Skeptical about my decision on choosing a Raid-0 configuration

@Calipha  I don't think you'll see much of a performance benefit to RAID 0, but it's worth noting that you can always disable RAID and use those two SSDs as independent drives.  The reason I say I wouldn't expect much of a performance increase is because the PM981 (which I'm pretty sure is based on the 970 Evo, not Pro) is capable of pretty much saturating a PCIe 3.0 x4 link singlehandedly.  And even though each of the M.2 NVMe slots on the system will have a PCIe 3.0 x4 link wired to it, there's a decent chance that the RAID controller itself only has a single x4 interface wired back to the CPU.  In that case, either SSD at any given time can consume up to x4 levels of bandwidth on its own, but the total throughput from both drives would never be able to exceed x4 at any given time.  To be clear, I'm not certain that's how this system is set up, but if it is, then RAID 0 is just allowing you to treat those two disks as a single virtual disk and doubling your risk of drive failure (since either drive dying would cause the data on the other to become useless).  So unless you think having separate drives for your OS and data might be appealing -- which it can be -- then you might want to consider ordering a single 2TB SSD rather than dual 1TB SSDs.  But before cancelling, you might want to see if you can get input from actual owners as to whether RAID 0 really can double your throughput to PCIe x8 levels or if the total read performance still seems capped at around PCIe 3.0 x4 levels (which would be 4 GB/s theoretical max).

@jphughan The issue I have is I'm not entirely sure what drives the Raid 0 configuration comes in, if I knew they were 2 x 1TB PM981a then I probably wouldn't concerned at all,b generally manufacturers are known for putting two slower drives in a Raid configuration that together would add up to the same performance as a single fast drive.

I just hope that that isn't the case with Dell. Might I ask, do you currently have one of the latest laptops from Alienware? If so, what model drives do you have?

@Calipha  I don't have a recent Alienware system, but to my knowledge the only laptop product line where Dell will guarantee a particular level of storage performance is on the Precision workstations, and even then they just allow you to order SSDs in certain performance classes rather than choosing a specific model or even a specific vendor.  Obviously one would hope that even if Dell needs to source parts from multiple vendors, they'd make sure that all of their variants performed the same way, but that isn't always the case.  I remember a while ago there was an issue where Dell sold some system that could come with either Samsung or Toshiba SSDs, and the latter had much worse write speeds than the former, but since Dell didn't guarantee any particular figures, that wasn't grounds for getting a warranty replacement (and reps wouldn't be able to guarantee a Samsung replacement anyway).  It's possible that with high-end Alienware systems they're a bit more selective, but unless Dell just happens to be using PM981s exclusively, which would surprise me, it's going to be a bit luck of the draw.  That said, there are other solid SSDs out there these days, including from Toshiba, so not getting a Samsung unit wouldn't necessarily mean you'd be in for subpar performance.

But if you want total control over this, it might have been better to just get the lowest-end storage option Dell offers and install whatever SSD you want yourself, as I've done.

Buy this PCIe NVMe ssd and get the cheapest storage option they have.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG/ref=sr_1_18?dchild=1&keywords=NVMe+Gen+4+1Tb+QLC&qid=1595706651&sr=8-18

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006  There's a 970 Evo Plus now.

Cool!

this one?
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-Plus-MZ-V7S2T0B/dp/B07MFZXR1B

but it costs like $300?

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006  Well yes, but you posted the 2TB version of the Evo Plus, compared to the 1TB version of the regular Evo.  Not exactly a fair comparison.

Yeah I agree,