Is this SSD compatible with my motherboard?

Martin Ferenec · February 16, 2017

Im new to this M.2 SSD thing and I need help.

This is the SSD: http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960.html

I will buy 500 GB EVO

I have this motherboard: http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-X99-UD5-WIFI-rev-10#ov

Now. I think that it will work normally but Im not sure. Im also wondering how do this things heat up? Because if I buy a controller that goes into PCIe port (just like a GPU) then I can cool it with a fan or at least a heatsink.

Thank you for your help!

(If anyone has any info about power consumption between a M.2 SSD and HDD please share it with me. I have Asus G752VY and because the battery is non-removable and batt. life is sh*t... and I was thinking if it would help a little bit to replace the HDD with a M.2. Because the laptop still has one ssd space free. Laptop would be lighter, quieter and probably last few minutes longer.)

dany_boy · February 16, 2017

Its compatible no problems. It will heat up quite a bit, but not to the point of needing extra cooling unless you want to prevent throttling. for more details, I suggest you give this article a read: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review. They mention power consumption to be about 5 Watts

Martin Ferenec · February 16, 2017

3 minutes ago, dany_boy said:

Its compatible no problems. It will heat up quite a bit, but not to the point of needing extra cooling unless you want to prevent throttling. for more details, I suggest you give this article a read: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review. They mention power consumption to be about 5 Watts

Thank you very much for a fast reply

Mira Yurizaki · February 16, 2017

The thermal throttling issue is only really apparent if you really hammer the drive a lot. Under normal use it won't be a problem.

As far as power consumption goes, it's the same thing: you have to be hammering the drive. If all you do is browse the web while on the battery, your storage drives account less than 1% of the total power consumption on average.