Upgrading my old Dell XPS15 9550 - will a newer nvme SSD work?

[sodfather]

Hey everyone

 

I'm looking to do some upgrades to my laptop as it is showing it's age a bit now.

 

When I bought the laptop I wrote down that I wanted to upgrade to a Samsung 970 Pro. At the time this had eye-watering speeds of 3,500/27,000 mbs read and write.

 

Anyways, now it's 5(!) years later and I'm finally getting around to it, but it looks like for the same price or cheaper you can get nvme drives that will do full-on-eyes-crying speeds of 7000 mbs.

 

Specifically the WD Black SN850, but is it compatible with my older laptop/can it handle all that extra speed or am I wasting my money?

 

TL;DR - should I get the Samsung 970 Pro M.2 2280 nmve SSD or the WD Black SN850 M.2 2280 for my Dell XPS15 9550?

 

 

Samsung 970 PRO 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-V7P1T0) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CGGRYVT/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_Z95C2306AZCF7KQMEXJ8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

WD_BLACK SN850 1TB NVMe Internal Gaming SSD; PCIe Gen4 Technology, up to 7000 MB/s read speeds, M.2 2280 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08KFS6THF/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_XF8P8RK4N8MDZ43WZT97?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

 

 

[Wolly9102]

 

1 hour ago, sodfather said:

Hey everyone

 

I'm looking to do some upgrades to my laptop as it is showing it's age a bit now.

 

When I bought the laptop I wrote down that I wanted to upgrade to a Samsung 970 Pro. At the time this had eye-watering speeds of 3,500/27,000 mbs read and write.

 

Anyways, now it's 5(!) years later and I'm finally getting around to it, but it looks like for the same price or cheaper you can get nvme drives that will do full-on-eyes-crying speeds of 7000 mbs.

 

Specifically the WD Black SN850, but is it compatible with my older laptop/can it handle all that extra speed or am I wasting my money?

 

TL;DR - should I get the Samsung 970 Pro M.2 2280 nmve SSD or the WD Black SN850 M.2 2280 for my Dell XPS15 9550?

 

 

Samsung 970 PRO 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-V7P1T0) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CGGRYVT/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_Z95C2306AZCF7KQMEXJ8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

WD_BLACK SN850 1TB NVMe Internal Gaming SSD; PCIe Gen4 Technology, up to 7000 MB/s read speeds, M.2 2280 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08KFS6THF/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_XF8P8RK4N8MDZ43WZT97?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

 

 

Get the 970. Even the EVO variant is enough. And it saves some extra money. Your laptop can't make use of the SN850 speeds since it only supports PCIe3 (up to 3500). 

[Rauten]

The WD you're looking at is PCIe Gen4, which your laptop doesn't support; your laptop can do PCIe Gen3.
The drive will work, but will do so at lower speeds than advertised.

 

What is your current drive, and why do you want to upgrade it? For most standard use cases, any old sata SSD will do enough. If you already have a sata or nvme SSD and you don't do anything with the laptop that can actually take advantage of the speed (video editing, for example), you won't really notice much of a difference during normal daily use.

[sodfather]

 

8 hours ago, Rauten said:

The WD you're looking at is PCIe Gen4, which your laptop doesn't support; your laptop can do PCIe Gen3.
The drive will work, but will do so at lower speeds than advertised.

 

What is your current drive, and why do you want to upgrade it? For most standard use cases, any old sata SSD will do enough. If you already have a sata or nvme SSD and you don't do anything with the laptop that can actually take advantage of the speed (video editing, for example), you won't really notice much of a difference during normal daily use.

That's helpful, thank you.

 

The reason I'm upgrading is that I use the laptop as a media server/streamer for hi-res music and FLAC files, and I'd like better speeds and storage space.

[sodfather]

8 hours ago, Wolly9102 said:

 

Get the 970. Even the EVO variant is enough. And it saves some extra money. Your laptop can't make use of the SN850 speeds since it only supports PCIe3 (up to 3500). 

Ironically the WD is much cheaper in my country