The best SSD for Game 2025

The WD Black SN850X is the best SSD for most gamers. This is one of the fastest PCIE 4.0 SSDs to purchase, with high-speed sequential read speeds of 7,300MB/s and 6,600MB/s. More importantly, we offer this performance at a very reasonable price.

This level of performance not only improves game loading times compared to hard drives and older SSDs, but also makes it easy to use. Game PC It also boots quickly and handles large file transfers easily. The key is that the PCIE 5 drive is much faster, but more than twice as fast – it’s better to save money and get this drive instead, as the extra speed is almost completely wasted on a typical gaming PC.

If you are concerned about thermal throttling, which can affect the WD Black SN850X, you can pick it up with an optional heat sink for peace of mind. Better yet, the heat sink comes with an RGB splash, which can make you look cool during your stay nice.

Read the WD Black SN850X review.

Built on the affordable SN570, the Western Digital’s Blue SN580 NVME SSD is a capable gaming SSD with up to 2TB of storage and solid 900TBW durability. It offers substantial read speeds for one of the lowest prices on the market.

During testing, we found that the random 4K performance of the SN580 was significantly slower than the fastest PCIE 4.0 SSD we tested. But it’s the best you can get under $100 without sacrificing capacity, speed, or both. The biggest option for building a gaming PC Within budget. However, if you have a little extra space, it’s definitely worth stepping up to a Samsung 980 Pro or WD Black SN850X.

Read the WD Blue SN580 review.

Now a longtime veteran of the SSD market, the Samsung 980 Pro can often be found at bargain prices and is fast enough for most people’s needs. Samsung says that with the most of the PCIE 4.0 interface, this drive can read at up to 7,000MB/s, and in testing it reached 6,866MB/s.

The above WD Black SN850X is faster for write speeds and game loading times, but the 980 Pro is often available at a cheaper price, and you will hardly notice the difference between the two drives in most real use. What’s more, the top write speed of 5,000MB/s puts the Samsung 980 Pro far ahead of the old PCIE 3.0 SSD. Samsung offers handy software packages, including migration software that allows you to easily move from an existing Windows installation to a new drive.

This drive was throttled without a heat sink in tests, so buy a model with a heat sink fitted in advance or use it if you have an M2 heat sink on your motherboard. However, prices often fluctuate, so be aware of the prices. If the WD Black SN850X is offered cheaper than the Samsung 980 Pro, it’s a better SSD to buy.

Read our Samsung 980 Pro review.

If your motherboard does not have a PCIE 5.0 M.2 slot and you want to push as long as you push the PCIE 4.0 M.2 connector, the Samsung 990 Pro is the drive for you. The drive failed to meet Samsung’s 7,450MB/s bill in testing, but it’s faster than the other PCIE 4.0 drives we reviewed with a top speed of 7,198MB/s. If performance is your number one priority, this is a great SSD.

When we first reviewed the 990 Pro, we kicked it a bit at a high price, but since then the cost has collapsed to the point where it often falls under $100 for a 1TB capacity. This is a great price for the performance offered.

However, this drive gets hot when running at full speed, so I recommend purchasing a heatsink version or at least using a basic M.2 heatsink on your motherboard. When it comes to gaming load times, there is no benefit to purchasing this drive with the WD Black SN850X, but if you regularly shift a lot of data, this will be a fast drive at a reasonable price.

Read the complete Samsung 990 Pro review.

The WD Black SN8100 is the fastest SSD ever tested, making it a go-to option for anyone looking for ultimate storage performance. Additionally, it is already available in a maximum of 4TB size, and the 8TB version is set to arrive again this year.

The sequential write performance of the drive leads impressive performance numbers, but is completely fast. Furthermore, its high benchmark results also lead to real testing benefits, but the real impact for most gamers is very small.

The main drawback of this drive is that it works hot. Therefore, you should either purchase a version with a heatsink installed or make sure your motherboard has a suitable M.2 SSD heatsink and a reasonable amount of airflow directed towards that heatsink.

And then of course, it’s an expensive drive and for a given capacity it costs almost twice the low price of a PCIE 4 drive. For most gamers, the extra is not worth spending, but if you press the SSD hard, this is the drive to get.

Read the complete WD Black SN8100 review.

Let’s be clear. Now, I would not recommend anyone to buy a SATA SSD via M.2 to build a modern gaming PC. The M.2 drive is much faster and cheaper for any capacity.

However, there are several scenarios where upgrading a SATA SSD is still the best option. Perhaps you have an older system that uses an older hard drive or SATA SSD and you need a light upgrade to a larger and faster drive, or even an older gaming console that can accept an older NAS or SATA drive that uses a SATA drive. For any of these, the Samsung 870 EVO should be your upgrade. Fast enough – SATA drives are limited by SATA interface anyway – affordable.

It’s not a high-end drive so there’s no particularly high write endurance or sustained write speed, but you don’t need to get either of these issues to use such a drive. If you want to build a system that hits SSD hard with lots of constant writes and rewrites on the drive, you should not use an old SATA drive for this purpose anyway.

The Samsung 870 EVO is available at up to 4TB of capacity, so storage can increase dramatically on older SATA drives, and its performance is still fast enough, and it’s much faster than some older SSDs when you notice the difference between night and day compared to hard drives.

PCIE 5.0 SSDs like the MP700 Pro are well above PCIE 4.0 speeds, but at this point there are additional cost and thermal considerations to performance. Corsair’s MP700 Pro is the easiest to deal with these difficulties, with built-in fans providing consistent cooling, and its prices do not break the bank.

With read speeds of up to 12,400MB/s (12.4GB/s) and 11,800MB/s (11.8GB/s) respectively, the MP700 Pro is not a very fast PCIE 5 SSD, but it’s still very quick. These specifications naturally make drives great for gaming, but they minimize improvements when it comes to Windows boot and game load times compared to the cheaper and more competitive PCIE 4.0 drives.

However, especially in scenarios where long-term read speeds are a priority, the MP700 Pro is cut better than all other PCIE 5.0 SSDs thanks to an active heat sink. Unfortunately, that fan curve cannot be configured, but out-of-the-box performance allowed the Corsair drive to peak at just 65°C in testing.

Corsair also offers the MP700 Pro with Hydro X-series water blocks for enthusiastic builders who rock custom water-cooled loops. Sadly, there is no passive heatsink available on the SSD, but you can grab it without it and speed up the mercy of the motherboard heatsink if you wish. However, considering how PCIE 5.0 storage is obtained, I highly recommend choosing a model with an active cooler, especially as it only costs $10-20 extra.

Read our Corsair MP700 Pro review.

If you are considering upgrading to an SSD on your laptop, you need to balance thermal and performance. I don’t want a drive that runs at speed because it gets too hot within the tight range of my laptop, but I don’t want to get stuck at slower speeds. This is where the Samsung 990 EVO hits the right balance.

Don’t be fooled by claiming that PCIE 5.0 is doing this drive. This is because it uses only two PCIE 5.0 lanes. However, it works well as a power efficient 4x PCIE 4.0 SSD that doesn’t require a heat sink and is perfect for installing on your laptop. It can be read at a maximum of 5,000MB/s. It’s faster than a PCIE 3.0 SSD and has a solid write speed of 4,200MB/s.

Additionally, this drive is often significantly discounted. This means you can pick up a 2TB drive for under $120. This is a bargain for that level of capacity. Adding the fact that the heat sink doesn’t need a heat sink to prevent throttling, there’s an ideal laptop SSD upgrade.

The Standard 2280 M.2 SSDS cannot fit within Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED. So you cannot use the above drives with this handheld (and some other handhelds also have this limitation). Instead, you can grab a 2230 M.2 SSD like the excellent team group MP44 to get a steam deck storage upgrade.

This drive’s 4X PCIE 4.0 interface means it’s faster than you would expect from such a small drive. In our test, we will be happy to read at 5,089MB/s and write at 3,702MB/s. This is even faster than TeamGroup claims, and there is no heat sink either. Plus, you can buy this drive for a huge 2TB capacity and there’s plenty of space to install the best steam deck games.

One problem is that the PCIE 3.0 interface on Steam Deck means that this drive cannot run at all speeds on the deck, but it runs as fast as other top-end PCIE 3.0 drives. Additionally, PCIE 4.0 support will provide potential future proofreading for Steam Deck 2 if you end up using the PCIE 4.0 interface, making it an ideal upgrade for ASUS Rog Ally X and other handhelds as well. This drive offers plenty of high-speed handheld storage, and is reasonably sold for $134.99, even a mass of 2TB capacity.

Read the complete TeamGoup MP44S review.

The Samsung T9 Portable SSD is the company’s current top tier external SSD, packing peak performance up to 2,000MB/s at speed enough to transfer 2GB in one second. This makes it ideal for those who need to exchange external storage. Also, all of its performance makes this drive extremely safe to use as an external steam or other game library drive.

Also available in capacity or 1TB, 2TB, 4TB while being very small and tough thanks to the rubber casing. It also offers hardware encryption for peace of mind.

That speed is excessive to most buyers’ needs, and if the drive slows down, the game load times will be faster and the file transfers are moderately fast so you can pay the premium at that extra speed, but if you absolutely need the best, the T9 will deliver.

Get the full picture with our Samsung T9 review.