Thinkpads Forum

I have a P51s on order (my last Thinkpads were a T60p and T43p bought new in 2006/2007 and still running to this day) and plan on replacing the spinning 500Gb HD with a 512Gb Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD via the mobility kit also on order. Looking at the specs of the P51s it appears the PCIe interface cannot take full advantage of the 960 Pro I have on order. I am wondering if I should instead purchase the 960 EVO SSD as this may be a better match for the system. I don't see any reason to buy a drive that is faster than the system it is installed in. This will also allow me to upgrade to 1TB since the EVO line is cheaper. Is my assessment technically accurate or have I missed something here. Thanks. Nice to be back into new Thinkpads again.

Ive used both EVOs and PROs and just get the EVO. Regardless of the performance thing, the EVO is unnoticably slower.

Lenovo appears to be doing everything they can to dissuade customers from buying the t570/P51 laptops with a standard herd drive and ordering the upgrade parts from Encompass. I have has the required enclosure and cable for the m.2 SSD upgrade on order for over a month and the ship date keeps getting pushed back. I know Lenovo has the parts because you can order the laptop preconfigured with the m.2 SSD parts installed in 5-7 days. Glad I also ordered the P51 which is a better machine and closer to the traditional Thinkpad in terms of build and configuration.

My understanding is that the P51S only dedicates 2 PCI lanes to the SSD instead of the 4 that would be required to realize the full speed of the SAMSUNG EVOs.
I purchased a EVO 960 in July thinking that it would fit into the M.2 port-it doesn't.
As unimorpheus mentioned, Lenovo makes it very difficult to get the adapters that one need to install the M.2 drive in the 2.5" space. I have been trying to get the parts for 3 months. Even when they are in stock they don't ship them. Encompass currently lists the bracket as being in stock currently and the cable in available in 4 days. The Encompass customer rep said that she will ensure that a bracket will be set aside for my order and that it will ship next week when the cable comes in. I hope so.
I really like my P51S but it hobbled with a mechanical drive. This experience will likely have me looking elsewhere for my next laptop.

Part of the allure of the ThinkPad line is that we can switch HDD/SSD of the same interface (SATA / M.2 PCIe NVMe), and ThinkPad pretend not to know about it.
(They can still see it--your HDD/SSD ordered with your machine was hardly used; they just ignore it).

But users changing the storage interface (SATA >> M.2 PCIe NVMe) may well void the warranty if found out,
guess this is why Lenovo frowns upon users ordering parts to change this.

For the record, we also wish that ThinkPad makes it easier to obtain parts to switch from SATA >> M.2 PCIe NVMe.
After all, ThinkPad power users typically tinker with their laptops