Type of SSD for Aspire 5, A515-56

I have just purchased an Aspire 5, A515-56 with 1 TB HDD about 15 days back, I want to put a 128GB SSD in it, because it is running very slow and hangs, the description in the acer website says:

Supports up to1 TB SSD, PCIe Gen3 8 Gb/s up to 4 lanes, NVMe

is it a normal SSD or a different one, by normal I mean the ones that have M.2 written in the description. I called the service center for the same and was told to get SSD (my preferred brand) and they will put it. And while searching I found only M.2 SSDs. So can someone please help and tell what kind of SSD should I buy, is the M.2 and the PCLe NVMe SSD same ?

Sorry for such a naive question, I don't have much technical knowledge.

Accepted answers

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@RahulJoshi

What is your full model number? As far as I know A515-56 should come with at least 128 GB of PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD.

Maybe some models will come with 1 TB old style HDD. If so, it may run slow, but should not hang. Or you pay a higher price for a 1 TB gen3 M.2 NVMe SSD?

My friend, M.2 drives and PCIe NVMe SSD is basically the same thing. M.2 is the type of connecting slot used.
However, there is something called M.2 SATA SSD, which is different and slower (with the speed of 2.5" SATA3 SSD), and use "B+M" key. That is something you DON'T want to get.

If you download and run Crystal Disk Info, it should tell you if you are currently using an old style spinning HDD ( will list the RPM), or indicates the drive is NVMe type.

Assuming you are using 1 TB old style spinning HDD, then you should buy at least a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD with sequential read speed close to 3,400 MB/s ( there are so many of them , some x2 models will get to 1,700 MB/s , some even x4 models just get 2,400 MB/s) with capacity of your choice.

I have several 500 GB gen 3 (PCIe 3.0) x 4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The best value one is the Silicon Power A80 model, while WD SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO, SK Hynix P31 are also good. All of these can achieve close to 3,400 MB/s, with 2280 form factor and use "M" key.

I suppose you are not trying to get the 2.5" SATA3 SSD, right?

Don't forget to buy thin heat sink (usually one piece type, fixed with silicone bands for laptops) for the PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD too, as they may run hot under load.

All comments

ttttt

@RahulJoshi

What is your full model number? As far as I know A515-56 should come with at least 128 GB of PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD.

Maybe some models will come with 1 TB old style HDD. If so, it may run slow, but should not hang. Or you pay a higher price for a 1 TB gen3 M.2 NVMe SSD?

My friend, M.2 drives and PCIe NVMe SSD is basically the same thing. M.2 is the type of connecting slot used.
However, there is something called M.2 SATA SSD, which is different and slower (with the speed of 2.5" SATA3 SSD), and use "B+M" key. That is something you DON'T want to get.

If you download and run Crystal Disk Info, it should tell you if you are currently using an old style spinning HDD ( will list the RPM), or indicates the drive is NVMe type.

Assuming you are using 1 TB old style spinning HDD, then you should buy at least a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD with sequential read speed close to 3,400 MB/s ( there are so many of them , some x2 models will get to 1,700 MB/s , some even x4 models just get 2,400 MB/s) with capacity of your choice.

I have several 500 GB gen 3 (PCIe 3.0) x 4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The best value one is the Silicon Power A80 model, while WD SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO, SK Hynix P31 are also good. All of these can achieve close to 3,400 MB/s, with 2280 form factor and use "M" key.

I suppose you are not trying to get the 2.5" SATA3 SSD, right?

Don't forget to buy thin heat sink (usually one piece type, fixed with silicone bands for laptops) for the PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD too, as they may run hot under load.

RahulJoshi

Thanks for the reply, it did answered my query.

And yes my laptop has 1TB old style spinning HDD and based on your recommendation I have shortlisted two SSDs: Samsung 970EVO Plus and WD SN550 both 250GB one.
Amazon.in: Buy Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB PCIe NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-V7S250) Online at Low Prices in India | Samsung Reviews & Ratings

Amazon.in: Buy Western Digital WD SN550 250GB NVMe Internal SSD - 2400MB/s R, 950MB/s W, (WDS250G2B0C, Blue) Online at Low Prices in India | Western Digital Reviews & Ratings

You said to look for sequential read speed close to 3,400 MB/s, so isn't write speed that important ?

Also performance wise which is good, to have a 250GB SSD for os and 1TB HDD for data or to have a single 512GB or 1TB SSD for both os and data, for normal day to day use with no heavy gaming or no heavy graphic based application but with lots of net surfing and full day MS Office use ?

Is this the type of heat sink you suggested ?

Amazon.in: Buy DFine Heatsink for M.2 / M2 SSD NVME/SATA Universal Upto 2280 with Silicone Thermal Cooling Gel Pad (Silver) - 1 Unit Online at Low Prices in India | DFine Reviews & Ratings

ttttt

@RahulJoshi

I am glad that I helped you and you accepted my comment as the Accepted Answer.

The WD SN 550 drive from your link is just that type I mentioned has 2,400 MB/s read speed. The PCIe 3.0 motherboard can support performance close to 3,400 MB/s, why settle for something that much slower and just a little bit savings. That was the reason I chose WD SN750 Black over this WD SN550 model. Currently, I use the Silicon Power A80 drive as boot drive in my other Acer desktop, and this desktop I consider it as a primary PC that I use everyday.

I believe write speed is not as important as read speed. Everyday once the PC power on, it starts reading from the SSD, while people write a particular file or copy files less frequently. Even so, you can hardly tell the time difference if the file isn't too big (in the multi-GB range). All of the drives that I mentioned in the previous comment have seq. write speed of 1,600+ MB/s, which is already pretty fast. I do not know about other people, but for my real life usages ( surfing internet, video streaming, Acer Community comments, E-mails, pay bills etc...) just do not have much chances demanding high speed writing. The only times I needed high speed writing was when I compiled videos and copied 40GB data in one chunk from drive to drive. Anyway, those two cases were for testing purpose only, not that I really needed. For those people who do frequent, large file copying then writing speed is more important, but not for me.

I'll suggest using M.2 NVMe SSD for OS and then format the 1TB HDD for data only later. You will see it is a real BIG performance boost using the M.2 NVMe SSD. Using 1TB SSD for both OS and data will have best performance, but the cost will be higher. Since the 1TB HDD is already there, just use it.

Let me tell you my recent experience:

Last month I just bought an Aspire 5 A515-46-R14K. This laptop is very good, and it came with a Kingston 128GB NVMe SSD. This is a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD having seq. read close to 3,300 MB/s (for NVMe SSD less than 1 TB, do not expect full speed like the 1 TB model, as less cache being used, there is always some discount in performance). The sequential write of this Kingston drive is just ~600 MB/s, that is terrible, just little faster than 2.5" SATA3 type of SSD.
However, in real life usage, this laptop just boots and shutdowns just as fast as my best desktop (11th gen Intel CPU i5-11500, PCIe 4.0 motherboard and PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD with seq. read close to 7,000 MB/s), because not much writing to do everyday. Before I bought the laptop, I had full intention to upgrade it to a 500GB gen 3 Silicon Power M.2 SSD, but now, I am satisfied with it and only will upgrade if the drive close to fill up ( don't know when it will happen, I'll most likely use an external HDD to save the data if storage space running low).

Since you have 11th gen CPU with your laptop, I think "IF" the laptop uses PCIe 4.0 motherboard, you probably can use gen 4 SSD too.

Yes, that is the type of heat sink that I recommended. In my 40GB data copying test, I was using the SSD without heatsink. In the first 10 GB the write speed was ~1,200 MB/s ( I was using the stock WD SN 520 x2 M.2 SSD), and all of a sudden the speed dropped to ~110 MB/s. That is called Thermal Throttling. When the SSD approaching overheating temperature the protective mechanism kicked in to slow down the writing process to protect the SSD from damage. That is the reason I suggested you to get a heat sink. Due to the cluttered space in a laptop, people cannot use full size heat sink. One weak point for this kind of heat sink is that the silicone bands may not be durable. Some people use polyimide tape instead of the silicone bands.
I just ordered heat sink and polyimide tape for my Kingston M.2 SSD and another 4GB RAM to ensure dual channel RAM performance today.

Good Computing!

RahulJoshi

Thank you for providing all this information, now I am pretty confident that, if in future also I need to buy an SSD I will be able to buy it with full confidence.

And, yes I found a WD SN750 250 GB SSD, which I think, I will prefer over the Samsung 970 EVO plus.
Amazon.in: Buy Western Digital WD Black PCIe NVMe SSD, 3100MB/s R, 1600MB/s W, 5 Y Warranty, 250GB Online at Low Prices in India | Western Digital Reviews & Ratings

In addition to knowing about SSD, I also learned about dual channel RAM through your comment.

So thank you once again.

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