Hi there,
I am going to get an SK Hynix Gold P31 either 512GB or !TB…It’s supposed to be the best for a laptop…Have anyone ever heard of the SSD drive? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
This is why most have not heard of them, till recently –
SK hynix is one of the major DRAM and NAND flash memory manufacturers, but for years they’ve had little to no presence in the retail consumer SSD market and have focused primarily on the OEM market.
That started to change last year when they launched their Gold S31 SATA SSDs, but that wasn’t really enough to establish SK hynix as an important brand for consumer SSDs. At CES in January, they previewed NVMe SSDs: the Gold P31 and Platinum P31.
Sata SSD or PCIe NVMe Gen3 M.2 2280 ?
SATA SSD
Sequential read speeds up to 560MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 525MB/s. 
.
PCIe NVMe Gen3 M.2 2280
Read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 3,200 MB/s 
*(based on PCIe Gen3 SSD)
Tip: If you buy from Amazon, they have a great FREE return policy, (if you select the wrong type M,2 device for your PC/Laptop - like I did for my Acer Nitro 5 (2nd slot is only PCIe)
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them.
I just bought a new SSD for MSFS in my laptop. I was tossing up between a Samsung 970 Evo+ and the WD Black SN750.
Ended up going with a 2TB Samsung. Partly because they’re supposed to run ever so slightly cooler, but also Samsung’s reputation in the SSD game is hard to beat.
A mainstream choice? Yes, but I still couldn’t be happier with it.
Never heard of them, but the premise you are operating on may be wrong if you are gaming on a laptop and expect it to be expandable. I use my laptop for every day tasks like writing documents, browsing the web etc and my gaming box for playing games since it can be expanded and offers more options to do so.
Basically If you buy a gaming laptop, you probably need to buy a new one when the old one isn’t enough, i wouldn’t buy one even if i had €1000000 in the bank, it’s just a waste of money.
(I also went with Samsung SSDs).
NVMe is, as mentioned /far/ faster than an SSD (check the loading times on ps5 for a clear example). I also agree with the laptop gaming comments - it’s a very expensive and underwhelming hobby.
As @N6722C mentioned, SK Hynix is a well experienced chip manufacturer and around in the business since the 1980s. I have never used one of their SSDs sold under their own name but from what you can read on the internet those are exactly as good as you would expect them to be from such a heavyweight of the industry.
My mistake for not mentioning that I just bought a new up to date laptop (HP Envy 15-ep0098nr) and I’m at error that instead of ssd it’s an NVMe drive.
An NVMe drive is basically an SSD. The main differences between the different types of SSD are connection/controller. The older types run over the SATA bus while NVMe utilizes PCIe. Which makes higher speeds possible.
I am just learning this (my mistakes), but the Slot for the M.2 Ram device, might support 2 different types, ie PCIe or SATA.
In my Acer Nitro 5, the 1st slot can support PCIe or SATA
The 2nd slot can only support PCIe
The laptop came with #1 slot fitted with a nice fast Kingston PCIe type. (could have been Sata 
)
The 2nd Slot, that I purchased a 1G Drive, HAD to be PCIe (which is good, as it is faster than than Sata by about x6 
)
I think I have that right. ??
What really threw me was that the Bios needed updating, to support the 2nd slot !!!
No indication that that was necessary, Why put a Bios in the laptop that does not support its internal slots ??? Go Figure.
Anyway, its all working nicely now … (apart from the Bios not supporting Legacy Boot … something else that was not in any Acer Documentaion !! Grrrrrrrrr )
You’re right. M.2 can provide PCIe or SATA. There’s a little more to it.
Care to share that Little more … Please
Not sure if I can contribute anything useful.
According to Google searches :-
An M. 2 SSD will support either SATA or PCIe, but not both at the same time. …
**The PCIe interface is faster, as the SATA 3.0 spec is limited to ~600MB/s maximum speed, while PCIe Gen 2 x2 lanes is capable of up to 1000MB/s, Gen 2 x4 lanes is capable of up to 2000MB/s, and Gen 3 x4 lanes of up to 4000MB/s.
You can use M. 2 or NVMe & SATA SSD, both at the same time. After installing the SSDs into respective spaces on the motherboard.
see also Can you connect an M.2 SATA to an M.2 NVMe port? - Super User
Very little real world difference between a SATA ssd and even the fastes Gen4 Nvmes.
What do you base that rather strange statement on ???
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I am using the SK Hynix P31 in a desktop for MSFS 2020 and it seems to work great so far over the past few months. Coming from a SATA 3 Crucial SSD, I saw a significant reduction in load times (between a third to half) and slightly fewer stutters when loading cached scenery. I would highly recommend this or the Samsung 970 Evo Plus. I haven’t tried the newer PCIE 4.0 drives but those are supposed to be a step change as well according to the benchmarks.
I run the sim on a dedicated, standard, 5200 RPM 2.5 inch hard drive. There are 8 of them in my PC on a PCIe SATA port card that I added to avoid paying for storage when I had plenty of recycled laptop hard drives on hand. Aside from my SATA 128GB SSD boot drive, it’s great. Anyhow, while my flight load times are ridiculous, the in-flight sim behavior is not affected at all versus an SSD, so I figured I’ll just save the money for now. I run the sim on generic “high” settings, 1080P, with these specs:
Gen 8 Core i7, GTX 1060 3GB, 32GB DDR4 2400MHz
Some of the most MSFS sim fun for the least invested. I even bought the base version only.
I use Samsung 970 Pro 1 TB, M.2 SSD For my OS and this sim.
Hardly strange.
Watch some videos on game loading times compared between SATA and NVME drives.
Have you had any crash to desktop when flying on detailed areas? I have a very similar setup to yours and keeps crashing whenever I fly airliners in Canada. I was starting to blame it on my slow 5200rpm HDD but I’m not sure.