Fastest line of notebook SSDs available right now?

[92GTA]

Hey everyone, I have an Acer Aspire E5-575G-76YK I use for Qubes Linux. Other users will know this is a resource hungry OS with all of its VMs running and I'm a power user who has a lot more going on than most. I have 32GB of the lowest latency RAM I could find (Kingston HyperX Impact) and now I'm looking to upgrade the SSD.

Money no object, what is the absolute quickest line of notebook SSDs currently available on the market as of today? Specs say I have a SATA 3 interface. I'd like to get a 2TB ideally, but a 1TB will do if the 2TB are too expensive or not available, I currently only have the factory 256GB SSD. A few months ago I was looking at a Samsung SSD (the 850 Pro I think?) but even at the time, it was a year or two as a model if I recall correctly.

Looking forward to suggestions, thanks!

EDIT: It looks like the only thing faster than the Samsung 850 Pro series is the Corsair Neutron XTi. Is that the consensus here too?

1TB Samsung 850 Pro - ~$359.95
960GB Corsair Neutron XTi - ~$419.40

Worth the price difference you think? Money no object, but I don't want to just waste money if it's not worth it in performance.

EDIT 2: I've decided to go with the Samsung. The Corsair is only a tiny bit faster in sequential tests, but Samsung is faster in Iometer and 4K-64 random tests I've read online. Not worth the premium it looks like.

 

[HankB]

Another option would be to see if you could replace the DVD drive with a cradle for a second SSD. You could then run it in RAID0 (striped) with the system drive and get better performance than any single SATA drive. A pair of 1 TB Samsungs would get you 2TB.

I believe the Samsung drives are well regarded around here.

Another alternative would be to upgrade the laptop to one that supports (and comes with) a much faster NVME drive.

 

[92GTA]

Well, the laptop I have already has internal support for 2 drives however I consider it "mission critial". As such, even tho I make consistent backups, I don't want to risk possible data corruption running RAID0. If anything, I would do RAID1 but I don't feel the need to even do that.

Glad to hear Samsung is liked.

I searched extremely hard for this very specific model notebook just for it's exemplary Linux compatibility. Perhaps when something newer comes along I feel is just as robust with equal compatibility, I'll look to be sure it supports NVME SSDs.

Thanks!

 

[Woomack]

Crucial MX500 seems as fast if not faster than Samsung 850 Pro while it's available up to 2TB in reasonable price. It's new drive so I'm not sure if there are any "early product issues". So far 1TB version which I have is working fine.

 

[92GTA]

Good to know. I did come across that model. For some reason in my mind, because I'm old lol, I just equate Crucial with "cheap". I realize that may not be the case today as it was 20 years ago, but it's still sorta my perception. The positive feedback on the Samsung was just overwhelmingly good. I pulled the trigger on one yesterday.

 

[Johan45]

Does that model have the M.2 slot as well? If you can't find the specs it's easily visible under the big access cover on the bottom.

 

[92GTA]

According to specs, the wireless controller is M.2 and the 256GB hard drive in it now is an M.2 SATA.

Hmm, now that I think about it, how can the HD be M.2 when it's a SATA? Last I checked, they were 2 different bus interfaces. Guess I am getting old and haven't been keeping up with standards :/

UPDATE: I have 4 PCI Express slots;. the 940MX, the wifi adapter, the card reader and ethernet, and an empty one. The empty one is 3.0 with maximum link width of 2x.

So some digging on the Acer forum says that I need PCIe 3.0x4 for a proper functioning NVME SSD but my model only has PCIe 3.0x2. So in short, I *could* use an NVME SSD and it would be faster than the M.2 SATA, but won't be as fast as it could be due to the interface bottleneck. It would be 3x faster than M.2 SATA but only half of what it should be.

 

[Johan45]

Technically yes but would require a PCIe interface card as well then cross your fingers and hope it works.
The M.2 sata drives run through the sata bus.

 

[92GTA]

Gotcha.

So you are saying that if I opened the SATA drive I would find inside an M.2 SSD? They just throw an M.2 SSD inside a 2.5" SATA HD enclosure basically?

 

[Johan45]

NO, there's a spot for a 2.5" drive and also an M.2 interface on that board. If you open it up it's the big access point in the centre the SSD goes to the left under the smaller access point

 

[petteyg359]

Gotcha.

So you are saying that if I opened the SATA drive I would find inside an M.2 SSD? They just throw an M.2 SSD inside a 2.5" SATA HD enclosure basically?

M.2 just defines the physical interface. It says nothing about the protocol running over those wires.