On Sat, 27 Apr 2019 09:58:09 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

Further to the above upgrade I have been looking at M.2 NVME drives and
now find the prices quite attractive.
I am looking at 3 brands for about the same price range for a 512 GB
unit as follows.

HP EX 950
SRG SX8200
WD black SN750

Now I have to admit I have never looked at NVME drives much before so I
am kinda behind the curve on this, I have looked at piles of reviews and
these 3 all get excellent marks, so now I am torn between them and can't
decide which one to buy.
So if anyone out there has any preferences or warnings I would
appreciate their input, Thanks in advance.

I'm no help on the choices above because each of my m.2 drives is
Samsung. (I've had zero issues and personally won't be looking at other
brands.) You're starting out well, though, because you're specifying m.2
NVMe and not m.2 SATA. m.2 is only the form factor, where the numbers
that immediately follow refer to the drive's size in mm. I.e., m.2 2280
is 22mm wide and 80mm long. Whatever you decide, be sure your mobo
physically supports it. You'll need the standard m.2 socket, plus a hold
down screw at the desired distance from the socket. Also take a look at
the mobo manual because, typically, adding an m.2 drive will take away
some other capability, such as disabling one or two SATA ports or
stealing a couple of PCIe lanes from one of your PCIe slots. Make an
informed decision and you'll be fine.

One final note: the boot drive in my latest build is an m.2 NVMe, which
specs out at some crazy data transfer speed, but other than super fast
boot times you'll very quickly become accustomed to it such that it no
longer seems 'fast'. It just seems normal, as if things have always been
that way. Even so, I wouldn't go back to vanilla SATA.