- Virtual CIO
How to Prioritise IT Projects When Budget is Limited
25 Dec, 2025

£2194.63 inc. VAT
AI-generated summary
At ~£1,829 ex-VAT for a 960GB M.2 Dell internal SSD, this is **not** a “sensible upgrade for everyone” kind of buy. That price only makes sense if you’ve got a Dell environment where you need **Dell-branded media** and want the simplest path for procurement, spares management, and support/compatibility expectations. If you’re just looking to speed up a workstation or normal server boot/storage for general business use, you’ll usually find better value elsewhere without sacrificing noticeable real-world performance.
Who I *would* put this in front of: teams standardising on Dell servers/lifecycle processes, where the IT department cares about vendor alignment and predictable replacements, or where the drive is part of a planned refresh with internal spares already pegged to Dell parts. Who I *wouldn’t*: small IT teams trying to stretch budget, mixed-hardware estates, or anyone buying purely for “faster than HDD” — at this cost, you could typically get more usable performance and capacity by looking at cheaper alternatives with similar practical behaviour. If you tell me what device/model it’s going into and what the workload is (VMs, database, file storage, hypervisor, etc.), I can give you a clearer “yes/no” on whether this specific spend is justified.

Dell
Dell - Customer Kit - SSD - Mixed Use - 1.6 TB - hot-swap - 2.5" - SAS 24Gb/s

Lenovo
Lenovo PM883 Entry - SSD - 3.84 TB - hot-swap - 2.5" - SATA 6Gb/s - for ThinkAgile VX Certified Node 7Y94, 7Z12, ThinkAgile VX3320 Appliance, VX7820 Appliance

Dell
Dell - Custom Kit - SSD - Mixed Use - 1.6 TB - 2.5" (in 3.5" carrier) - SAS 24Gb/s - for PowerEdge R540, R550, R650, R660, R6615, R6625, R750, R7525, R760, R7615, R7625, T550

HP
HP Z Turbo Drive Kit - SSD - encrypted - 512 GB - internal - M.2 2280 - PCIe 4.0 x4 - Self-Encrypting Drive (SED), TCG Opal Encryption 2.0 - for Workstation Z4 G5