HP EX950 NMVe M.2 2TB SSD Review

When many of us think of the brand HP, you may think of a printer or a pre-built office system, but alas, you would only be half right. They’ve been making a substantial push into the high-end gaming market in recent years and have had some success with it too. Their latest M.2 SSD looks set to thrill gamers again, promising to be the ideal drive for eSports. That means faster performance and improved reliability but at a more affordable cost. eSports generally doesn’t require bleeding-edge gaming performance, but loading times and reliability are still crucial in competition. HP say this drive is ideal for upgrading a mainstream motherboard or gaming laptop.

“The HP EX950 M.2 SSD is suitable for mainstream eSports motherboards and is great for upgrading gaming laptops and improving the performance of games by accelerating game startup, map loading and scene changes.” – HP

One thing I am pleased to see is that this drive is actually manufactured under licence by BIWIN, a Chinese OEM with 25-years of experience to their name. They’re one of the few who actually manufacture their own drives rather than just design them, as it gives them more choice over the components used in each device vs your typical bulk OEMs who may simply change the sticker for each brand.

HP EX950

It’s certainly well equipped, featuring an M.2 interface over PCIe Gen3 x4, with NVMe 1.3 3D NAND, it can push around 32Gbps of bandwidth. Speeds should be in the region of 3500 MB/s Read and 2900 MB/s Write, which is pretty much maxing out the PCIe Gen3 interface. Furthermore, it’ll deliver 410K IOPS, comes with LDPC Error Correction, and it’s backed by a five-year warranty. So really, all that’s left to do is take a closer look and see how this drive performs!

Features

• KEEP REINVENTING, THE HP WAY: HP SSD EX950 M.2 – Top Performance for the Most Demanding
• READ WRITE SPEEDS: Sequential Read/Write Speeds up to 3500 MB/s / 2900 MB/s, an industry top leading reliability (MTBF) 2 Million Hours
• CONNECTIVITY: Supports PCIe Gen3 x4 interface, NVMe 1.3 with the ideal bandwidth of 32Gbps, 8 flash memory channels and large capacity DDR
• SUPERIOR DURABILITY: Equips LDPC error correction mechanism to enhance the drive’s longevity and reliability to meet the expectations of demanding users
• COMPATIBILITY: Designed to work with most Windows, Mac, and Android OS
• WORLD-CLASS QUALITY & SUPPORT: 650 TBW (Terabytes Written)

Specifications

What HP Had to Say

“HP EX950 M.2 is an eSports SSD with the best performance and a new generation ultra-high-performance storage device which supports PCle Gen3×4 interfaces and new version of NVME1.3 standard. With read and write speeds reaching up to 3500MB/s and 3000MB/s respectively, it fully satisfies the need of gamers, DIYers, overclocking masters or audio and video editors for ultra strong performance and reliability.”