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Summary of Choices for Name Brand 500/512 GB NVMe Drives

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trs96

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Here are a couple of alternatives to the Samsung EVO Plus - NVMe drives that won't have issues with macOS. The WD Black is 500 GB and the HP is 512 GB but larger sizes are available. Both will perform fairly close to the EVO Plus but cost significantly less and still have 5 year warranties. The HP EX950 is the best price per GB selling at 78 USD. If you simply want a fast low cost macOS boot drive then get that. I'm using an HP EX900 as a boot drive for Mojave 10.14.4. Trim was automatically enabled and it's seen as an Apple SSD in System Information. Most sata based 2.5" 500GB SSDs cost nearly this much money.

414157


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https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820326205

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MZG2LF7/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Western Digital WD BLACK SN750
1558045599655.png
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250109
Has 15 reviews on Newegg with an average of 5 eggs. Owners of these really like them.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MH2P5ZD/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

So even though the HP and WD NVMe drives are not in the Buyer's Guide and aren't made by Samsung, you can still use them for your macOS system drive. These are large companies with a long history and stellar reputation. They will honor their 5 year warranties if you ever have a problem with the drive. Some report that the WD runs cooler than the 970 EVO and also draws less power too.

Here's a post by an Amazon reviewer that owns the WD Black NVMe drive:
The reason I bought the WD Black 500GB instead of another 970 EVO is the power consumption and heat. The WD Black 500GB uses a lot less power and stays about 5C cooler despite being put in a worse place in the case. My case has two M.2. slots one in a nice place at the bottom of the board close to good cooling which is where I put the 970 EVO. The other slot is in the middle of the board sitting in a horrible place between the cpu and video card. I am actually quite amazed that the WD Black stays as cool as it does.

The best Deal on the Samsung 970 Pro right now is on Amazon and Newegg. $159 for a 512 GB version. This will have the most durabiltiy over the long haul. If you will use it as a "scratch drive" in a video editing system, the Pro is the best choice. It will hold up to heavy reading and writing of large files on a regular basis. Adding a heatsink to it is a good idea in those kind of scenarios.
1558047095135.png
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C8Y31G2/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147693
 
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Just to buttress what you've said about the HP EX950, it's a really good drive. I've installed it, and I'm using it right now. It's actually faster than my old Samsung 960 Pro. I have it and a 1TB HP EX920, and both perform very nicely, and are available at very competitive prices (look for sales).
 
If you don't need a large 500-512 GB boot drive Newegg is selling the EX920 256GB NVMe drive for $40 on sale.
Why buy a 500 MB/s Sata based SSD when this costs so little and gives you close to 3GB/s read speeds ?

Screen Shot 6.jpg

Even if you have an older Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge or Haswell based system you can still boot from an NVMe drive. Simply buy an adapter and put it in a PCIe x4 or x8 slot if you have one open. You'll need to have Clover installed on another Sata based drive in your system and the NvmExpress-DXE driver installed in Drivers64-UEFI for this to work. You can see what I did to install one into my old Dell Optiplex 9010. This is Ivy Bridge based. No support in BIOS for booting from NVMe drives.

 
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Will HP EX950 work in laptop hackintosh as a boot drive? Planning to do shopping in few days.
 
Will HP EX950 work in laptop hackintosh as a boot drive? Planning to do shopping in few days.
Depends on how new the latpop is and whether it has an NVMe slot onboard and also the length of NVMe it supports.
 
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