SSD for Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK?

dewi · 18 Aug 2019 at 14:52

I have a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK motherboard. I currently have two 128 GB SSDs and a 640 GB hard disk. I'm thinking of replacing the hard disk with an SSD. The largest SSD on Gigabyte's support list is a 512 GB Samsung XP941 MZ-HPU512T, which is no longer made. What would be the best SSD for this motherboard? I was thinking of a Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB or a Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB. I assume I may as well get a M.2 SSD as it's a similar price to a 2.5" SSD (£149.99 vs £142.43). Is there any point in spending more on the 970 EVO (£185.99 vs £149.99) with this old motherboard?

dewi · 18 Aug 2019 at 17:59

I see Overclockers are also selling the Crucial MX500 1TB M.2 SSD for £119.99, which seems like very good value for money.

Disco_P · 19 Aug 2019 at 11:48

Does your motherboard have an m.2 slot?

I cannot tell the difference between my 2012 sata ssd and new nvme drives with 5x faster sequential reads and writes. So I just stick to drives with really good warranties. 5 years is a must.

dewi · 19 Aug 2019 at 12:22

Yes, it does have an M.2 slot. I think the Crucial MX500 1TB M.2 seems like the best buy if I wouldn't see any real difference with a faster drive, as it's much cheaper than the Samsung 860 EVO.

dewi · 2 Sep 2019 at 11:12

I decided to buy a Crucial MX500 1TB M.2 SSD since it was the same price as a 2.5" SSD. I hadn't realised that I'd need to remove my CPU cooler to gain access to the M.2 slot, so I'm now waiting for OC to ship me some Arctic MX-4 thermal compound.

dewi · 8 Sep 2019 at 22:10

Well, that was easy. I inserted the M.2 SSD, clone the old drive, removed the old drive, rebooted and I was done.

Pulse · 8 Sep 2019 at 22:45

Been interested in doing similar to remove an old mechanical drive. What sort of speeds are you getting using the onboard M.2?

dewi · 21 Sep 2019 at 11:48

According to UserBenchmark, I'm getting 244 MB/s sequential read. I can't say I notice any difference in performance compared to the Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" SSD drive that it replaced, but I'm certainly appreciating the additional disk space. Any SSD is way faster than a mechanical drive. You'll notice a huge improvement in boot times and general responsiveness if you replace your boot drive with an SSD.