Music, welcome to another video from Explaining Computers. This time, I'm going to discuss M.2 SSDs. Specifically, I'm going to compare M.2 SSDs to the older, traditional half-inch form factor SATA SSDs. Then, I'm going to discuss the broader implications of M.2 technology. So here we have an M.2 SSD, the same one I showed you in the previous video. I've just taken it out of the case so we can see it more clearly. As you can see, comparing it to my finger, it really is a very small storage device. There isn't much to it in terms of hardware. Looking at the device, we have the connector and the flash memory chips on top. This is a single-sided M.2 SSD, so there aren't even any components on the other side. It really is a very minimal and amazingly small piece of storage technology. Just to give you a little background, M.2 is a fairly new standard for connecting SSDs and other devices, such as Wi-Fi adapters and Bluetooth adapters, to computer motherboards. M.2 replaces SATA and was initially known as the next-generation form factor, or NGFF. Today, M.2 is increasingly being used to connect devices not just to desktop motherboards but also to the motherboards used in laptops and tablets. Many modern desktop motherboards now have one, two, or three M.2 slots. For example, the Gigabyte H170M-DS3H, which I recently used in an i7 build, has one M.2 slot. In fact, I'll be fitting this M.2 SSD in that slot later in this video. Different M.2 cards have different notches or cutouts in the connector to prevent them from being connected to slots incompatible with the device, and also to prevent them from being inserted the wrong way around. M.2 SSDs, in particular, can be keyed with either a B or...
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