2014 Mac Mini SSD Upgrade Advice - Performance & Bootcamp Compatibility

[HabaneroFromHell]

Hoping someone here can give me some firsthand advice.
I have a 2014 Mac Mini (i5 2.8GHz/16 GB/256 GB SSD) on the way courtesy of a great eBay deal. I am planning to use this to replace my MacBook Air 2013 (i5 1.3GHz/4 GB/256 GB) as my office productivity daily driver, which requires me to dual boot Monterey/Windows 10. I have scoured the threads and haven't been able to determine if anyone has had success upgrading the stock Apple SSD to a larger (512GB/1TB) aftermarket SSD while accomplishing both Bootcamp compatibility AND equal/better performance from the upgraded drive.
I did read the threads in the MacBook forums, but it is pretty clear there's a lot of variance in compatibility by model. Also a lot of horror stories about drive performance degrading quickly from normally reliable manufacturers like Crucial. Aiming for a 1TB drive if possible. I know my general options are as follows:
1) buy used Apple OEM drive (512 GB is all I could find and obvious risk with used SSDs)
2) OWC Aura N2/Pro X2 SSD (no adapter needed, supposedly Bootcamp compatible, but research points to the performance being worse than the stock Apple drives and reliability issues)
3) Standard PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD with Sintech Adapter (additional failure point, will only run on 2 lanes, not sure what drives have successfully worked in 2014 Mini with Bootcamp)
Can anyone point me in the right direction of the best drive for this application?
TIA

 

[Boyd01]

Have you seen this long thread? Lots of disk test results and discussion there. But the SSD speed is going to be limited by the design of the 2014 Mini, I don't think you will get any better than about 800MB/sec regardless of what you do.

Using a Standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini

In searching the web a month ago, I wasn't able to find articles on using a standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini. I was going to order a Toshiba/OCZ RD400 for some yet-to-be-defined future use NOT in the 2014 Mini (it's a good PCIe SSD that Toshiba will be discontinuing and the 256GB...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[HabaneroFromHell]

Have you seen this long thread? Lots of disk test results and discussion there. But the SSD speed is going to be limited by the design of the 2014 Mini, I don't think you will get any better than about 800MB/sec regardless of what you do.

Using a Standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini

In searching the web a month ago, I wasn't able to find articles on using a standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini. I was going to order a Toshiba/OCZ RD400 for some yet-to-be-defined future use NOT in the 2014 Mini (it's a good PCIe SSD that Toshiba will be discontinuing and the 256GB...

forums.macrumors.com

Thank you, I did go through the thread, and there is some good info, but it doesn't answer the critical question of Bootcamp/Windows 10 compatibility. I'm not expecting to double the speeds, but I don't want to end up with worse performance than I started with, if that makes sense.

 

[EugW]

Why don't you run Windows off a separate SATA 2.5" drive? Or is the 2.5" drive connector not there in that model?

 

[HabaneroFromHell]

Why don't you run Windows off a separate SATA 2.5" drive? Or is the 2.5" drive connector not there in that model?

Assuming the Mini is as advertised, it did not come with a stock HDD, so I'm pretty sure the connector will not be included. That said, I'm always up for a challenge. I'm not seeing any way to do a separate Windows drive in the Mini without using virtualization or an external drive, neither of which seems like a better option to me.