PNY XLR8 CS3030 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), Read up to 3,500

This was my first attempt at using this type of Drive and I have to say this thing blows all SATA drives out of the water!! Super quick response times and an epic 1tb all in a chip the size of a small ram card. No real moving parts means no breakdowns. I’ll need to purchase the next models for my next laptop if I ever even have the need for one.

I installed this as an upgrade to a SATA SSD and performance is exactly what you want from a Gen3 NVMe drive, especially at the price point. It's competitive performance-wise with low-to-midrange Gen4 drives. Installation is a snap. PNY is a reputable brand.Pros: Performance and value, ease of installationCons: Ships with 512ke firmware instead of 4KN mode which will provide a small hit to performance unless the part is reflashed. PNY had a tiny "scandal" a while back for quietly reducing the specified write durability of this product series after announcement.

This is my two week review, but the drive has been fantastic. Doesn't ship with a screw for mounting, so buy one if you don't have one.I was able to replicate the advertised speeds in diskmark and gaming with it has been great. I am very happy with the price, speeds, and capacity.Just to address this, flash cells performs better when hot and heat increases the lifespan. The controller throttles itself when it gets too hot. I haven't been able to get it hot enough for throttling (benchmarking got it to 60C and gaming is usually around 50C. It throttles speeds at 70C) so I would not recommend a heatsink for this drive.

This is for the PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB M.2 Gen3x4 NVMe SSD.This is a great value NVMe drive that competes with the best from Samsung for significantly less money. The 1TB model has 1GB of DRAM cache, and I believe all capacities of this model have at least some DRAM cache, which is better than similar drives from some other manufacturers.In CrystalMark, I'm getting sequential reads and writes of around 3.2GBps. This is even on an NVMe adapter card on an unsupported motherboard with a custom bios to support it. Running on a native M.2 Gen3x4 slot on a newer board may yield better results.Also, for anyone using an aftermarket or motherboard-included heatsink, the sticker peels off cleanly.I really couldn't ask for much more at this price. Good size cache, good price to capacity ratio, good controller, great speeds.