Is my Acer Nitro 5 AN515-43 compatible with this Samsung SSD?

BunE

I thought buying an SSD was straightforward enough unfortunately there were a lot of variables that came into play in terms of compatibility. That aside is my laptop's model compatible with the Samsung MZ-V7S1T0BW 1TB 970 EVO Plus NVME M.2 Internal SSD?

Storage slots

Storage specs sheet

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/671142/is-my-acer-nitro-5-an515-43-compatible-with-this-samsung-ssd

As you can see from the list that you have attached, the specified M.2 drives for your AN515-43 are all PCIe Gen.3x2 and the 2.5" HDD or SSD's are SATA III 6GB/s types. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME M.2 (which I have upgraded in my AN515-56 is a PCIe 3 x4 as the AN515-56 can utilize the PCIe 3 x4 ) btw, this drive is exceptional as its got all the Samsung proven and dedicated software for cloning and fine tuning, I've used Samsun SSD's for over 5years and never ever had any problems with and they have worked 100% always, this just my opinion!

Now and by fitting this M.2 PCIe 3 x4 drive it will work 100% with your AN515-43 but, you will not be able to utilize the 970 EVO NVMe PCIe 3 x4 full read/write speeds as your AN515-43's has a M.2 interface is PCIe 3 x2 and that is slower (not by much as a matter of a fact its irrelevant) so you will only get a max read/write speeds of the PCIe3 x2 specs.

As you have attached Acer compatible drives for AN515-43 laptop drives, Acer only list all the M/2 compatible PCIe 3 x2 drives and only list the 2.5" SATA III 6GB/se mechanical drives for the AN515-43"s, so and if you can buy the M.2 PCIe 3 x2 drives listed above? Then buy them, as they are cheaper and more compatible with your AN515-43 laptop as Acer does not list any 2.5" SSD drives.

Below are some of the top 2.5" SSD drives that I've used, and they work perfectly and are fully compatible 2.5" SSD SATA III 6GB/s drives that you should look at and consider.

2.5" SSD compatible drives SATA III at 6GB/s, these are also 100% compatible also:

1. Samsung 870 EVO QVO 500GB to 8TB
2. Samsung 860 Pro up to 4 TB
3. Crucial AX500 500GB to 4TB
4. WD SSD SATA III 2.5"
5. Seagate SSD

BunE

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1145791#Comment_1145791

So the Samsung 970 is compatible with my PC but I can't use it's full capabilities? What is NVME is it a technology, and what about PCie 3x2 is it a conection type?

StevenGen

Yes, with the Samsung 970 that is a PCIe 3 x4 its lanes are quicker, and your AN515-43 will never utilize its max read/write speeds as your AN515-43 interface is PCIe 3 x2 but, SSDs are backward compatible with these older standards, but if you are seeing lower-than-expected performance it's important to verify your PCIe revision by reviewing your system or motherboard documentation from the manufacturer. Older standards, or systems where PCIe interfaces are using fewer data lanes as discussed in BIOS/UEFI Configuration for Optimizing M.2 PCIe®NVMe®SSDs, will reduce bandwidth and lower performance by at least half. The below table outlines maximum theoretical PCIe speeds by both PCIe generation and number of lanes but note that due to system overhead and other hardware characteristics, real word numbers will be about 15% lower, and not exceed the rated speeds of the storage device itself.

NVMe is a high-performance, NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access) optimized, and highly scalable storage protocol, that connects the host to the memory subsystem. The protocol is relatively new, feature-rich, and designed from the ground up for non-volatile memory media (NAND and Persistent Memory) directly connected to CPU via PCIe interface (See diagram #1). The protocol is built on high speed PCIe lanes. PCIe Gen 3.0 link can offer transfer speed more than 2x than that of SATA interface.