Storage/Games M2 SSD

Muntyness · 20 Nov 2021 at 20:43

Right, so to preface, I've never installed an m2 ssd before so I kinda need some advice.

So I've got a MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard and apparently it has a M2 slot in it. Now I was to get a new SSD mostly for games (thanks gamepass

) and other storage, as such I was thinking of getting a WD Blue SN550 2TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (S200T2B0C) or a Crucial P2 2TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 NVMe Solid State Drive P2 2TB M.2 2280 and I wanted to know which one would be the most reliable (I'm leaning towards the WD drive though).

Plus, having never installed an M2 before - would it be registered like any other drive? (I mean would it come up as Drive D or E or whatever or would it try to take the Drive C spot? Basically can I treat it like slapping in any other HDD) Or would it cause problems because Windows isn't going to be installed on it?

Joxeon · 21 Nov 2021 at 01:15

I'd go for the SN550.

Wooden Law / Black · 21 Nov 2021 at 12:16

The difference between the SN550 and the P2 is that the P2 is QLC while the SN550 not (TLC), so this latter has better endurance and performance, but for games even QLC-based drives are good, so I would pick the cheapest one.

DD_Crash · 21 Nov 2021 at 14:22

M2 will show up as a drive and windows will give it a letter

Snapshot · 21 Nov 2021 at 17:39

I'd have a look at the prices of WD Black SN750s as they're very good at the moment.

You'll probably need to go into Disk Manager to initialise it then create a partition and finally format it. You can select the drive letter when you start the format. It's exactly the same as adding a SATA drive.

Muntyness · 22 Nov 2021 at 01:13

Thanks for the replies guys - especially the about the install of the m2.

I'm gonna go with the WD Blue. The Black looks nice - but even with the current sale the price is a bit too much to justify ^_^;;

Muntyness · 24 Nov 2021 at 18:22

Whelp I've now installed the WD M2 Drive, and apart from repeatedly dropping the screw, install was easy.

You were right though @Snapshot I did have to initialise and partition it before it showed up in Explorer.