SSD for Aspire 5 A515-46-R14K

Peludo

Can anyone verify that this SSD from Samsung (SAMSUNG (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB - M.2 NVMe) is compatible with A515-46-R14K?  If anyone has a suggestion for a better SSD for this machine please let me know.

ttttt

@Peludo

I have the same A515-46-R14k laptop. You  can basically use almost any PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD in the market (but some may be slower). The stock 128 GB Kingston M.2 NVMe SSD is still O.K. for me, even though the seq. write speed is just about 630 MB/s (way below the app. 2400 MB/s+ of high end drives standard). Its seq. read speed is still up to par (about 3,200 MB/s). Since I don't have much data to be written on it and mostly using the laptop for streaming, I have no intention to replace it in the near future. However, I added heat sink to this 128 GB Kingston drive. Don't know if you noticed the temperature is rather high ( 45+ degree C when idle).

WD SN 750 Black and Samsung 970 EVO Pro, 980 are high end drives with good reputations.
Silicon Power A80 is worth considering for good value.
SK Hynix Gold P31 is also a good drive to be considered.
Get the one with the capacity that you want.

All of these drives have seq. read close to 3,400 MB/s and seq. write of 2,400 MB/s+. Other than the Samsung 980, I have all of these drives and are happy about them.

Be prepared to buy an external NVMe adapter for cloning the Kingston drive to the new drive.

brummyfan2

Hi,
Yes, you can use a M.2 NVMe SSD in this model, Samsung 980 1TB you have mentioned is a PCIe 3.0x4 SSD, so it should work without any issues but your laptop may have only 2 lanes enabled for PCI Express Root Port, so it will run at half the speed advertised by the manufacurer(Samsung).
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/980-pcie-3-0-nvme-gaming-ssd-1tb-mz-v8v1t0b-am/
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/45218630

ttttt

@Peludo

I have the same A515-46-R14k laptop. You  can basically use almost any PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD in the market (but some may be slower). The stock 128 GB Kingston M.2 NVMe SSD is still O.K. for me, even though the seq. write speed is just about 630 MB/s (way below the app. 2400 MB/s+ of high end drives standard). Its seq. read speed is still up to par (about 3,200 MB/s). Since I don't have much data to be written on it and mostly using the laptop for streaming, I have no intention to replace it in the near future. However, I added heat sink to this 128 GB Kingston drive. Don't know if you noticed the temperature is rather high ( 45+ degree C when idle).

WD SN 750 Black and Samsung 970 EVO Pro, 980 are high end drives with good reputations.
Silicon Power A80 is worth considering for good value.
SK Hynix Gold P31 is also a good drive to be considered.
Get the one with the capacity that you want.

All of these drives have seq. read close to 3,400 MB/s and seq. write of 2,400 MB/s+. Other than the Samsung 980, I have all of these drives and are happy about them.

Be prepared to buy an external NVMe adapter for cloning the Kingston drive to the new drive.

Peludo

Thank you brummyfan2 and tttt.

My intention for additional hard drive space is just to have more storage.  I wasn't planning to move the operating system to the new SSD.  Can I just add the new SSD and have it become a separate drive so I don't have to clone the Kingston drive and all that jazz? 

Please let me know if I am completely wrong here! Thanks.

ttttt

@Peludo

If you really don't want to change the Kingston M.2 NVMe SSD, there is still an open space/slot for 2.5" SATA3 SSD/HDD. Use the adapter and the connector cable that came with your A515-46-R14k. I have also added a 500GB WD Blue SATA3 SSD to my laptop.

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-500GB-SSD-WDS500G2B0A/dp/B073SBZ8YH/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=wd+500gb+SATA3+SSD&qid=1632034558&s=electronics&sr=1-3

You can buy the data drive with the capacity that you want.

ttttt

@Peludo

Go to Youtube and Type " A515-46" in the search field, there may be some videos on how to do hardware upgrades to this laptop.
Very helpful in preventing mistakes while doing upgrades.