Western Digital 500GB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,400 MB/s - WDS500G2B0C

Bought this for my computer to use as a boot drive and for some games. Using M.2 has really sped up the load times of all games and software.

Good Quality and impressive performance !

I own several NVMe SSDs for my music production tower PC, and some are top speed, some are best for reading data such as game scenery or instruments libraries, and some are known for running cooler than others. This WD Blue falls into the category of decent speed, runs cooler than famed Samsungs and for the price you cannot beat it for extra storage. This WD Blue makes a great drive for reading a lot of data, not necessarily writing. The speeds are decent for reads, rated 2400mb/sec (pro drives hit about 3500mb/sec). Your regular SATA SSD which is just standard speed these days, no longer the amazingly fast drive, hit about 400MB/sec, so NVMe is the way to go. The write speeds on this drive come in about 1900mb/sec which is way faster than a SATA SSD but not like Pro drives that are about 30% more. However, motherboard buss speed makes a difference, so the two best uses for the budget Blue drives are: 1- Added storage for game scenery or MIDI instrument libraries, or anything that you stream in but dont necessarily write back to the drive 2-Replacement drive for a laptop if you need for storage or have a second NVMe slot. The Blue runs cooler, necessary for laptop environments. The slower write speed will not be an issue in a standard laptop, the buss speeds are generally slower than gaming towers. To install this drive as an extra drive in a tower you need a PCIe adapter. I use this one and it works great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01798WOJ0. It has the smaller PCIe x1 connector but you want to plug it into one of your long PCIe 3.0 X16/8/4 slots (it works even though the slot is so much longer). Look in your motherboard manual to see which slot runs at X4, its usually the 2nd or 3rd slot. You need X4 to get all the speed from the drive. Obviously keep your graphics card in the first PCIe slot, they almost always run at X16 which is necessary for GPUs.

Best bang for your buck, NVmE m.2 it’s 2280 and works well, for boot drive and a few games. I load in faster and have less texture pop up.

To be upfront, I currently have a pair of these as a read cache in my NAS, set to use less than half their max capacity to preserve both speed as well as longevity. Theyre doing fine in this role, and I honestly dont expect much of them, as the NAS is only connected over a 1gbe connection. If you were to stick them in your computer to use as a Steam drive or for your photos, music, movies, or whatever, it would be perfectly adequate (although the 500gig version would be a bit small to hold a digital games library; I think it could hold maybe 2 or three calls of duty, but 9-12 regular games). It would also be acceptable as a boot drive, though that does see a bit more writing than storage. You could also use this to store proxy files after overnight processing. Trying to use this as a write-destination for something like video editing or capture would be a fools dream, and you should wake up ashamed and confused for having had those dreams. While these are TLC drives (as far as I can tell), the write cache on them is insufficient for sustained writes. In general, I would recommend no one buy WD drives at this time, unless they are discounted (which is why I went with them), due to their recent trend of false and misleading marketing. I would not put it past them to imply QLC drives are TLC while charging TLC prices. Im not saying WD is filled with bad people doing bad things, but theyve done bad things and refused to admit to it until overwhelming evidence was brought to bear.

This Solid State Drive (SSD) card has a capacity of 500 GB and a sequential read speed of 2,400 MB/s. I selected it to replace the original SSD in an Acer Swift 3 Windows 10 laptop. That SSD had a capacity of 256 GB with a speed of 530 MB/s. The original needed upgrading because there were only 12 GB of available space left which left no room for additional applications or data, and the laptop performance was noticeably slower than when new. The instructions state that the drive is designed for professional installation so the hardware, software and instructions typically supplied with internal drive kits are not included. This is because SSD drives are not designed as simple plug and play replacements like mechanical drives. But, I had no problem replacing the SSD in the Acer Swift 3. First I created a complete backup image of the system on a USB drive. Then I removed the 12 star-socket fasteners with a special tool (not included) and carefully pried off the entire bottom panel of the laptop, removed two cross head fasteners, slid out the old board and replaced it with the new one, then put it back together. After installing the new SSD, I started the laptop with an external Windows install drive and then restored the backup. Another option would be to install the new SSD and manually install everything. The manufacturer’s support website also provides free software and instructions for other ways to move all data to the new SSD. The new drive provides the extra space I need with a dramatic increase in speed that it evident when starting, running apps, and copying files. Excellent performance.

Dont buy a gen 4 drive if you dont need to. This is plenty fast .... Especially as a boot drive .....

I was running out of space on my pc so i decided to get an SSD, A game I play called Rust, used to take around 5 mins to load into a server, now it loads in under 30 seconds! Very very easy to install, just plug it straight into an m.2 port and screw it in with the nvme ssd screws that come with your motherboard.

Stores all my games on this one. No problems

Nice and quick NVME drive, I have no complaints. Buy one, I dare you.