use that hard drive for swapping and backup), that Windows will only recognize one of them -- likely the old drive. You only find this out by going to Windows Disk Management afterwards to find the error message on why both disks aren't mounted. Installing Windows 10 fresh on your SSD will give it a new identifier, but do you really want to do that? DO NOT tell Disk Management to force mount the other disk because it creates a new serial number in the process and renders that disk unbootable for Windows 10. If you want to keep both your new SSD and your original bootable Windows hard drive in the event of a future issue -- or it's your only copy of Windows 10 -- I recommend just buying a new hard drive for swapping and backup from the SSD, as well as big slow additional storage for when you have more than the SSD holds and access speeds aren't an issue, and put the original hard drive on the shelf. This way your system has a shiny new hard drive along with your new SSD and both should be good to go for years of service.
| General | |
| Device Type | Solid state drive - internal |
| Capacity | 500 GB |
| Hardware Encryption | Yes |
| Encryption Algorithm | 256-bit AES |
Samsung 960 EVO Series - 500GB NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E500BW)
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
Samsung 960 Evo 500gb Nvme M.2 Pcie Ssd Solid State Drive Mz-v6e500
Delivery $115.60
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
Samsung 960 Evo Series 500 Gb Pc Ie Nv Me M.2 Internal Ssd (Mz V6 E500 Bw)
Delivery between 28–31 Oct $29
My Pc tower is an old CMStacker that i bought in mid-2000. Nestled away behind my home entertainment center in my living room. Installing this new style of SSD to your motherboard is not easy. Location for it on my motherboard is underneath the PCI-E x1 slot where my Audigy soundcard is slotted. Screw used to fasten is extremely small. Tried fastening it three times with only removing my soundcard until i gave up. The angle with limited hand space and small screw made it impossible. Doesnt help when you slot in this SSD it doesnt lay flush to your motherboard. It angles up at roughly a 30 degree angle. Requiring one hand to hold it down while the other hand fastens the screw. Eventually i gave up and laid my Pc tower down on its side. Took a few attempts/minutes but ... MoreMy Pc tower is an old CMStacker that i bought in mid-2000. Nestled away behind my home entertainment center in my living room. Installing this new style of SSD to your motherboard is not easy. Location for it on my motherboard is underneath the PCI-E x1 slot where my Audigy soundcard is slotted. Screw used to fasten is extremely small. Tried fastening it three times with only removing my soundcard until i gave up. The angle with limited hand space and small screw made it impossible. Doesnt help when you slot in this SSD it doesnt lay flush to your motherboard. It angles up at roughly a 30 degree angle. Requiring one hand to hold it down while the other hand fastens the screw. Eventually i gave up and laid my Pc tower down on its side. Took a few attempts/minutes but the screw finally took to the thread. ****Ideal installation should be done outside your case giving yourself room to navigate hands positioning. Prior or after mounting your CPU with the heatsink. ****Additionally make sure your motherboard manufacturer supplied the screw. If they didnt, call them to get the size and or to order it from them. For in my search the screw size my MSI motherboard used was completely different than the size google searches supplied.
- I recently built a new system and decided to go with the 500gb NVMe as my main OS drive. - The OS boots about the same speed as a regular SSD, maybe a second or two fast but it's not terribly noticeable (I also have 2x RAID array's in my setup so the POST process takes a couple seconds longer anyways). - In my setup I have this NVMe as my OS drive, a 850 2.5" as a High I/O game drive and 2x WD 1TB in RAID 0 as a Low I/O game drive. I put a few games on the NVMe drive but only the ones I play a lot while I prioritize everything else on the other 2 volumes. Even though this is a EVO drive, it loads games insanely fast. I had some games (Stellaris, HOI4, EFT) that were heavily modded and they load in seconds, literally seconds. I used to run them on a 4x WD 1TB Raid ... More- I recently built a new system and decided to go with the 500gb NVMe as my main OS drive. - The OS boots about the same speed as a regular SSD, maybe a second or two fast but it's not terribly noticeable (I also have 2x RAID array's in my setup so the POST process takes a couple seconds longer anyways). - In my setup I have this NVMe as my OS drive, a 850 2.5" as a High I/O game drive and 2x WD 1TB in RAID 0 as a Low I/O game drive. I put a few games on the NVMe drive but only the ones I play a lot while I prioritize everything else on the other 2 volumes. Even though this is a EVO drive, it loads games insanely fast. I had some games (Stellaris, HOI4, EFT) that were heavily modded and they load in seconds, literally seconds. I used to run them on a 4x WD 1TB Raid 0 (SSD like speeds but with HDD). And there is just no comparison to even the EVO NVMe. - Build: - MSI Z270 Pro Carbon Gaming - Intel i7-7700K - Corsair Hydro Series H115i - G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (16gb x2) @ 3200mhz - ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme Core 11GB GDDR5X 352-bit - Samsung 960 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe (OS Drive, Win 10 x64) - HGST DeskStar 0S04005 4TB 7200RPM 128mb x3 in RAID 5 (primary data drive) - SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III 3D NAND (High I/O games drive) - WD Black Series WD1003FZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB x2 in RAID 0 (Low I/O games drive) - LG 34UC79G-B 34" Ultrawide 2560 x 1080 @ 144hz - Toshiba 32L2400U 32" 1920 x 1080 @ 60hz
If you want to mount this drive in your M.2 slot, ensure that: 1) You have your own mounting screw already since no screw comes with the SSD. 2) That your M.2 slot is properly wired for PCIe 3.0 X4. Dell XPS 8900 isn't. Magician software will tell you how many channels of PCIe are connected. I had to add a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe 3.0 X4 plug-in card for $18 because Dell screws up. But still a great deal. DO NOT use your SSD as your Windows swap device. You could eat it alive if you do a lot of swapping. Leave a rotating hard drive in your system for that. Or install enough RAM and eschew swapping altogether. Nobody tells you that when you clone your existing Windows 10 drive to your new SSD with the Samsung utility (and likely others as well) that it copies an ... MoreIf you want to mount this drive in your M.2 slot, ensure that: 1) You have your own mounting screw already since no screw comes with the SSD. 2) That your M.2 slot is properly wired for PCIe 3.0 X4. Dell XPS 8900 isn't. Magician software will tell you how many channels of PCIe are connected. I had to add a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe 3.0 X4 plug-in card for $18 because Dell screws up. But still a great deal. DO NOT use your SSD as your Windows swap device. You could eat it alive if you do a lot of swapping. Leave a rotating hard drive in your system for that. Or install enough RAM and eschew swapping altogether. Nobody tells you that when you clone your existing Windows 10 drive to your new SSD with the Samsung utility (and likely others as well) that it copies an internal serial number to the SSD and when you boot with your new SSD and your old hard drive both in the system (because you want to use that hard drive for swapping and backup), that Windows will only recognize one of them -- likely the old drive. You only find this out by going to Windows Disk Management afterwards to find the error message on why both disks aren't mounted. Installing Windows 10 fresh on your SSD will give it a new identifier, but do you really want to do that? DO NOT tell Disk Management to force mount the other disk because it creates a new serial number in the process and renders that disk unbootable for Windows 10. If you want to keep both your new SSD and your original bootable Windows hard drive in the event of a future issue -- or it's your only copy of Windows 10 -- I recommend just buying a new hard drive for swapping and backup from the SSD, as well as big slow additional storage for when you have more than the SSD holds and access speeds aren't an issue, and put the original hard drive on the shelf. This way your system has a shiny new hard drive along with your new SSD and both should be good to go for years of service.
I got the drive working fine on a old z77 chipset. Even after bios Nvme edits windows would still not recognize the drive and clean install prompted that i needed a driver. The install fix was to press "shift+F10" at the install prompt. this opened a CMD prompt window then type "Diskpart" then type "List disk"... My disk was Disk 0 so then type "Sel Disk 0". then type "Detail Disk" and low and behold...there it was. The 960 evo with details listed under dos. But wait theirs more. then type "Convert GPT" You should be able to stop here close diskpart and now see the drive Nativity after starting the windows install over. The bottom line is that the disk would not show in my old bios or windows until i initialized the disk and prepared it for use in UEFI by using ... MoreI got the drive working fine on a old z77 chipset. Even after bios Nvme edits windows would still not recognize the drive and clean install prompted that i needed a driver. The install fix was to press "shift+F10" at the install prompt. this opened a CMD prompt window then type "Diskpart" then type "List disk"... My disk was Disk 0 so then type "Sel Disk 0". then type "Detail Disk" and low and behold...there it was. The 960 evo with details listed under dos. But wait theirs more. then type "Convert GPT" You should be able to stop here close diskpart and now see the drive Nativity after starting the windows install over. The bottom line is that the disk would not show in my old bios or windows until i initialized the disk and prepared it for use in UEFI by using "Convert GPT" in "diskpart". Once i did all the problems are gone and the drive is amazing with no problems at all. After the drive was showing i decided to clone my two force gt ssd drives in raid 0 to this drive and my speed tripled. People with newer boards might not have this problem but im willing to bet those who are claiming DOA in reviews could have saved a return by running "diskpart" command and setting to GPT. I am using the SYBA M.2 PCI-e To PCI-e 3.0 x4 Card Model SI-PEX40110 and am happy as can be now.
OMG I love these guys. I ORDERED Samsung 960 RAM. But they delivered BETTER. They gave me 970 Samsung. Faster better. Wow. It was a great deal before... and it got better. Nice.
I replaced a 256 Samsung 950 Pro with this. It does everything it is rated to do and more. Can't see any reason to pay the premium for the 960 Pro unless you have it in an environment that it is under constant write use and you need the added service life that the 960 Pro offers. Even though the 950 Pro is a really fast PCIe SSD my graphics station boots faster and Adobe Premier Pro and Photoshop load quicker.I installed the 950 Pro that the 960 EVO replaced into a PCIe slot using an adapter. As long as the adapter is inserted in a 4 lane or 8 lane slot the SSD runs the same speed as it did on the built in 4 lane M.2 slot on the motherboard. You can also run it on a mother board that only has a two lane slot. On a two lane slot the read speed will be cut in two, ... MoreI replaced a 256 Samsung 950 Pro with this. It does everything it is rated to do and more. Can't see any reason to pay the premium for the 960 Pro unless you have it in an environment that it is under constant write use and you need the added service life that the 960 Pro offers. Even though the 950 Pro is a really fast PCIe SSD my graphics station boots faster and Adobe Premier Pro and Photoshop load quicker.I installed the 950 Pro that the 960 EVO replaced into a PCIe slot using an adapter. As long as the adapter is inserted in a 4 lane or 8 lane slot the SSD runs the same speed as it did on the built in 4 lane M.2 slot on the motherboard. You can also run it on a mother board that only has a two lane slot. On a two lane slot the read speed will be cut in two, but the write speed will only suffer about 30 percent. Obviously even these new fast drives still don't have the write capacity to fully saturate the bus.If your BIOS has support to boot from the PCIe slot you can boot from there also. The advantage to that is that the M.2 will most likely run cooler as it has airflow around it although this 960 EVO runs at about 29 degrees at idle and about 41-43 degrees C under load on the motherboard slot.These Samsung PCIe M.2 960 EVO SSDs remove the Video and Photo processing bottleneck that is present even with SATA SSD drives on high end editing machines.By using these fast PCIe drives to load from and save and render to, my computer with its i7 on a Z170 board and much processing being handed off to an Nvidia GTX 1070 will now take whatever I throw at it and never flinch. May the RAID0 rest in peace as they are no longer relevant. Progress has made them obsolete and useless. Hail the new king in fast consumer affordable storage and OS drives.
First and foremost, this drive is fast with near-advertised speeds (see story below for more details). The response time and consistency has been exceptional, and my cold boot time on Windows 10 after enabling several MSI boot optimizations is now 2 seconds flat. Still amazes me several weeks later.Truthfully, I went through many hoops to get this SSD working with my motherboard (MSI Z97-GD65). However, this was due to my motherboard not having an m.2 port (it has mSata which is significantly different) and was my fault for not verifying this before my purchase. MSI was very gracious however, as about a year or so prior they released an update to their BIOS which added support for m.2 drives - perfect! I ordered an m.2 -> PCI-E x4 adapter, updated the BIOS using a ... MoreFirst and foremost, this drive is fast with near-advertised speeds (see story below for more details). The response time and consistency has been exceptional, and my cold boot time on Windows 10 after enabling several MSI boot optimizations is now 2 seconds flat. Still amazes me several weeks later.Truthfully, I went through many hoops to get this SSD working with my motherboard (MSI Z97-GD65). However, this was due to my motherboard not having an m.2 port (it has mSata which is significantly different) and was my fault for not verifying this before my purchase. MSI was very gracious however, as about a year or so prior they released an update to their BIOS which added support for m.2 drives - perfect! I ordered an m.2 -> PCI-E x4 adapter, updated the BIOS using a spare USB drive, and installed my new hardware. Initially, the drive was successfully detected by Windows 10 (I had to right-click on the start menu and then initialize the drive via Disk Management). My goal however was to migrate Windows over to this SSD to get off my 1TB HDD RAID setup. I went to a free faithful tool of mine - Clonezilla. After installing the latest stable to a USB stick and booting off the stick, I eventually reached an unrecognized error during the process. Disappointed but not discouraged, I read on a forum post that the dev builds of Clonezilla were on a newer version of Linux with better drive technology support. So I gave it a shot and they were right! Migration took about an hour for 500GBs of written data, and I've been a happy camper since. The m.2 adapter causes a slight loss in performance yielding 85% of advertised read (~2700MB/s), yet still 100% of advertised write (~1800MB/s).I bought this drive for the performance, endurance and future-proofing. I expect this SSD to remain my main drive after building a new desktop a few years down the road. The performance is insane, taking my rapid loads from a dedicated SATA3 SSD for games to an entirely new level. For anyone still reading, my recommendations are to ensure your computer is compatible with m.2 (at PCI-E x4 speeds), that you are okay with your main GPU lane dropping to PCI-E x8 (MAYBE dropped 1-2 fps for me with my GTX 1080 and dual monitors), and that there's plenty of ventilation around the SSD to ensure that top speeds are consistent during huge data transfers.
My steps taken to install after hardware installation and I don't know if all this is required or not but it's how I got this working. Updated latest bios Downloaded windows media creation tool Have 32g usb 3 flash drive Downloaded win 10 64 bit in iso format Downloaded rufus Used rufus to create windows 10 installation for uefi for gpt partation Set bios to ahci Disabled secure boot Changed boot priority for the usb and installed windows, delete all partations(not the random 128mb recovery partation or whatever was already on there) so that you can create a new paration in windows installation process. It should say unallocated space and you create a new partition. After windows installation complete was able to go back to bios and change boot priority to the 960 ... MoreMy steps taken to install after hardware installation and I don't know if all this is required or not but it's how I got this working. Updated latest bios Downloaded windows media creation tool Have 32g usb 3 flash drive Downloaded win 10 64 bit in iso format Downloaded rufus Used rufus to create windows 10 installation for uefi for gpt partation Set bios to ahci Disabled secure boot Changed boot priority for the usb and installed windows, delete all partations(not the random 128mb recovery partation or whatever was already on there) so that you can create a new paration in windows installation process. It should say unallocated space and you create a new partition. After windows installation complete was able to go back to bios and change boot priority to the 960 evo. As a newbie this took me like 6 hours of playing with settings and doing research online, this is the reason for 4 eggs. Overall drive is fast and I'm satisfied and havent got the heart to put back in my sata 1tb 5400 rpm hdd. I may just pick up a sata ssd instead, I don't think I'll ever want a mechanical drive again honestly. The 100tb endurance rating seems low but I guess we'll see how it holds up. I hope this was able to help someone.
Getting a bigger capacity drive is useful on M.2 because of 2 reasons: the innate IOPS improvement (speed) on higher capacity drives(1TB faster than 500gb of the same exact version of drive), as well as difficulty of upgrading to another m.2 in the future due to most mobos having only 1 m.2 slot. (m.2 will be a slight pain to upgrade size later[double migration]) The drive is physically hanging ominously below my video card due to a missing screw that doesnt come with the drive or motherboard... at least i have a standoff included on my mobo to prevent it from bending too much. Also the second video card that is over the m.2 is pushing it down somewhat and fully plastic thereby preventing any shorting. (it works it works it works without the screw [lol]) i added ... MoreGetting a bigger capacity drive is useful on M.2 because of 2 reasons: the innate IOPS improvement (speed) on higher capacity drives(1TB faster than 500gb of the same exact version of drive), as well as difficulty of upgrading to another m.2 in the future due to most mobos having only 1 m.2 slot. (m.2 will be a slight pain to upgrade size later[double migration]) The drive is physically hanging ominously below my video card due to a missing screw that doesnt come with the drive or motherboard... at least i have a standoff included on my mobo to prevent it from bending too much. Also the second video card that is over the m.2 is pushing it down somewhat and fully plastic thereby preventing any shorting. (it works it works it works without the screw [lol]) i added this information for science. Buy a screw with ur purchase. Consider whether or not you really want load times to go away ( especially considering the increased cost of m.2 and the deminishing returns of load time reduction). i kind of miss them but not that much. (i still get load times on things like steam opening and programs opening. Improvement seemed like only 10%... only large files and hd loading is improved like windows startup. the m.2 clip seems sturdy and would prevent it from slipping out even while moving... ill put a screw in some day. the load time for windows with HDD can be 10-60 second and with SSD can be 5-25 second and with this M.2 NVMe it can be 1-5 seconds. if these gains on windows 10 load time seem worth the extra cost of the drive, I recommend it for you. You don't need to format the m.2 drive if you are migrating with samsung software because the software clones partitions and formats correctly. this information was was not availible online and worried me while cloning.
I moved from a Crucial/Micron 1TB SATA6 M500 SSD that was getting full (lots of games). I upgraded to this NVMe and honestly it doesn't really feel any faster than the old SSD. I wish I spent a bit more and got the 960 Pro NVMe since maybe it would feel faster. Installing it was a big pain since I didn't have the screw and had to hunt around for replacement screws to hold the NVMe drive in since obviously I lost the screw from the original motherboard as the PC was built over a year previously. I ended up finding a laptop screw that worked but I had to make a small custom washer for my rig. Typically the NVMe screw is M2 with a big wide head (looks like a tack). I wish a few came with every motherboard purchased. The Samsung data migration software worked great to ... MoreI moved from a Crucial/Micron 1TB SATA6 M500 SSD that was getting full (lots of games). I upgraded to this NVMe and honestly it doesn't really feel any faster than the old SSD. I wish I spent a bit more and got the 960 Pro NVMe since maybe it would feel faster. Installing it was a big pain since I didn't have the screw and had to hunt around for replacement screws to hold the NVMe drive in since obviously I lost the screw from the original motherboard as the PC was built over a year previously. I ended up finding a laptop screw that worked but I had to make a small custom washer for my rig. Typically the NVMe screw is M2 with a big wide head (looks like a tack). I wish a few came with every motherboard purchased. The Samsung data migration software worked great to copy my m500 data to NVMe. I like the latest 4.x Magician software but hate the new v5.0 I upgraded to. Basically 5.0 seems like it does very little other than run a performance test and doesn't show much useful data (like firmware version) or allow you to optimize windows settings (or see them). It's like they removed all the nerd knobs that PC enthusiasts like and made the software look pretty for someone like my mom who is not technical. Basically Magician 5 sucks so avoid upgrading to it if you can. Also on Magician - it doesn't work with Samsung Enterprise drives and the tiny 1.3MB DL for Enterprise SSD management doesn't work or do anything so rather than figure out Samsung's software shortcomings I found it easier to stop buying Samsung SSDs server server builds and only use Intel drives in server builds because Intel's software doesn't cause me headaches. Maybe Samsung wanted to design Magician 5 similar to its Enterprise SSD management software (so useless). Overall Samsung SSDs are great but I wish they put some thought into Magician since clearly someone went brain dead on the software team.
| General | |
| Device Type | Solid state drive - internal |
| Capacity | 500 GB |
| Hardware Encryption | Yes |
| Encryption Algorithm | 256-bit AES |
