Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E250BW)

Warning: Long Review. Context and experience with SSDsI recently purchased this device for my newest Alienware 17R4. Now at two months old and the EVO 960 PCI 1TB SSD, almost a month old, the games I had on the Crucial MX300 2TB SATA 2.5 Inch SSD- CT2050MX300SSD1 were moved to this new 960 EVO and there is a VERY noticeable increase in speed and performance over all compared to the previous Alienware 17 that I still own and installed a Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM . I have nothing but good things to say about the 850 as I had made it the boot drive/game drive on the previous system. I decided SSDs were the way to go for this new system. So I bought the Crucial 2TB SSD for the open SATA III port and it worked well enough, but some games were suffering severe lag, and I thought it may be the Crucial SSD, as it was a lot thinner and lighter than the Samsung 850 EVO 2.5inch SSD from the previous system. Turns out it was not the drive but the game itself which had been copied straight from the old system onto the new one, though the game had a severe outdoor lag that the game never had on the previous system. The old one has a 4thGen Core i7 2.80GHz overclocked to 3.2GHz, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 960m. But looking at the specs, the newer Crucial is just as fast as the SATA III 850 EVO, but cheaper, much lighter, smaller and twice the storage for less $$$ than the 850 EVO cost me (it needs a caddy to fit into the drive space available)..In searching for a replacement drive, this system comes with a 2.5inch drive port (where the Crucial was installed) a boot drive slot for a PCI which currently has a crappy factory 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD which is small and slower by far, another such port where this 960 EVO is now installed, and there is still an open mSATA slot. I plan to replace the boot drive with another one of these same 960 EVOs which will bring my storage to 4TB, the largest I have ever had yet. With the mSATA I'm hoping it will be 5 or 6 TB later. I looked at the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SATA III, but found it was the same speed as the first SSD on the previous system, though cheaper. It was still more expensive than the Crucial and only 1TB, so I looked into the 960 EVO/PROs, and was surprised how much faster the 960s were compared to the 850 EVO and Crucial SSDs (around 3X faster read/write speeds over both the 2.5inch SATA III and the M.2 SATA III). So I had the choice between the EVO and the PRO, and I saw that the PRO is several hundred dollars more expensive than the EVO for a mere 300MB/s of speed. The EVO is already 3x the speed of the Crucial, and the difference in performance was amazing. Moving 80GB of data used to take about a half hour on the SATA III 850 EVO and Crucial 2TB, now takes 10 minutes or less on the 960 EVO PCIe. This 960 EVO is actually less expensive than the 1TB 850 EVO SATA III I bought in 2015.TL;DR Amazing speed. Perfect for gaming. Buy the 1TB 960 EVO PCIe instead of the 1TB 960 PRO PCIe. The 300 or so MB/s of speed of the PRO is not worth the $120-$150 increased cost. Very happy with the amazing look and performance of my games.

WICKED fast. I have two 1TB units, as well as two 850 Evo 1TB SATA3 6Gbps drives. I do not play games, and use Windows 10 on both systems I have the 960 Evo NVMe and 850 Evo SATA3 drives installed in. I also purchase all my equipment outright; i build, tweak and own it. I also tried out a pair of OCZ RD400 units, and they underperformed for the money.I shoot/edit commercials in 1080P/2.5K RAW, with Adobe CC and Blackmagic Resolve, so speed matters, but moreso in media/cache/export/previews, so the 960 Evo is simply set up for that purpose, and the SATA3 850 Evo are OS/Program disks. 30 minutes of footage can exceed 120GB of storage at 1080p, and i typically shoot 45-70 minutes of RAW 1080p, plus multiple audio sources to other gear, so it adds up quickly.With my previous x58 desktop, SSD, and ARECA RAID6, my highest disk speeds were 240MB r/230MB wr sustained on OCZ Vertex3 120GB, and 520MB r/440MB wr on an eight by 1TB 7200RPM disk-based ARECA ARC-1222 RAID6 setup.The 960 Evo, in both Z270 desktop and Z270 laptop, are an order of magnitude better, averaging 2.9GB r/1.6GB wr sustained performance.That, coupled with Thunderbolt 3, has saved me easily 2-5 hours of media transfer time per project day between SSD/SD camera/audio box cards/disks. In other words, I got a large chunk of my life back.I have a desktop I just built in my giant HAF 932 case with an Asus Rog Strix Z270e mobo, GeForce GTX 1080, i7 7700K at 5Ghz, H110i V2, 32GB 3400Mhz DDR4, 4K 60hz 27" IPS display, Thunderbolt 3 PCIe card, 850w PSU, and a very nice 150 watt Klipsche 2.1 desktop audio setup on the HD audio side (broadcast is usually delivered in stereo), as well as a Sony receiver/JBL subwoofer totalling 1020 watts 7.1 setup on the optical side with a 50" 4k UHD HDR television for client review/secret movie night with the GF (it's my company and my office dammit) with Displayport and Optical cable passing through a wall to receiver/HDR UHD TV.The 850 is my OS/Programs disk, and 960 EVO is media/cache/export/previews disk. Also an ARECA ARC-1222 eight disk RAID6 for mass storage totalling 5.3TB. I have excellent cooling in the HAF 932 case with a side intake fan blowing on the motherboard and hence on the 960 Evo as well to keep it cool, and a front intake fan to help cool the 850 Evo as well; in 2 weeks I've seen no thermal throttling.This setup replaced an Asus Rampage III Gene x58, i7 980x 6-core at 4Ghz, 24GB 1600Mhz DDR3, GeForce GTX 660 2GB, OCZ Vertex3 120GB boot/OS with the same ARECA ARC-1222 eight disk RAID6 array which was also media/cache/export/previews.Laptop setup is approximately 268% faster than previous x58 desktop, new desktop is approximately 325% faster, due to faster processor/RAM. Data transfer speeds due to thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 3 is rediculous... Coming from average of 30Mbps to 1.5GBps is a world of difference.My x58 machine was not compatible with the NVMe 960 Evo, could not work with Thunderbolt 3, and even the SATA3 and USB3.0 it had were only marginally better than USB2.0 and SATAII speeds for data transfer, and sometimes worse. 24GB of RAM was adequate, and the i7 980x 6 core processor at 4Ghz was actually quite capable; I now use the i7 980x/Rampage III Gene and 24GB RAM, and Vertex 3 SSD as a home desktop/media center PC.I also have a brand new MSI GT73VR Titan Pro 4K 7RF i7 7820HK running at 4.3Ghz, GTX 1080, 4K G-Sync, 32GB 2400MHZ DDR4 RAM, Thunderbolt 3 laptop for mobile work, which replaced a very old Inspiron which was simply used to transfer media on site. I keep the laptop plugged in, and elevated about 2 inches from any table/surface with custom fan curves for clean, cool air intake, and added my own thermal pads to the 960 Evo and 850 Evo just in case, and I see no thermal throttling there as well.In the Titan Pro laptop, 850 Evo is OS/Programs, with 960 Evo set as media/cache/export/previews, same as the desktop, and now i can happily and easily edit on site/set, show clients raw footage vs quick edited preview, edit/batch RAW photos with presets from Photoshop I built on desktop/laptop after having calibrated the screens, work on it at home, and transfer the entire project via Thunderbolt 3 astoundingly fast when i get back to the office, and back to the laptop before i leave.Overall, the 960 Evo easily embarasses anything out there, including VERY pricey PCIe RAID setups with high end ARECA RAID controllers (borrowed an ARECA ARC-1880xi (?) With multidisk HDDs, then SSDs... disappointed.)If you have the capital and you use it for work or gaming, it's a no-brainer. These NVMe drives put SATA SSDs and HDDs firmly in the grave, and I won't bother buying anything else SATA related at this point; SATA is dead.Latency, spin up time, 3.5"/2.5"/1.8" size disks, and slow sustained performance are a thing of the past.Sadly, for you gamers, per MSI Afterburner, these systems only produce 59.9FPS in solitaire at 4k resolution on 60hz G-Sync 4k displays and a Samsung 4k 60Hz gaming-capable low latency 8000 series tv, which I attribute to the weak GTX 1080 graphics cards in them. You may have better luck with less demanding games like Far Cry Primal, GTAV, or Hitman, which my interns tell me stay locked at 60FPS on the same machines I just bought/built when they so generously stay after hours to 'quality test' the equipment for me, but it's certainly not the 960 Evo's bogging them down ;)