Buying a good laptop is an intimidating affair, as you need to check the TGP of the discrete GPU (if it has one), the speeds of the SSD, and the generation and performance of the memory. The memory crisis (and the associated NAND shortage) means laptop makers are making even more compromises in their builds, and this has left room for Chinese-made SSDs to finally hit the mainstream.

As reported by Notebookcheck, its review sample of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL is kitted with an SSD from YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.), as opposed to the Samsung, Western Digital, or even Kioxia ones you might otherwise expect.

The fact that a relatively unknown brand can partner with a big one like Lenovo is a testament to what the memory crisis has done to laptop manufacturers. Like we pointed out with Chinese DRAM earlier this year, these alternatives will likely function as intended, but that doesn't mean you are getting a bargain with them as an end consumer—although big manufacturers are likely to secure good deals in bulk.

Notebookcheck got hands-on with the YMTC 512 GB SSD in its ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL review and notes the performance figures are below average for an SSD in an office laptop, with sequential read/write speeds of 3950 and 2514 MB/s, respectively.

One can assume Lenovo went with YMTC here as it was cheaper than going for more established brands, and that is how Lenovo (and likely others) has chosen to tackle the crisis. Selling similar rigs with cheaper parts, so as to make up for part of the rising cost of components.

In the grand scheme of things, YMTC is a relatively new company. It was founded in 2016 thanks in part to government funding. YMTC reports having over 8,000 employees worldwide and was valued at $22 billion just last year. Those are impressive figures, but wider adoption by non-Chinese brands could establish more of a foothold for the fledgling NAND creator.

Though that is good news for YMTC, it does mean just one more thing to check when you're buying a laptop. You might still be getting an SSD, but with reportedly reduced speeds, you will have to decide if the performance cut is worth it.

I've been keeping track of SSD prices for some time now, and unfortunately, the ceiling for what I consider a 'good' price on an SSD these days has risen quite a bit. The memory supply crisis is still raging, making the downright sensible SSD prices of last year feel more and more like a distant memory with every passing day.

As such, doling out more than 200 bucks for any SSD feels like a lot right now, but I'd make the case that spending that money on a speedy PCIe 5.0 drive. Right now, you can scoop up a 1 TB Samsung 9100 Pro for $207 at Amazon.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

It's worth noting that Amazon Germany is selling a PCIe 5.0 SSD from Crucial for less cash than this. But if you're not feeling overly confident about shipping from Deutschland, the 9100 Pro is still well worth considering. It offers sustained read/write speeds of up to 14,700 MB/s and 13,400 MB/s, respectively.

In his Samsung 9100 Pro 2 TB SSD review, our Zak offers a handy technical breakdown of what makes this drive so nippy, but in short: dedicated LPDDR4X cache memory plus a 365 GB pseudo-SLC cache makes SSD go 'brrr'. As a result, Zak writes that this drive "absolutely [rips] across sequential performance."

Unfortunately for PC gamers, the 8100 Pro's random 4K performance is a bit of a let-down in comparison. Game loads are rarely pulling up files all neatly lined up, which is why random 4K performance tends to be a more valuable metric for us.

Zak writes, "The 2 TB unit [lands] at a fairly average 88 MB/s on the read and an astoundingly low, 237 MB/s on the write. That's not great for a drive that's meant to be this 'fast'. In contrast, every other Phison-based SSD I've tested lands a write speed in the 300 MB/s and above range. In fact, every SSD I've ever tested here sits around that mark, even the 4.0 drives. That is not ideal."

As such, this drive may be better suited to supplementing the storage you already have rather than outright replacing your main internal SSD. Otherwise, Zak was impressed by the drive's efficient thermal performance—though notes that you're better off avoiding the version that comes with a heatsink.

"The included heatsink is a bit naff," he writes, adding, "This is one efficient drive when it's cooled correctly. Given the heatsinked variant costs more though, I'd highly recommend opting to ignore that added extra, and instead bury it underneath a solid, dependable, thick, mobo heatsink instead."

Some cheaper but slower alternatives...

👉Check out of Amazon's gaming SSD deals👈

These are strange days for hardware, with the memory supply crisis encouraging me to acquaint myself with some Amazon Prime Day SSD deals that I wouldn't have spared a second glance at the end of last year. As someone with many terabytes of personal photos, home videos, and game screen shots, every little scrap of system storage helps.

That brings me to a drive I can only recommend with some fairly large caveats. For a start, the Adata Legend 710 is slooow by PC gamers' standards, enjoying downright leisurely read/write speeds of 2,400MB/s/1,800MB/s. I would not recommend gaming on this PCIe 3.0 drive… but I can't dismiss it outright when it's offering 2 TB of space for only $190 from Newegg.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

That works out to about 9 cents per Gigabyte, and with that maths in mind I can definitely think of another use for this drive. As I said before, I'm holding on to an expansive photographical record of nearly my entire life. That's a lot of files I don't need on the regular, nor at a pace above a leisurely stroll down memory lane. As such, the Adata Legend 710 might make a fine 'cold storage' drive for all of digital memories.

I really must stress this SSD is best suited to files that aren't 'high traffic,' as the Adata Legend 710 only has an endurance rating of up to 520 TBW. That means, if you were to use this as a gaming drive, you'd potentially have to replace it far sooner than you like. Limiting how many times you're writing to this drive really is the way to go.

By a similar logic, if you're currently storing everything—games and precious photos—on one hardworking SSD, shuffling a few files off onto the Legend 710 should give your main internal SSD some much needed room to breathe.

I'd recommend keeping your most important, non-game files in more than one place on external storage media too—just in case the worst does happen. I'm still rocking two external HDDs for all of my photos, but the Adata Legend 710 makes a strong case for upgrading to solid state storage.

To reiterate, if you're on the hunt for a faster drive for gaming specifically, you're better off looking elsewhere. Thankfully, I have a couple of suggestions for nippier PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The Biwin Black Opal NV7400 is the best budget gaming SSD—though the 1 TB version has been enjoying the best discounts during the Amazon Prime Day sales. After the Adata Legend 710, the most affordable 2 TB out there is the Acer Predator GM7 for $246. With a read/write of 7,400 MB/s/6,500 MB/s, it's decently speedy for gaming too.

If you can push the budget boat out just a little bit further, there's also the WD_Black SN7100 which just happens to be the SSD we recommend overall for gaming. The 2 TB version will set you back $284 from Newegg, though with a read/write of 7,250 MB/s/6,900 MB/s, it doesn't completely outclass the aforementioned Acer drive. May the memory supply crisis have mercy on all of our wallets…

Some speedier alternatives...

👉Check out all of Newegg's SSD deals👈

Amazon Prime Day deals are ending, and yet I'm still just a boy, looking on the internet for a good SSD deal. Is that too much to ask for? Apparently, it is. I've found a grand total of three of them, 1 and 2 TB Crucial drives, all of which were 50 to 60% higher in price than when I first reviewed them. Ouch. That was moderately depressing until I stumbled across Team Group's little gem here (I say stumbled, senor Ridley, went "ere lad, I've spotted this well good 4 TB deal" word for word, verbatim) and here we are.

Team Group's T-Force G50 4TB is technically a bargain. And I use that term lightly. Newegg's selling it right now, with promo code FTT462 for a shockingly low $400. That is about as low as I've seen it for some time. For context, it regularly sits at around $500 or so, and I've even seen it as high as $520.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

What that means is that, finally, at last, there's a drive out there that's broken the 10-cent-per-GB barrier. $0.099 per gig to be exact. It ain't much, but there's literally nothing we've seen to date that even comes close to that. The only downside, of course, is you're forking out the big bucks to get the monster savings.

I've tested a fair few Team Group SSDs in my time, most recently the 2 TB MP44Q, and while that drive didn't exactly impress compared to some of its competitors out there (benchmarked when prices were slightly more comfortable), on the whole, they're not that bad by any measure. Pricing has such a big impact on scores these days, it's remarkable.

So, hardware-wise, the T-Force G50 is running InnoGrit's IG5220 controller. It's a 12 nm DRAM-less design that leans on an HMB instead of a cache on the SSD itself. That's then been backed up with two 2 TB packages of YMTC's 3D TLC 128-layer NAND flash. It's not quick, not by any length of the imagination, but the endurance rating is far, far higher than the G50 Evo's QLC that Team Group swapped out for later.

Sequentials are flagged up at 5,000 MB/s on the read and 4,500 MB/s on the write, making it basically an entry-level PCIe 4.0 drive, but still, 4 TB ain't nothing to shake your head at. Especially if you need the storage space for an expansive game library, the single-sided design makes it compatible with smaller form factors, too, such as the PlayStation 5 and some of the best gaming laptops.

👉Check out all of Newegg's gaming SSD deals here👈

It's not a great time to upgrade the storage in your PC. Prices are high and there's little new to be excited about. Though we can't do without storage—it's a need, not a want for PC gaming—so if you're in the market, here are the best value SSDs I could find this Prime Day.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

I've focused on one key metric here: price per gigabyte. To find out which are best in this regard, I've added all of the SSDs in our best Prime Day SSD deals page into a spreadsheet, totalled the price and capacity, and come up with a final figure. It's a bit rough and ready but here's the result:

So, what can we glean from this? Higher capacity means lower cost-per-gigabyte. That all stands to reason. We can also spot the better value drives here, and none of them are one terabyte in capacity.

While a 4 TB drive may be out of budget for many, it's the lower-priced 2 TB drives that make the most sense. Especially as the cheapest of the lot, the Acer Predator GM7 at $246, is actually pretty fast.

Looking to the deals below, the cheapest drive per gigabyte is the T-Force G50 from Teamgroup at $400. That's just $0.10/GB, which is untouchable in my estimations. I've not seen anything get close to that. Though it's slower storage than the others. At $0.12/GB, the GM7 in 2 TB and 4 TB flavour is a valid choice with more performance on offer.

The Crucial P310 and P510 are outliers. The P510 is $0.16/GB, which doesn't seem great, but this is a PCIe 5.0 drive. Faster than PCIe 4.0 by some margin, while usually out of the question for gamers at today's prices, this one doesn't have that price premium. Though much like the P310, the catch is it comes from Amazon Germany. There's a risk of a long delivery window or some extra fees on import.

There's no easy fix for the memory crisis. Supply is outstripping demand (thanks, AI) and our bank accounts are bearing the brunt of it. What that means for prices for the rest of the year is anyone's guess. It's tough to say with any confidence. It's unlikely we'll see a dramatic shift in pricing, as the supply of chips isn't budging in the near-term.

Prime Day SSD deals - best value

The full details

👉Check out all Amazon's SSD deals👈

Oh, Crucial, how I miss thee. Honestly, as SSD manufacturers come and go, it was up there as one of the big dogs of NAND flash. The P310 and P510 in particular, I had extensive time with here at PC Gamer. I've reviewed them both and built with them in a multitude of systems across the site, and they're top-quality drives, delivering some solid performance across the PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 connection standards.

The good news is that the two of them are currently on sale this Amazon Prime Day as well. You can nab the 1TB Crucial P310 PCIe 4.0 SSD for about $143, down from $176. And the 1 TB Crucial P510 PCIe 5.0 SSD is a "meagre" $164 down from $179.

If 1TB just ain't enough to satisfy your gaming storage desires, Newegg's also running a fairly lucrative deal on the P310 2TB model as well, bringing the price down to "just" $274.99 thanks to a small saving and a $10 off promo code (FTTF6425).

But there's a catch: they ship from Amazon Germany. Why? Good question, can't answer that, but if you pick one up today as a Prime Member, they'll land on your doorstep, state-side, next week. Nice. As far as we can tell, fees don't look too bad at all (if any from our research), but it could be a possibility, so do just bear that in mind.

Oh, it's depressing, isn't it? We need SSDs still to build systems, and yet, the pricing of them is just obscene right now. Even these "deals" that I've marked up above here are staggeringly expensive compared to when I first looked at them.

When I initially reviewed the 1TB Crucial P510 on launch, it was $100. One hundred bucks for a PCIe 5.0 drive, ripping along at almost 11 GB/s on sequential read, and 9 GB/s on the write. That's $0.10 cents per GB at its lowest efficiency. Under review, the P310 was even cheaper, and yes, it was slightly more limited on the sequentials, but its 1 TB equiv ran at just $80 ($0.08 cents).

Collectively, even discounted , those drives have increased in price by 63.94% and 79.55%, respectively. Yowzer. And yet, relatively good deals. Annoyingly so. Perhaps we had it too good for too long?

The quick low down then? The P510, an ideal main OS drive. PCIe 5.0 SSD, backed up by one of Phison's E31T DRAMless controllers, and Micron's own 276-layer TLC NAND flash. It's got a 600 TBW endurance rating, and is genuinely quite impressive in terms of random 4K read and writes, clocking in 84 and 316 MB/s respectively. It's markedly cool for a 5.0 SSD as well, tapping out at 64 degrees under intense load.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

The P310, on the other hand, is more of a working man's PCIe 4.0 SSD, but surprisingly not that far off the mark of the P510 in any measure. Initially launched as a small form factor M.2-2230 drive, ideal for Steam Deck's and the like, Crucial relaunched it a few months later as a full-length cousin, complete with much better thermals at the cost of slightly slower controller performance. The temp dropped from 68 to 50 degrees under load, but sequential writes fell from 6,314 MB/s to just 6,035 MB/s, although the reads stayed fairly robust at 7,109 MB/s. Random 4K performance was a bit low, with even the write falling under the 300 MB/s mark, but its load time in game seriously clapped at 7.305 seconds total for Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbrings.

On the hardware front, in a similar vein to the P510, it was a DRAMless Phison E27T controller, welded together with a stack of Micron 232-layer QLC NAND flash, with a far lower (thanks to that QLC) 220 TBW at the 1 TB mark. Ideal for regular reads, or a secondary games drive, but less helpful long term for main system storage.

Still, both of them are impressive enough, particularly given the price in the modern era. Best SSD of 2026? Perhaps not, but well, you can thank Germany for the availability and the price point. Auf Wiedersehen, meine Freunde.

👉Check out Amazon's NVMe deals👈

Let's not pretend that SSDs are in a good place right now. It's tough going out there and prices are much higher now than they have been for half a decade. That said, we can't go without in a modern gaming PC—many games demand solid state storage—so if you're stuck in a bind, here's the best SSD deal I could find this Prime Day.

It's this Acer Predator GM7 for $246 at Amazon. It's a 2 TB drive, as the higher capacity generally makes for better value, coming in at $0.12/GB.

I've run the numbers on all the NVMe SSDs in our Prime Day SSD deals page and they range anywhere from $0.10/GB to $0.18/GB—the former being this admittedly quite slow 4 TB drive that's near enough $400; and the latter being our previous pick for the best SSD for gaming, the SN850X.

The only other drive that gets close to the GM7 and doesn't cost $400 or more is the Crucial P310, which is a touch slower but a known, now defunct, brand (Crucial was a subdivision of Micron until the memory crisis). So that's also a valid pick if the GM7 is kaput. Though it's coming from Amazon Germany and while we don't think it will incur any extra costs than what's noted, there's always a chance of some extra import fees or delays that kill the whole value proposition. It's available at Newegg with a code (FTTF6425) for $275 as a more reliable backup, in my opinion.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

The GM7 doesn't suck, at least, as it's rated to 7,400 MB/s sequential read, which is right up there for the best the PCIe 4.0 specification can deliver. Beyond that, you'll need a PCIe 5.0 drive, and those have truly lost the plot when it comes to pricing. The SN8100 is $386 for a 2 TB model, upwards of $0.19/GB. Yeesh.

I think we'll stick to PCIe 4.0 for now, as it's plenty fast enough for gaming. The sequential write speed is rated to 6,500 MB/s, which is a little slower than some but nothing to fret about. Importantly, the drive has a 5-year/1200 TBW warranty, which is pretty good.

Acer's drives are actually put together by Biwin, who is also the seller of this very drive on Amazon. Biwin is said to be using a Maxiotek controller and YMTC TLC NAND for this drive, which would be a close fit for the Biwin Black Opal NV7400 that our Zak reviewed last year. The speeds are identical, which bodes well, but we know that exact DRAMless controller is pretty capable and doesn't get very hot under load.

In a tough climate, I'll take the win here. While far from a perfect drive, or the cheapest historically, it's good value in comparison to many others on the market today.

👉Check out Amazon's NVMe deals👈

That we're in something of a crisis when it comes to PC storage and memory prices isn't news. But the pricing and specifications of SanDisk's new gamer-focused SSDs for PC and console are still pretty shocking.

The dubious fun kicks off with the SanDisk Optimus GX 7100X. It's a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 drive rated up to 7,250 MB/s for reads and 6,900 MB/s for writes. And it has a list price of $800 for the 2 TB config. The only other model is a 4 TB drive for $1,580. Ouch.

The drive is at least based on TLC NAND, rather than cheapo QLC memory, and comes with a five-year warranty. But still. Currently, SanDisk is offering the drive at a "discount" on its website, with the 2 TB model slashed to $630.

That's quite a bit off the MSRP, but it's still very silly money for a 2 TB Gen 4 M.2 drive, even in the current climate. Currently on our Prime Day SSD deals page, you can snag a 2 TB WD Black SN8100, which is an uber-fast Gen 5 drive, for $386, making the SanDisk drive look hopelessly over priced.

Is there anything that justifies the incredible $800 sticker price and still-silly $600-plus sale price? Well, it's "officially licensed" for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally consoles. But to the best of my knowledge, a generic Gen 4 SSD works fine in the Xbox Ally, so I'm not really clear on the real benefit there. I don't think there are even warranty implications for the Ally.

As if this wasn't bad enough, I give you the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850P. This little beauty, another M2.2 SSD, kicks off at 1 TB. So, you might hope it's a bit more accessible. Yes, and yet no.

The 1 TB model has a list price of—wait for it—$475. The 2 TB model? That's $950. And this, ladies and germs, is still a Gen 4 drive, rated at 7,300 MB/s for reads and 6,600 MB/s for writes.

Again, there's a lower current "sale" price for the 1 TB model of $380. But that is still bananas for a 1 TB Gen 4 drive. Yes, that pertains even now in the AI-fuelled memory and storage crisis. And again, our Prime Day SSD deals page shows the way forward here, with the WD Black SN7100 1TB yours for $189.

The Optimus GX PRO 850P is also "officially licensed", this time for the Sony PS5 console, which still doesn't carry much more meaning given the PS5 should work with any 4-lane PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe drive in capacities between 250 GB and 8 TB.

It has a chunky looking heatsink which is presumably optimised for the PS5's thermals. But, still, it's very hard to fathom where the money is going. For the record, SanDisk will do you an Optimus M.2 drive with PCIe Gen 5 support, the Optimus GX PRO 8100. That lists at a scarcely believable $525 for the 1 TB model, $350 on "sale."

The latter actually makes this Gen 5 1 TB drive cheaper than the Gen 4 1 TB Optimus GX PRO 850P in terms of current offered pricing on SanDisk's website. But, whatever. The best one can suggest in all this is that SanDisk knows where the market is headed and has decided to get out ahead of it with these hugely inflated MSRPs.

Presumably they'll look "normal" in a few months and while other drive makers are crank up their prices, SanDisk can style out some strictly true "discounts" at these remarkably high prices. Oh well!

With SSD prices now rapidly ballooning, due to the dearth of supply caused by AI data centers swallowing up all of the memory chips, buying a new storage drive at the moment might seem like a silly idea. But with no end in sight to the RAMpocalypse, if you do have to get one, I strongly suggest that you go as big as you can afford.

And at a cent shy of $400 at Newegg, this Team Group T-Force G50 is an ideal purchase.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

Bigger SSDs last longer than smaller ones, hence why this particular model has a write endurance of 2,600 TBW. You'd have to completely fill the whole drive, every single day for nearly two years, to hit that limit, and even then, it will still carry on working after that.

So why is this drive so cheap compared to every other 4 TB SSD out there? There are two reasons: It's from Team Group, and it's not blisteringly fast, despite using a PCIe 4.0 interface.

In the case of the former, that company is one of the largest SSD makers around, so it has a reasonable supply of flash chips compared to others, hence why some models it makes are more affordable than the competition.

As for the speed, well, that's a non-issue, to be honest. You really won't notice those sequential read/write rates, either in gaming or just general use. It's only if you try to fling around enormous 4K videos that things will be a touch on the slow side. In every other scenario, this will be absolutely fine.

👉Check out all of Newegg's gaming SSD deals here👈

The RAMpocalypse whooshes ever on, and while it can sometimes be hard to put into perspective exactly what that means, sometimes an insider gives a little insight. To this end, Silicon Motion VP Nelson Duann recently told Tom's Hardware that the retail SSD market is all but kaput.

"The retail SSD market has almost disappeared... The controllers we sell to module makers are now largely ending up in SSDs that are shipped to PC OEMs. The reason is that OEMs cannot obtain enough NAND directly from memory manufacturers, so they are increasingly sourcing SSDs from module makers instead."

In other words, where OEMs (think Dell, HP, and so on) would usually bulk-buy NAND from memory makers and turn it into bona fide PC storage themselves (with the help of other bulk-bought parts like microcontrollers), they are no longer doing this. Instead, they are buying SSDs from module makers (think Samsung, SanDisk) because of the increased demand for AI servers.

This means more module maker SSDs like the kind you and I get in our gaming PCs are going to OEMs, which means less in the retail SSD market. And Duann is here suggesting that this is to such an extent that the latter market has almost disappeared.

This has apparently been occurring "since late last year and into this year."

As end-users, we don't get to see all the stock and inventory gubbins that DRAM, SSD, and memory controller companies do. But we do see retailer prices and out-of-stock labels, and it probably goes without saying at this point that things aren't looking good from an end-consumer perspective.

While NAND makers are doing better than they ever have done and SSD companies are purchasing memory from them years in advance, little ol' gamers like you and I are being faced with ever-more expensive storage.

RAM, of course, hasn't been faring any better. RAM and SSD maker Team Group recently gave us all a stark recommendation: "If you need memory, we recommend purchasing it as soon as possible."

Normally, I'd consider that a simple case of 'company encourages people to buy its products', but while that is almost certainly what's going on to an extent, it also rings true—the two things can be true at the same time. The situation doesn't seem like it will improve any time soon, and even if the company was mainly referring to RAM, with Silicon Motion's revelation here, it looks like Team Group's recommendation was apt for storage, too.

Even though many components inside our gaming PCs are exceptionally expensive, enthusiasts are still happy to buy them, partly because they know every item is backed by a warranty. However, that assumes a company is willing to honour that warranty in the first place, and in one such case concerning a Samsung SSD, the responses to the claim have been so negative that it's resulting in a lawsuit.

The SSD in question is a 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro, a somewhat pricey but otherwise pretty decent Gen4 solid state drive. But as explained by Louis Rosmann, the famous tech YouTuber, repair shop owner, and consumer rights advocate, they can fail, just as any mass-manufactured PC component can.

In his YouTube video on the matter, he describes how he bought the 990 Pro drive roughly a year ago from Best Buy, but that it stopped responding to commands in his RAID-1 array. But since it was still within warranty, he contacted Samsung to RMA it, though his internal alarm bell was already clanging over the fact that this model has practically quadrupled in price since he bought it.

Although his initial inquiry started well, the first hiccup was that Rosmann was unaware that he had contacted Samsung Canada B2B support desk, rather than the USA one (he's based in Austin, Texas, for context). He duly compiled, providing all the necessary information again, apart from one seemingly innocuous piece of data: a photo of the 990 Pro. As he was at work at the time, and the Samsung SSD was still in his computer back home, he couldn't immediately give them what they wanted.

The very next day, Rossmann received an email from Samsung saying that it had closed the support ticket because he hadn't sent over a photo within 24 hours (even though it wasn't actually 24 hours later). Do note that Rossmann openly displays all this correspondence in the video.

Eventually, this all gets sorted, and Samsung contacts Rossmann with details on how to return the drive and so on. That all goes smoothly until a repair statement is sent back to him, stating that "based on the test results, the returned drive was verified as good." The consumer rights activist then queried this, but heard nothing back. Instead, Samsung just returned the drive to him.

In the video, Rossmann then demonstrates the drive in action, showing inconsistent write speeds of 20 to 160 MB/s. That would be slow for an old SATA HDD, let alone a 6,900 MB/s PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. To even the untrained eye, that drive is goosed, and Rossmann's eyes are highly trained, as he runs a data recovery service in his repair shop.

Naturally, he fires off… how shall I put it?...a somewhat stern but clearly worded email about everything that has transpired, the issue at hand, and consumer rights that protect his warranty claim. Samsung's response to this ("we apologize for the inconvenience or any confusion you may have experienced") only riles him further.

But then the real kicker drops at the end of the response: "As you may already be aware, there is a very big shortage of memory products across the market. Due to this issue, the warranty service does not currently have your model of SSD in stock for replacement or a comparable model for upgrade."

Rossmann then points out that Samsung's store on Amazon has plenty of 4 TB 990 Pros in stock for $949, and argues that stock levels aren't a problem at all. Anyway, he eventually decides that this whole thing is so ridiculous that the only solution for him is to file a small claims lawsuit. "I look forward to costing you more money in legal fees than what you would have paid to simply replace my drive," he says to the camera.

I suspect that when it comes to DRAM and SSDs, this kind of situation isn't especially rare, and Rossmann describes the "wrong thing to do" that many PC users would actually carry out, to get a working replacement: Buy a new $949 Samsung 990 Pro, stick his broken SSD in the box, and then file a chargeback based on receiving 'faulty goods'.

As someone with a whole host of large and currently hugely expensive SSDs in my primary PC, I'm dreading the day when one or more of them decide to fail, whether it's in or out of the warranty period. Because either way, it looks like I'm going to be faced with a large bill to get the solution I want.

But if the likes of Rossmann are willing to keep fighting for our consumer rights this way, then perhaps I'll get lucky and only have to sell one of my kidneys on the black market, instead of both of them (plus my one decently working lung).

This is not the greatest SSD deal ever offered. I just want to be up front about that. But considering the context—everything sucks—it's really not that bad. I mean, it is bad, but it's not that bad compared to the rest.

I've been looking through our cheap SSD deals page and it doesn't make for pleasant reading. Compared to this time last year, we're looking at prices that are two or three times in excess for the same, or slower, storage.

That said, an SSD is something you might be in need of, and you can't just wait around for a couple of years hoping all this blows over. If you fall into that bucket, this Biwin Opal NV7400 is the best value around that I could find—and it doesn't suck.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

It's currently $250 on Amazon, which works out to around $0.12/GB. That's comparatively pretty low right now, and while a long way away from the six cent or five cent per gigabyte drives of yesteryear, it is actually a speedy drive worth its salt.

Rated to 7,400 MB/s seq. read and 6,500 MB/s seq. write, the NV7400 is up there with many other PCIe 4.0 drives in sitting just below the theoretical limit of the four-lane PCIe 4.0 connection. It uses the Maxiotek MAP1602A Falcon Lite Gen4 controller alongside either Micron or YMTC 232-layer TLC NAND.

In our NV7400 review, we note that it's pretty close to those advertised speeds.

"If you're looking for the best value, longest-lasting SSD right now and don't mind the average performance, then it has no equal," says our Zak Storey in the review. And that's as true then, when this drive cost a mere $120 for 2 TB, as it is now at double that.

With Prime Day coming up, I'm hoping to see more movement across SSDs. Even if it's only a fraction of a saving on the ludicrous increase we've seen in recent months. Stay tuned for that. We're logging everything we find on our Prime Day SSD deals page.

👉Check out all of Amazon's SSD deals here👈

The memory crisis has fundamentally changed how we approach memory and storage. It has made consumers adjust expectations about how much capacity they can get, and for what cost, and for companies like Biwin, it has meant having to purchase billions worth of NAND flash memory years in advance just to make sure it has a good supply.

Biwin is in a funny place, being a DRAM kit and SSD manufacturer. Even though the increased demand means it can almost guarantee selling all of its stock, it too will be hit by the supply crisis when it comes to securing precious memory chips. Biwin does not produce its own NAND flash memory, but it does need it for its products.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, it has signed a two-year deal to give $1.86 billion to an unnamed NAND supplier in exchange for an agreed volume of chips.

That supply will start flowing as of June 30, 2026. Both the pricing and quantity are fixed, which means if the price goes up over time, it's not paying a variable spot price. It's potentially a smart move from Biwin, but if the price happens to go down, then it would be overpaying for that stock.

As noted by Tom's Hardware, that $1.86 billion figure is more than half of Biwin's annual revenue. That is both a testament to how big its revenue now is, due to the memory crisis, and a sign of how big that commitment is.

Chances are, this long-term deal will be beneficial for Biwin as there's no sign of the memory crisis stopping soon. AMD's global vice president and general manager of the client channel business, David McAfee, recently told us that he hopes it ends in the next few years. He noted that the big three memory manufacturers— Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix—are all working on increasing production.

We were told, "I think we'll start to see by the end of next year and into 2028 that that ramp really starts to take hold, and then it's just a factor of the forces of supply and demand, and how that affects memory prices."

However, SK hynix and Samsung are both trying to minimise risk by not ramping up production too hard, just in case demand drops suddenly (*cough* AI bubble popping *cough*). Still, the commitment to at least two years of NAND at such a high figure is a sign that Biwin likely thinks the memory crisis isn't ending in at least the next two years, and that seems to be a common thought among manufacturers right now.

You only have to take a mere glance at the lowest prices around for gaming SSDs to realise that someone is making a small fortune during the RAMpocalypse. It is, of course, the companies that make the NAND flash memory chips, and the latest research suggests that, altogether, they accrued $46 billion in Q1 2026 revenues, more than three times what they did this time last year.

That's according to the latest report on the NAND flash industry's finances by Counterpoint Research, and given what we all know about the RAMpocalypse, the figures are entirely unsurprising, as is the reason for all that money pouring in. Yes, that's right: it's the demand for enterprise-grade SSDs to go in AI data centers.

That kind of solid state drive now accounts for 40% of the total NAND flash market, and Counterpoint says that it's forecast to pass 60% by the end of the year. Given that every single desktop and laptop PC, as well as phones, watches, and tablets, use SSDs as the primary storage device, that growth is likely to squeeze prices even higher.

Every week or so, I cast an increasingly nervous glance at the health status of the four WD Black SN850X SSDs in my main PC, hoping that I won't have to replace them any time soon. That's because any equivalent replacement will set me back well over $300 apiece, but probably not for much longer, it would seem.

Such is the demand for NAND flash that the relatively small players in the industry have significantly gained market share, with China's YMTC being the biggest winner: 8% in Q1 2025, now 13% and on par with SanDisk and Micron.

They're all making so much money that the combined revenues for Q1 2026 is actually bigger than what the industry earned across the entirety of 2023.

With no sign of AI demand slowing down, plus the fact that memory makers won't be able to ramp up production until well into next year or later, gaming SSD prices are clearly set to continue rising. Which raises a simple question: Just how far can the prices climb before the PC industry collapses under the strain?

We've all stared in shock at the likes of the Steam Deck rocketing in price (now $949 for the 1 TB model) because of the dearth of affordable memory and storage chips, and some gaming PC builders have only managed to stay relevant by using older processors, single sticks of memory, and stocks of ancient and crusty old SSDs.

Sure, the ultra-priced Steam Deck still sold out immediately upon a stock refresh, but I wonder if that was down to a lot of gamers assuming that 'it will only get worse, so buy one now while it's still vaguely affordable'. Either that, or they're just going to scalp them on eBay to fund a 1 TB SSD purchase next year. Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to look up how best to extend the lifespan of my SSDs, and no, I won't be using any AI search engine to do that.

Samsung has developed a new prototype NAND memory chip composed of an incredible 900 layers, according to a new report. The chip is actually achieved by stacking two 450-layer cell wafers.

ET News (via Sammobile) says, "Samsung Electronics recently implemented a 900-layer Class V-NAND integrated system utilizing Cell Multi-Bonding (CMB) technology, which bonds two 450-layer cell wafers into one."

The outlet says that the current highest layer count for NAND flash memory is SK Hynix's 321-layer NAND technology. Samsung is said to be prepping its own 10th Gen V-NAND with over 400 layers and this new 900-layer prototype seems to be bonding two of that class of NAND chip together.

The challenge here, as we understand it, involves the intricacies of bonding chips together, which include the incredible precision required to align the cell wafers and their interconnects accurately, along with a so-called "warping" phenomenon during manufacture. ET News says the latter was solved courtesy of an advanced Upper Chuck design, which is the tool that holds the wafers in place during bonding.

While it's easy to see how this new 900-layer memory will increase memory capacity without expanding the physical dimensions of a NAND chip, the cost implications are less obvious. Taken at face value, two 450-layer chips are required, plus the time and cost to bond them together.

Of course, this is all being driven by the insatiable demand for storage capacity of the AI industry. So, cost probably isn't much of a limiting factor, for now.

Still, we're looking at roughly three times the density of existing NAND flash memory and the possibility of cramming frankly ludicrous quantities of storage into a very small space. If the AI bubble ever does go pop, there will presumably be an awful lot of flash memory looking for customers, and a golden age of comically cheap but incredibly large SSDs could follow.

The catch is that we'd all have to suffer whatever broader negative consequences came with the AI boom coming to an abrupt end. So, there's no easy way out of the current chip crisis.

Right now, storage for PCs is expensive but not completely bananas, what with a typical 2 TB M.2 drive coming in around $250 on our SSD deals page. But it is at least good to see that the march of technology carries on. If the economics of it all ever normalise, there will be some pretty cool stuff to buy.

I remember when an early review sample of the original Intel X25-M SATA SSD landed on my desk. It was the first mainstream consumer SSD and easily the biggest development in PC storage in the last few decades. That was 2008, but it turns out SATA SSDs are still going strong, as in 100 million strong.

Kingston has just announced that it has shipped fully 100 million units of its A400 SATA SSD since launching the drive. That's a model that went on sale in 2017, but is still available today.

You can get the A400 in 240 GB, 480 GB and 960 GB capacities, with the latter clocking up claimed 500 MB/s read and 450 MB/s write speeds. OK, those numbers are positively pedestrian by modern SSD standards. The very latest PCIe Gen 5 drives are theoretically good for getting on for 25 times that performance in terms of raw bandwidth.

But the key comparison for a SATA SSD like the A400 isn't a cutting-edge M.2 drive. It's one of those antediluvian contraptions with spinning magnetic platters, namely old school hard drives.

As several commenters on this Reddit thread discussing the Kingston milestone point out, SATA drives like the A400 are a "life saver" for older PCs. Indeed, I'm not totally convinced most people would immediately know if their fancy M.2 drive was somehow secretly swapped for the likes of an A400.

The point is that even an old SATA-based mini-brick like the A400 delivers most of the benefits in terms of system response that's associated with the latest solid-state drive technology.

By way of example, take this YouTube overview of game level load times comparing an HDD with a SATA SSD and then PCIe Gen 3, 4 and 5 NVMe SSDs. Using Starfield as the metric, the HDD took 218 seconds to do the initial level load. But the SATA drive cut that to just 19 seconds.

Yes, the NVMe SSDs were faster still. But even the Gen 5 drive only reduced the load time to just under 15 seconds. Not exactly life-changing is it?

Another consideration here is PCIe lane availability. By their nature, PCIe-based SSDs consume PCIe lanes, which can be a limited and precious commodity shared with the likes of a GPU.

So, in some scenarios with lower-spec motherboards, it can be advantageous to avoid populating PCIe lanes, especially with secondary mass storage as opposed to primary OS drives. All of which means that SATA SSDs retain relevance, even here in 2026 where the attention is largely focused on the latest M.2 drives.

Of course, with all SSD pricing on the up of late, the A400 may not feel like much of a bargain right now. But if it makes you feel better, when that Intel X25-M drive came out, it cost over $500 for an 80 GB model. In that context, the thick end of $190 for over 10 times the capacity doesn't feel quite so terrible, even if it is about the same as what you'd pay for a decent Gen 4 M.2 SSD of the same capacity.

With the RAMpocalypse doing its very best to make PC gaming less affordable by the week, you need to keep an eye out for great deals to help your pennies go further. While this isn't a return to the days of super-cheap SSDs, less than a year ago, you can't say no to a massive 47% discount on a 1 TB Lexar SL500, just $140 at B&H. And if that's not enough storage for you, then how about a 49% saving on the 2 TB version, for $215 at B&H?

There's just one catch, though: Both external SSDs are only available at these prices for just today, May 10.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

That's pretty much it for downsides, fortunately, as the Lexar SL500 is a really solid portable SSD, and thanks to its USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) interface, it's an ideal way for expanding the storage of any gaming PC. This is especially true if your rig is a laptop or handheld device, as these often come with just one M.2 slot for an NVMe drive.

It's important to note that you'll only see those impressive read/write speeds if the SL500 is plugged into a USB port that's rated to 20 Gbps or faster. Lots of PCs claim to have 'USB 3.2' sockets, but they're often just 10 Gbps or even just 5 Gbps. It won't harm the drive in anyway; it just won't be able to shift data around at full speed.

With an IP54 rating for dust and water, and a supplied rubber case to help it survive drops of up to six feet, six inches, the Lexar SL500 is a tough little cookie, too. Plus, it's MagSafe compatible, so you can slap it onto the rear of your iPhone 12 or newer (or even a laptop, if it has a metal body), and use it to store any 4K videos you've just taken.

Alas, after today, this deal will be no more, but where there's one, you know there will be others, and as soon as we spot them, we'll be sure to flag them up.

👉Find all of B&H's internal and external SSD deals here👈

Micron, which you may know as one of the biggest players in the memory market, has just released a great big whopping 245 TB SSD specifically designed for data centers. And it feels a little sickening to look at, knowing how expensive my next storage upgrade is going to be.

Entitled the Micron 6600 ION SSD, Micron says it is "the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD", and, as you might be able to guess, it's to support "AI, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads."

Micron's new data center SSD not only promises its QLC NAND technology is a generation ahead of any of the competition's QLC, but, with a 30 watts maximum power rating, it works out to use half the juice of a comparable capacious HDD. SSDs typically consume less power than HDDs anyway, so how power efficient it really is will have to be left to further testing.

What makes this SSD interesting is its humongous storage size. Also, compared to HDD deployment, Micron notes it requires 82% fewer racks. Travis Virgil, the senior vice president of ISG product management at Dell, says, "AI workloads are pushing data center capacity to the limit, and when you can fit significantly more storage into every rack, the math changes: less power, less floor space, less operational overhead."

The 245 TB model comes with a sequential read of 13,700 MB/S and a sequential write of 3,000 MB/s, but we don't know the pricing just yet. Chances are, unless you represent a major AI company, that price won't matter to you anyway.

So good news for AI then, but not necessarily anyone else. Storage is hard to come by at reasonable prices nowadays, and that's all because of AI. The memory crisis is largely caused by AI data centers sapping up all the modules to train new models, and it's not helped by the fact that there are multiple competing AI companies. They are fighting to get their digital foot in the door at the likes of SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron to secure contracts.

But manufacturers aren't looking to give contracts easily either. Just today, it was announced that SK hynix is struggling to keep up with 'unprecedented' offers, and didn't necessarily want to agree to any of them, as long-term contracts could require selling memory at a lower rate.

I, on the other hand, found out I had 300 GB in my recycling bin yesterday, so that's kinda like installing a 245 TB SDD, right?

Windrose breached early access late last month. As you might expect from something a few port calls shy of a full release, it's not all been smooth sailing, with a number of Steam users saying that the pirate versus environment game has been hammering their SSDs. Thankfully, developer Kraken Express have now released a patch.

Content creator Pixel Operative brought wider attention to the issue, by running some quick tests on the game themself and sharing their findings to X and YouTube. Apparently, when compared to similar survive 'em ups Enshrouded and Valheim, Windrose exhibited "significantly [larger] read/write numbers for less than 2 minutes of game play."

Tom's Hardware also later covered the issue, calculating that 432 GB could potentially be written to your drive over the course of a four hour session.

This astronomical write volume could significantly shorten the lifespan of QLC SSDs (which are arguably more efficient at storing data, but generally have lower TBW ratings) or otherwise aged drives. That's definitely not good news in the midst of a memory supply crisis. Thankfully, patch notes for version: 0.10.0.4.268-9d2ca277 say that "disk usage during gameplay has been reduced."

Kraken Express have continued to tinker with and refine the game's save structure since. For instance, version 0.10.0.5.120-073042fb dropped yesterday, and the patch notes say, "The game now automatically backs up all data every 10 minutes of gameplay and upon exiting."

Even with all the aforementioned technical hiccups, the devs aren't currently planning on any progress wipes during early access. However, the studio did recently warn, "Of course shit happens." Arrr, just like the high seas, early access can be an unpredictable place.

As such, Windrose captains shouldn't expect much beyond bug fixes and improvements to stability for the foreseeable future, with the next big content update being at least six months away from reaching the shore. Kraken Express attempted to manage expectations, sharing, "All the new content and features we want to deliver takes time."

Because I'm based a stone's throw away from Bristol in the UK, it's definitely a pirate's life for me, oo ar. So, with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced still a ways off from pulling into port in July and Windrose's excessive data writing curtailed, I know exactly where I'm gonna drop anchor in the meantime.

Due to the memory supply crisis, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that now is a particularly stressful time to experience hardware failure. With a bit of luck, a sensible multi-year warranty should save your bacon when an SSD stops playing ball—but it looks like the RAMpocalypse may be about to claim another victim.

Case in point, Nextorage has just unveiled a new QLC gaming SSD that comes with a mere one-year warranty policy (via HKEPC Hardware). As you may already be aware, QLC drives can store more data per NAND flash cell than TLC ones, but that comes at the potential cost of a lower write endurance. As such, a measly 12 months for a warranty period is a choice.

The just-announced G-series EEA SSDs offer capacities ranging from 1 TB to 8 TB. They use a PCIe 4.0 interface, and like most drives these days, they're also DRAM-less. Nextorage lists an advertised read/write speed of up to 7,000/6,400 MB/s, and that its design "reduces power consumption and heat generation".

As for write endurance, the 1 TB model is rated for 400 TBW, which doubles for the 2 TB model, and again for the 4 TB version. Comparatively, the new 8 TB features an impressive 4,000 TBW of advertised endurance.

However, the 1 TB drive will cost ¥44,550, or about $280. Now, PC components tend to be slightly pricier in Japan anyway, so there's a chance the actual USD cost may be a bit lower than the currency conversion suggests (though let's hope the memory supply crisis doesn't worsen to such a degree that it makes this statement seem like naive optimism in retrospect).

Still, if you ask me, that's not necessarily the best value for money as it is. Couple that with Nextorage's "One year from the date of purchase" warranty policy, and I'd really recommend looking elsewhere.

For instance, the most affordable 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD I'd suggest right now is the Kingston NV3. Yes, it's a bit slower than Nextorage's new drives, but it offers a much more approachable price point, and Kingston tends to still offer 5-year warranties—for now, at least.

Given that Toshiba is allegedly struggling to replace enterprise hard drives due to stock shortages, I can see the logic behind Nextorage's extremely short warranty period. Besides the current limitations of QLC, it may be a bit of a mission for Nextorage to secure enough stock for replacements, potentially until 2028.

One of China's largest chip manufacturers has apparently made plans to build two additional new foundries to the one already under construction. Once all are operational, it's claimed that the firm's wafer output will more than double, which could potentially make it one of the world's largest makers of NAND flash memory chips.

The firm in question is Yangtze Memory Technologies, better known simply as YMTC, and its flash memory is heavily used by the likes of Acer, Adata, Lexar, and Team Group for their SSDs and other storage devices. The best budget gaming SSD around, the Biwin Black Opal NV7400, is a drive that also uses YMTC chips, though the production is also joined by offerings from Micron.

However, YMTC itself hasn't publicly announced these fab production plans, and instead the claims come from Reuters, which cites sources who "were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified", though this is normal for such new stories.

Given the current flash and DRAM market, where the AI industry is ordering so many chips that there's a global shortage of them (leading to sky-high prices), you might think that YMTC has amended its plans to include an additional two foundries to capitalise on the billions of dollars of potential AI orders.

However, Reuters suggests that the move is more to do with China distancing itself from reliance on US chip manufacturers, especially in light of the introduction of export restrictions on chip-making equipment.

While it's potentially good news for PC gamers hoping to see lower SSD prices, YMTC isn't going to be ready to flood the market with cheaper chips just yet. Its foundry that's currently still in construction isn't expected to start running until later this year, and even then, it won't reach its full potential until next year.

The two extra plants will take many more years to be in the same position, though Reuters' sources claim that all the new facilities will be able to churn out 100,000 wafers apiece, and put together, YMTC's output could potentially more than double. That's unlikely to be enough to knock Samsung off the top slot in the list of global flash memory production, but it could well make SK hynix and Micron look twice.

YMTC is apparently also considering dedicating some of the increased wafer production towards the manufacturing of LPDDR, as used in phones, tablets, and some laptops, but even if it does, the DRAM market is utterly dominated by Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron.

In other words, don't expect to see DDR5 memory kits come down in price just because YMTC is able to sell some DRAM chips cheaper than the competition.

One of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world, SK hynix, has just announced that its new 321-layer QLC PQC21 flash chips are now in full production, with supplies of 1 and 2 TB modules ready to go. Before you think that this could help lower SSD prices, though, it's Dell that's getting dibs on these chips.

Peel the sticker off an average gaming SSD, and you'll notice that it has quite a few chips on the circuit board: one being a flash memory controller, one possibly being a bit of DRAM, and the rest all being NAND storage itself. With the latter being expensive and in short supply, SK hynix is hoping that its new QLC flash will make a difference.

QLC, or quad-level cell, memory can store 4 bits of data per individual cell. That makes it ideal for cutting costs, as you need fewer cells in total to reach a target storage size. In the case of SK hynix's new PQC21, just one module is required for 1 TB.

Downsides? Compared to TLC (3 bits per cell) or MLC (2 bits) SSDs, QLC drives have a shorter lifespan and lower performance, though neither is much of an issue for the average PC user.

At the moment, we have no idea as to whether SK hynix has made any improvement in these areas with the new flash, but my gut feeling is that the product is simply designed to be manufactured quickly and cheaply, helping to plug the ever-increasing hole in the SSD supply chain.

Not that you're likely to be using it any time soon, as the only customer to be getting its hands on the PQC21 is Dell, though SK does have "plans to continuously expand partnerships with other major global customers."

Gaming SSDs with PQC21 chips are unlikely to set any performance records, but they could find a spot in our SSD buying guide in the budget section. Not that any solid state drive is what you'd call budget these days, but you get what I mean.

Everything changed when the fire nation attacked… Honestly, that's what it feels like writing this review. Teamgroup's MP44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD has finally landed with me for testing, and it's a curious little QLC number that, once upon a time, would have offered itself up as a nice, affordable, tantalizing opportunity for any would-be budget gamer's rig. The problem is that it's 2026, this sorta QLC feels a bit old fashioned, and SSD prices are through the roof.

It's especially tough as we've seen even superb budget drives such as the WD Blue SN5100 totally hampered by an extraordinarily high price tag. And that's a problem, a real big one, especially for Teamgroup. Side-by-side these drives, although targeted at the same audience, and with similarly high price tags (at time of writing the MP44Q is $305 and the SN5100 is $317), perform wildly differently.

The MP44Q is a sleek little budget PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. It's a single-sided M.2 2280 design giving it broad compatibility with all of your consoles, laptops, and PCs, and comes complete in 1-4 TB capacities with no heatsink variant available.

As for that core hardware, you get a Maxiotech MAP1602A controller (a slightly older model, and the same one found inside of the Lexar NM790), and die packages built out of YMTC's 232-layer 3D QLC NAND flash (you "might" find similar density YMTC TLC in Biwin's Black Opal NV7400, or Micron flash who knows…). There's no dedicated DRAM cache here, mostly to keep costs down, but you do get a healthy dose of 40 MB of system memory allocated via HMB, and a big chunk of pseudo SLC, and that's kind of it.

There's no drama, no new flagship parts or anything, just off-the-shelf OEM components—tried and tested and ready to go. What is interesting, however, is the endurance rating, as Teamgroup's got this clocked at 1000 TBW, which for a budget QLC drive is quite impressive. The default rating for most SSDs these days is 600 TBW for 1 TB, and practically all manufacturers abide by that, so it's nice to see an improvement here. Although you still get the same 5-year warranty anyway.

As for pricing, at the time of writing, it's kind of on the high side for a budget drive, especially compared to that SN5100. The reason I've been slamming that comparison so hard in this review is purely because, by the metrics that matter, the SN5100 outclasses the MP44Q in almost every way while being cheaper as it does it.

Benchmarks: SSDs

TemperatureCrystalDiskMark 7.0.0Final Fantasy XIV: ShadowbringersCrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 | RND4k Q1T1 | IOPS3DMark Storage

Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4

54

Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4

61

Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4

62

Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4

48

WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4

48

020406080

Peak temperature (°C)

Temperature Data

Product	Value
Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4	54
Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4	61
Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4	62
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4	48
WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4	48

SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s)

SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s)

RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s)

RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)

Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4

7407

6595

70

288

Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4

7318

6687

107

308

Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4

7446

6601

70

310

Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4

7370

6336

75

229

WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4

7116

6820

101

276

02,0004,0006,0008,000

CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 Data

Product	Value
Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4	7407 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 6595 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 70 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 288 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4	7318 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 6687 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 107 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 308 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4	7446 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 6601 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 70 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 310 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4	7370 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 6336 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 75 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 229 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4	7116 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 6820 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 101 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 276 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)

Total Loading Time (seconds)

Scene #1 (seconds)

Scene #2 (seconds)

Scene #3 (seconds)

Scene #4 (seconds)

Scene #5 (seconds)

Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4

7.97

0.961

2.166

2.535

1.513

0.795

Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4

7.125

0.852

1.832

2.284

1.425

0.731

Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4

7.869

1.127

2.072

2.465

1.461

0.745

Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4

7.398

1.112

1.813

2.286

1.445

0.742

WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4

7.841

1.831

2.411

1.498

0.755

1.347

02468

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Data

Product	Value
Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4	7.97 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.961 Scene #1 (seconds), 2.166 Scene #2 (seconds), 2.535 Scene #3 (seconds), 1.513 Scene #4 (seconds), 0.795 Scene #5 (seconds)
Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4	7.125 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.852 Scene #1 (seconds), 1.832 Scene #2 (seconds), 2.284 Scene #3 (seconds), 1.425 Scene #4 (seconds), 0.731 Scene #5 (seconds)
Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4	7.869 Total Loading Time (seconds), 1.127 Scene #1 (seconds), 2.072 Scene #2 (seconds), 2.465 Scene #3 (seconds), 1.461 Scene #4 (seconds), 0.745 Scene #5 (seconds)
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4	7.398 Total Loading Time (seconds), 1.112 Scene #1 (seconds), 1.813 Scene #2 (seconds), 2.286 Scene #3 (seconds), 1.445 Scene #4 (seconds), 0.742 Scene #5 (seconds)
WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4	7.841 Total Loading Time (seconds), 1.831 Scene #1 (seconds), 2.411 Scene #2 (seconds), 1.498 Scene #3 (seconds), 0.755 Scene #4 (seconds), 1.347 Scene #5 (seconds)

RND4k Q1T1 Read (IOPS)

RND4K Q1T1 Write (IOPS)

Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4

17195

70309

Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4

26224

75158

Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4

17134

75727

020,00040,00060,00080,000

CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 | RND4k Q1T1 | IOPS Data

Product	Value
Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4	17195 RND4k Q1T1 Read (IOPS), 70309 RND4K Q1T1 Write (IOPS)
Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4	26224 RND4k Q1T1 Read (IOPS), 75158 RND4K Q1T1 Write (IOPS)
Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4	17134 RND4k Q1T1 Read (IOPS), 75727 RND4K Q1T1 Write (IOPS)
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4	N/A
WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4	N/A

Index

Bandwidth (MB/s)

Average Access Time (µs)

Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4

2874

496.38

63

Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4

3915

672.63

59

Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4

2893

495.11

62

Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4

2757

471.23

65

WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4

3238

553.1

55

01,0002,0003,0004,000

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Teamgroup MP44Q 2 TB l Gen4	2874 Index, 496.38 Bandwidth (MB/s), 63 Average Access Time (µs)
Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 2 TB | Gen4	3915 Index, 672.63 Bandwidth (MB/s), 59 Average Access Time (µs)
Lexar NQ780 4 TB l Gen4	2893 Index, 495.11 Bandwidth (MB/s), 62 Average Access Time (µs)
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 2 TB | Gen4	2757 Index, 471.23 Bandwidth (MB/s), 65 Average Access Time (µs)
WD Black SN7100 1 TB | Gen4	3238 Index, 553.1 Bandwidth (MB/s), 55 Average Access Time (µs)

3DMark's storage benchmark comes back with a score that's 1000 points higher straight out of the gate, with a much broader bandwidth figure, and slightly lower access times. That result is all thanks to the random 4K performance. The MP44Q really struggles here, delivering just 70 MB/s on the read and 288 MB/s on the write, making it slower than even Lexar's latest NQ780 QLC drive as well. Compare that to the 107 and 308 MB/s from the SN5100, and there's almost no contest.

Yes, it does eek back a win in the sequential read front being 89 MB/s faster (or 1.21% faster), but that's such a niche use-case for most of us gamers, it's almost not worth mentioning.

That all then translates into game load times too, and although the SN5100 doesn't particularly break any records in that department, scoring 7.125 seconds, the fact that the MP44Q lands in at 7.970 seconds is just, well, less than ideal. Physically, it's cool, mind you, and efficient as a result, but that's not enough to offset those massive deficits in the metrics that matter most.

"If you’re looking to order a Framework Laptop or Desktop with a lot of storage, now is the time to do that." So says Framework CEO Nirav Patel in the latest update to the company's ongoing blog post about the memory crisis.

We've reported previously on numerous occasions on how Framework is handling spiralling RAM and SSD prices. The latest update does indeed announce further broad price increases, more on which in a moment. But it also calls time on Framework rigs configured with larger SSDs and benefitting from what you might call legacy pricing.

"We’ve started to deplete our earlier, lower-cost inventory of SSDs, and have needed to re-price some capacities to reflect the costs we are now paying for new orders. Like with memory, we’re passing through as close as we can to our actual costs from suppliers and using a Weighted Average Cost model. There are still some models and capacities like 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB SN850X for which our pricing is substantially below market while we sell through inventory. If you’re looking to order a Framework Laptop or Desktop with a lot of storage, now is the time to do that," Patel said.

Patel doesn't say exactly how much prices will rise once current stocks of 2, 4, and 8 TB drives are depleted. Framework is charging $265, $469 and $899, respectively, for those drives right now when you configure a Framework 16 system.

On Newegg, you'd be looking at $422, $669 and $1,345 respectively. So, Framework's current pricing comes at a significant discount to market rates. A fairly hefty step up once drives sell out seems pretty likely.

As for the rest of Framework's announcement, the general gist is that prices are going up again for system memory, but not by as much as previous months. That said, the company also couldn't rule out further increases.

"The cost increase is smaller this month than in previous months, but we don’t yet have the visibility to determine if this is a new stable cost level," Patel said.

Framework is also slightly increasing the pricing of some configurations of pre-built Framework Desktop and Framework Laptop 16 and says that, "in upcoming months, we will need to do this on the remaining pre-built configurations of Framework Laptop 13, Framework Laptop 16, and Framework Laptop 12."

Anywho, if you were thinking about a Framework in any case, its current pricing on larger WD SN850X drives certainly makes them that much more appealing. For now.

Being able to encrypt and protect your data can be important, even if it’s to stop your little brother from accessing your Steam library, and at CES this year Lexar revealed its Touchlock SSD, which melds 128-bit AES hardware encryption and a capacity of 512 GB or 1 TB (and a 2 TB version has been announced) with an NFC reader, so you can use your phone to unlock it. It also has one of those clever MagSafe rings on it, so you can stick it to the back of your phone, but it will work with almost anything with a USB port, be that a Windows or Linux PC, a Mac, or either kind of smartphone.

It’s not the fastest drive out there, as Lexar has chosen to fit it with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface—that’s the 5 Gbps one—which is an odd decision given that phones like the Pixel 10 Pro and recent iPhones come with Gen 2 ports that are twice as fast, and our PCs bristle with USB4 and Thunderbolt sockets. But it’s still a decent speed, and if you’re using it as a way to expand the storage in your Steam Deck you’re not going to notice the difference. It probably helps keep the price down too.

With a name like TouchLock, you might expect the drive to have a built-in fingerprint reader, but you’d be mistaken. The security here comes via your phone. It magnetically clamps itself to the back of your iPhone or Android model and talks to the Lexar mobile app via NFC. And if you’ve got it hooked up to your PC, you’ll need to unlock it in this way before Windows even knows it’s there.

Setup is straightforward. Get the Lexar app installed on your phone, then use the included USB cable to connect them together. Snap the drive onto the back of the phone, and the app will launch, and you’ll need to go through a brief pairing ceremony in which a recovery key is generated. This looks rather like the Winter Soldier’s activation phrase, and you'll have to repeat it back to the app once you’ve saved it somewhere safe—this involves tapping words in the right order on the phone screen rather than typing them in, and doesn’t take long. That done, you can unlock the drive at any time by pressing it against your phone, no matter what the USB port is connected to.

The included cable is an odd one. It’s clearly marked 10 Gbps despite this being a 5 Gbps drive, and comes with a USB-C to A adapter that will only go on one way thanks to a small plastic clip. The drive seemed quite happy being connected to a PC via a USB4 cable, though it did nothing to improve its performance.

Speaking of which, it doesn’t do badly for a Gen 1 drive. Obviously it was never going to transfer data at the same speed as a USB4 drive, or even USB 3.2 Gen 2, but it’s surprising how small the gap can be. PCG uses Final Fantasy 14’s benchmark to test external drives, and while the Crucial X9 loads the Shadowbringers test in 16.5 seconds, the Lexar TouchLock does it in 15.2s. And it’s the same in Dawntrail, with the X9’s 14.29s loading time beaten by the TouchLock’s 12.75s.

Lexar TouchLock benchmarks

3DMark Storage

Index

Bandwidth (MB/s)

Average Access Time (µs)

Lexar TouchLock

558

90.88

305

Samsung T7 Shield

857

140

212

Samsung T9

1045

181.54

174

Crucial X9

875

152

208

Crucial X10

1136

181.36

147

03757501,1251,500

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Lexar TouchLock	558 Index, 90.88 Bandwidth (MB/s), 305 Average Access Time (µs)
Samsung T7 Shield	857 Index, 140 Bandwidth (MB/s), 212 Average Access Time (µs)
Samsung T9	1045 Index, 181.54 Bandwidth (MB/s), 174 Average Access Time (µs)
Crucial X9	875 Index, 152 Bandwidth (MB/s), 208 Average Access Time (µs)
Crucial X10	1136 Index, 181.36 Bandwidth (MB/s), 147 Average Access Time (µs)

CrystalDiskMark

SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s)

SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s)

RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s)

RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)

Lexar TouchLock

409.88

428.88

24.37

22.96

Samsung T7 Shield

1052.55

999.02

31.18

59.44

Samsung T9

2005.41

1887.7

32.69

75.79

Crucial X9

1028

970

35.56

73.92

Crucial X10

1900.81

2002.7

33.45

103.38

07501,5002,2503,000

CrystalDiskMark Data

Product	Value
Lexar TouchLock	409.88 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 428.88 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 24.37 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 22.96 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Samsung T7 Shield	1052.55 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 999.02 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 31.18 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 59.44 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Samsung T9	2005.41 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 1887.7 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 32.69 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 75.79 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Crucial X9	1028 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 970 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 35.56 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 73.92 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)
Crucial X10	1900.81 SEQ1M Q8T1 Read (MB/s), 2002.7 SEQ1M Q8T1 Write (MB/s), 33.45 RND4k Q1T1 Read (MB/s), 103.38 RND4K Q1T1 Write (MB/s)

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail

Total Loading Time (seconds)

Scene #1

Scene #2

Scene #3

Scene #4

Scene #5

Lexar TouchLock

12.75

0.401

3.044

3.436

3.17

2.699

Samsung T9

13.51

0.469

3.119

3.879

3.657

2.386

Crucial X9

14.291

0.478

3.244

3.91

3.799

2.86

Crucial X10

8.271

0.421

1.962

2.227

2.096

1.565

03.757.511.2515

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Data

Product	Value
Lexar TouchLock	12.75 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.401 Scene #1, 3.044 Scene #2, 3.436 Scene #3, 3.17 Scene #4, 2.699 Scene #5
Samsung T7 Shield	N/A
Samsung T9	13.51 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.469 Scene #1, 3.119 Scene #2, 3.879 Scene #3, 3.657 Scene #4, 2.386 Scene #5
Crucial X9	14.291 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.478 Scene #1, 3.244 Scene #2, 3.91 Scene #3, 3.799 Scene #4, 2.86 Scene #5
Crucial X10	8.271 Total Loading Time (seconds), 0.421 Scene #1, 1.962 Scene #2, 2.227 Scene #3, 2.096 Scene #4, 1.565 Scene #5

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

Total Loading Time (seconds)

Scene #1

Scene #2

Scene #3

Scene #4

Scene #5

Lexar TouchLock

15.26

3.174

3.962

4.094

2.611

1.423

Samsung T9

13.91

1.659

3.847

4.237

2.829

1.333

Crucial X9

16.5

2.178

4.27

4.652

3.646

1.75

Crucial X10

9.55

1.794

2.405

2.682

1.74

0.926

05101520

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Data

Product	Value
Lexar TouchLock	15.26 Total Loading Time (seconds), 3.174 Scene #1, 3.962 Scene #2, 4.094 Scene #3, 2.611 Scene #4, 1.423 Scene #5
Samsung T7 Shield	N/A
Samsung T9	13.91 Total Loading Time (seconds), 1.659 Scene #1, 3.847 Scene #2, 4.237 Scene #3, 2.829 Scene #4, 1.333 Scene #5
Crucial X9	16.5 Total Loading Time (seconds), 2.178 Scene #1, 4.27 Scene #2, 4.652 Scene #3, 3.646 Scene #4, 1.75 Scene #5
Crucial X10	9.55 Total Loading Time (seconds), 1.794 Scene #1, 2.405 Scene #2, 2.682 Scene #3, 1.74 Scene #4, 0.926 Scene #5

Temperature

Peak (°C)

Idle (°C)

Lexar TouchLock

44

37

Samsung T7 Shield

69

30

Samsung T9

62

27

Crucial X9

60

25

Crucial X10

55

40

020406080

Temperature Data

Product	Value
Lexar TouchLock	44 Peak (°C), 37 Idle (°C)
Samsung T7 Shield	69 Peak (°C), 30 Idle (°C)
Samsung T9	62 Peak (°C), 27 Idle (°C)
Crucial X9	60 Peak (°C), 25 Idle (°C)
Crucial X10	55 Peak (°C), 40 Idle (°C)

The Lexar drive can’t beat the Crucial one everywhere—in sequential data transfer tests things are exactly as you’d expect, with the X9 running about twice as fast as the TouchLock, but it goes to show that in game loading, sequential speed isn’t what matters.

Lexar’s drive goes on to beat even the Samsung T9 (USB 3.2x2, 13.51s) in the Dawntrail loading race, which takes place at 1440p to simulate the way we play our games these days. There's less than two seconds between the contenders here, so we’re not talking about huge differences, but it’s interesting to see that the fastest drive on paper isn’t always the best when it comes to game loading.

On the outside, this is a nicely proportioned and extremely light SSD, perfectly proportioned to snap to the back of a phone and act as a backup drive for movies and photos, or perhaps to hold media for playback. It’s also handy for transferring those media files to a PC for editing, and while holding an extended Steam library may not be exactly what Lexar had in mind when it designed the TouchLock, it handles this task well too.

If security is important to you, the TouchLock may not be the absolute best for encryption, as Samsung’s T7 Shield offers 256-bit scrambling, but it does win in terms of convenience, as long as you have your phone with you every time you want to use it. Being a USB 3.2 Gen 1 device also means it can more easily hook up to a broader range of devices, including phones, tablets and older PCs as well as Macs and those that run Linux, without needing to worry about which flavour of Thunderbolt you’re trying to connect to.

It worked first time on every device I tried it on, once unlocked with my phone. It’s also reasonably priced, which in a world where the cost of anything made of silicon seems to be on an upward spiral, is an important thing to consider.

It is tough out there, people. Real tough. Games are not getting smaller, and neither are our Steam libraries. And yet storage space inside your gaming PC is at a real premium. I don't want to have to keep doing this, but yes, it's all about the RAMpocalypse and the insatiable demand for memory, whether DRAM or now NAND, made by AI infrastructure.

We knew it would be coming for our SSDs, and we watched prices start to tick up before Christmas, but I've just spent today scouring through SSD prices on all our favorite (read: trusted) retailers, and I've come away very, very depressed for our hobby.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

All it takes is one good 150 GB game, and there will be a sound as if a million voices suddenly cried out in terror and were immediately silenced... when they looked at the red bars in their 'This PC' section of File Explorer.

Thankfully, there are no good new games coming, right?

Anyways, we would normally be recommending that you pick up a 2 TB drive to bolster your game storage, as the best compromise between capacity and affordability, but I just looked at our pick as the best SSD for gaming right now, and I'm floored.

The WD_Black SN7100 is great, but it's still just a PCIe 4.0 SSD, albeit a very speedy one for the interface. And yet the 2 TB version is retailing for $389 at best right now. Considering just back in September it was $120, that's a 224% price increase in just four months.

FFS. Luckily, there are still 2 TB drives out there that won't utterly bankrupt you, although they're still pricey compared to just a short while ago. This Samsung 990 EVO Plus is $240 at Amazon today, and it's only gone up 105% since September.

Sure, that pricing sucks in comparison to last year, but it is the reality for the foreseeable future (and still liable to get worse), so if you really do need to upgrade the storage in your gaming PC, then this is your best bet. And chances are, as cheap as it's going to be all year.

It's still a fast PCIe 4.0 drive, using proper TLC NAND, not the cheaper QLC, though it is DRAM-less (which helps 'cos it doesn't need any more expensive memory). That means for productivity tasks, it's going to be slower, and not feel quite as zippy on the Windows desktop, but realistically, you're not going to notice any performance loss in most games.

Theoretically, they have less longevity, too, though this Samsung 990 EVO Plus is rated to a healthy 600 TBW and has a full five-year warranty.

I'm not going to pretend this is some mega deal of the century, but if I were chasing a smart SSD purchase today, this would be the drive I'd buy. The WD_Black SN7100 is certainly the better SSD, but for two-thirds the price, I'd be happy sticking to Samsung.

👉Check out all the SSD 'deals' on Newegg right here👈

For anyone hoping against hope that the memory supply crisis just might start to stabilise in 2026, I've got bad news: An executive at Kioxia, a memory manufacturer based in Japan, recently admitted that the company's production volume for the year is already sold out.

The managing director of Kioxia's memory business unit, Shunsuke Nakato, made the admission during an interview with Korean news outlet Digital Daily, elaborating that the ever-hungry AI industry's demand for memory has led to a challenging supply and demand situation. Nakato went on to say that, as many companies are continuing to invest in AI out of a fear of being left behind, the situation is likely to continue into 2027 at least.

Though memory supplies are limited, Kioxia is apparently deploying something of a 'gentleman's agreement' with its clients, remaining committed to existing contracts rather than adopting a 'first-come, first-served' or 'everything to the highest bidder' approach. However, Nakato also admits that even long-term Kioxia customers are having to contend with as much as a 30% year-on-year price increase.

Also interesting to note from this interview is Nakato's scepticism about QLC tech. For context, SK Hynix unveiled a 'world first' 321-layer QLC flash memory chip last year, while Micron revealed it wasn't completely abandoning the consumer arena by announcing its PCIe 5.0 QLC drive, the Micron 3610 NVMe SSD. Nakato highlighted concerns about the tech's lifespan and performance, before arguing that eighth-generation NAND flash would still be preferable as it overcomes those issues at a structural level.

Otherwise, Nakata's comments regarding the memory supply crisis are 'so far, so familiar,'—though some industry observers have suggested there'll be no end in sight through 2028 and beyond.

Still, it may not be all doom and gloom. For one, Nakato was keen to highlight the suite of new products Kioxia intends to release throughout 2026. For another, the interview also highlighted Kioxia's high production capacity and its plans to ease the supply situation by improving the operational efficiency of its Yokkaichi and Kitakami factories.

The Yokkaichi plant is already one of the largest flash memory production facilities in the world, but a second chip fab will also enter full-scale production later this year at the Kitakami site. That said, this is unlikely to appreciably ease the supply situation in the short term—for instance, even though the second largest memory maker SK Hynix has significantly moved up a number of its chip foundry plans, we're still unlikely to see an appreciable improvement in memory supply for some time yet.

Every time I write about SSD prices or the memory supply crisis more broadly, I feel like I should don a billowing, hooded cloak and open with something like "Alas, I bring you more ill-tidings, my liege." I do love a bit of drama, but honestly, in terms of SSD deals, it's also pretty rough out there.

That doesn't mean you can't find a reasonably priced SSD out there, you just need to know where to look—and as I update our best SSD deals for gaming today guide every week, I like to think I have a clue. So, to contend with the challenging SSD stock situation, I've not found just one deal on a speedy 1 TB drive, but three—because I know I'm not the only one with a nose for deals.

Today's SSD deals

• Crucial P310 (2280 form factor) - $107 @ Amazon
• WD_Black SN850X - $109 @ Walmart
• Crucial P310 (2230 form factor) - $130 @ Newegg

So, to cut to the chase, if you miss out on the Crucial P310 for only $107, fear not because you can pick up the WD_Black SN850X for only a few bucks more at $109 (from Walmart, of all places).

Unfortunately, we know this is old, and therefore limited stock—Sandisk has separated from WD, and has rebranded a bunch of its drives to match. If you miss out on Walmart's limited stock, there's finally the itty-bitty handheld gaming PC-friendly, 2230 version of the Crucial P310 for only $130 instead.

But why pick up any of these drives? Well, I'm so glad you asked! For one thing, each one has featured in some form among the hallowed headers of our best SSD for gaming guide, but let me break it down further. To begin with, the most affordable drive of the bunch, the 2280 form factor version of the Crucial P310, boasts the exact same speeds of its shorter, slightly more expensive sibling. With up to 7,100 MB/s read and 6,000 MB/s write speeds, this is definitely a speedy enough game drive for the price.

All that added length also gives it a greater surface area from which to disperse heat, and better thermal performance than its stumpy sibling as a result. However, it's worth underlining that the 2230 form factor is geared towards handheld gaming PCs like your Steam Deck, rather than your full-size rig.

Furthermore, as an older QLC SSD, it's not really built with, say, more professional workloads in mind, but it's otherwise a worthwhile choice for any gamer on a budget—and that's the long and short of it for the Crucial P310.

For a few bucks more, there's the WD_Black SN850X (soon to be renamed the Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850X). With a sequential read/write of up to 7,300 MB/s / 6,300 MB/s, it's only a wee bit nippier than either version of the Crucial P310. With a 1 GB DDR4 DRAM cache alongside a 300 GB dynamic SLC cache, it's also a little better suited to more beyond gaming too.

If you can find this old stock at a reasonable price, you'll still get a very respectable performance out of this PCIe 4.0 drive. If you miss the boat on this deal though, there's always the Crucial P310—though the 2230 form factor is currently more expensive, can get pretty toasty during lengthy loads, and is only really a good deal if you're looking to give your Steam Deck a little extra room to breathe.

Grab any SSD from a gaming PC, and you'll find that it has one of two types of NAND flash memory chips: TLC or QLC. While the former is faster and more robust, the latter offers considerably more storage, making it ideal for housing terabyte-hungry games. And if SK Hynix's developments with PLC chips come to fruition, we could see a return to sensible SSD prices.

PLC or Penta-Level Cell flash chips aren't a new thing, as Intel, Toshiba, and SK Hynix all started working on their development a little over six years ago. Up to now, it doesn't seem like much progress has been made, but as reported by Blocks and Files, it would appear that SK Hynix has perhaps unlocked the key to making them commercially viable.

Flash memory cells work by using a large voltage to effectively ram electric charge across an insulated gap. Once there, it can remain stored for very long periods of time before requiring a top-up. Single-Level Cell (SLC) works like a switch: it either has all the charge or none, giving you two states or one bit of digital information.

That only requires the voltage sensors with the flash chips to read one voltage, which is very quick and simple to do. However, because it's only 1 bit of storage, you need a lot of SLCs to get any reasonable-sized memory capacity.

Which is where the likes of TLC, QLC, and PLC come in. With each of these, more charge states are used in the cell, giving rise to more bits of storage: three for TLC, four for QLC, and so on. However, this also increases the number of different voltages that need to be read, as well as decreasing the gap between them.

This slows down the whole process, with data reads and writes all taking longer, and makes them less reliable. Not just in terms of the accuracy of reading the voltages, but also the longevity of the cell itself. So much so with PLCs, that they're just not usable right now.

SK Hynix's solution to all of this is to chop the cells in half. Rather than requiring an enormous 31 voltage levels to get the five bits of storage, each half only requires six levels. The combination of the two halves' voltages produces 36 voltage levels; more than enough for PLC. And since each half only has six levels, each one is more reliable and quicker to use.

Essentially, it's a bit like jamming two almost-TLCs into one cell, giving you the storage benefits of PLC but without the drawbacks. Well, there is at least one drawback, namely the increased cost for the manufacturing process and the complex circuitry required to manage the split cells.

But given that SK Hynix is one of the largest NAND flash manufacturers in the world, second only to Samsung, there's a good chance that all of this can be made commercially viable. While we're unlikely to see PLC SSDs in our gaming PCs any time soon, the rampant demand for flash storage by the AI industry will probably help speed things along.

If this all comes to fruition within a reasonable time, we could see standard SSDs drop back to a sensible price. But for now, it's pretty grim out there if you want a high-capacity drive for your gaming rig.

For the last year and a bit, I've sat down every Friday morning to update our guide to the best SSD deals for gaming. Today, I sat down for the first time in 2026, only to see that the memory supply crisis is well and truly having a knock-on effect on SSD pricing.

Our Jeremy has already been keeping an eye on surging PC hardware prices, but this morning presented a more recent example. I just wrote a deal post about the 1 TB version of the Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD which, today, is going for $118. Not terrible, right? Well, that's what I thought until I remembered I had in fact written about the same SSD back in October of last year—when it was only $66.

That is a close to 50% price increase in about four months. Even worse, this same drive cost almost $150 within the last month according to Amazon price tracker Camelcamelcamel.

The Lexar is far from the most egregious increase I've seen, with higher capacity SSDs more severely affected. For one extreme example, Best Buy is currently asking for over a grand for the 4 TB version of the WD_Black SN850X SSD. It's hard to rule this out as simply a listing error when Newegg is asking for $520 for the same drive. If we look back at my Amazon price tracker of choice, you can see an almost runaway spike from between November last year to now.

As for the 8 TB model of the WD_Black SN850X, that's now $1,080 at Newegg, an almost 55% price increase compared to when I last wrote about it in May. It's also important to note that this is all arguably older stock too, as none of these drives are sporting Sandisk's recent rebrand. The 8 TB version of the drive is out of stock on Amazon, but taking a peek at the price tracker reveals another massive spike beginning November 2025 and continuing into January 2026.

These are just a few examples, but it's clear that the realm of SSD now finds itself thoroughly caught up in the memory apocalypse. Long story short, as the AI industry builds more and more data centres (often in ill-advised climes for the hardware inside), it's going to need more and more system memory like DRAM, as well as storage media like SSDs. Moving at a swift clip and throwing a great deal of money around, that means a memory shortage for us normal folk, due to the limitations in manufacturing facilities. Perhaps worst of all, these surging prices are far from wholly unexpected either.

In October, Adata's Chen Libai observed that most major memory and storage technologies were experiencing a shortage for the first time in about 30 years. In November, Phison's CEO Khein-Seng Pua shared in an earnings call that "every NAND manufacturer" has said they're "sold out" for 2026. Then in December, Kingston's Cameron Crandall also sounded the SSD pricing alarm, explaining that the company had very recently seen a 246% increase in NAND wafer prices.

But even in December, I was less keen on the advice Crandall gave at the time, saying if you were thinking about a hardware upgrade, you should "do it now and [don't] wait, because prices are going to continue to go up." On the one hand, yes, there's a chance prices have yet to peak. On the other, panic-buying is never the answer in the midst of a shortage. If you can, wait or simply use what you already have. If you can't, buying an entirely new rig may actually work out cheaper in some select circumstances.

Alright, picture for a moment that you're some kind of ye olde monarch and I'm your weird little guy advisor whispering in your ear: Something troubles me, sire. As a wise ruler, I'm sure you are already aware that the SSD prices have not been…let us say 'favourable' as of late. But hark, look here milord/milady/mi-they-dy—for I have secured a sensibly priced SSD for thee. All you need do is…

Absolutely nothing. I promise! There are no tricks here—you really can just pick up a 1 TB Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD for less than $118 from Amazon. Okay, yes, I suppose that does mean aligning yourself with the Bezos empire once again, but with the memory apocalypse upon us and thoroughly ravaging the realm of SSDs, perhaps needs must, your majesty.

It's worth noting that, yes, this SSD has been much more affordable in the past. You may recall my missive on this very same drive from as recently as October, when the Lexar NM790 was only $66. The more recent jump up to nearly $120 in price is disheartening, but still far more sensible than plenty of other SSD deals I've seen recently. Fancy a lightning-fast 1 TB SSD for $170? Or how about a 2 TB SSD for easily more than $200? Me neither.

I can attest that the Lexar NM790 remains a most valiant and speedy SSD, however. Indeed, for a time, it was a familiar face at the best SSD for gaming roundtable—until it was usurped by newer, more ambitious recruits. Who? Oh, I couldn't possibly say, sire. Though the Lexar does share the same memory controller and flash memory as the Team Group MP44, our current reigning 4 TB champion, you can be sure both SSDs are alike in swiftness.

You know, I thought I was gonna drop the weird little guy act somewhere around here, but I think I'm having too much fun—besides, I already have a wardrobe filled with black clothing, so truly this was a part made for me. At any rate, while I draft up an email officially requesting my job role be changed to 'PC Gamer's weird little guy,' let's delve a little deeper into specs.

Allow me to speak plain: The Lexar NM790 is a PCIe 4.0 drive turning in a still very respectable sequential read/write performance of 7400/6500 MB/s. It's not as fast as some PCIe 5.0 drives for sure, but it's definitely fast enough while also being nowhere near as pricey (though Phison's E37T controller may soon redress that balance).

Our Jacob loved the 4 TB version of this SSD in his Lexar NM790 SSD review, but that doesn't mean the 1 TB model doesn't have room to shine. Granted, you've got maybe only enough room for your OS and maybe a few games on top at most—though if you're as obsessed with visual novels and deckbuilders as I am, then 1 TB will prove more than enough space.

There's also the added bonus that the Lexar NM790 won't be sweating bullets under pressure. Jacob writes, "This drive is cool under load. While copying our 30 GB test folder—a moderately intensive workload—I measured it at only 57°C max. That's pretty much its base level with an ambient temperature of around 23°C.

When transferring over 200 GB of data in one steady stream, which you may not do all that often in real-world use, I measured the temperature at 72°C. That's an admirable temperature from a drive with no active cooling solution and high speeds."

Alas, if only I could keep my cool so admirably while scheming…what, milord? Oh, nothing. It was but the ramblings of yet another weird little guy—do not trouble yourself. Now, if you could but sup from this cup of…what's in it? Mate, it's just water. You really ought to take your hydration more seriously, your highness.

I'm not going to lie to you, SSD pricing is pretty dire right now due to the memory apocalypse. As such, the end of 2025 was all doom and gloom about how we may not see sensibly priced storage for who knows how long—even Micron killed off its own Crucial brand, which had provided some of the best SSDs for gaming previously. And yet, a Micron-made SSD survives in 2026.

The company has just announced the Micron 3610 NVMe SSD, which it bills as "the industry’s first PCIe Gen5 QLC client SSD, powered by Micron G9 NAND." This release suggests that not only is Micron keeping at least a toe in the consumer market despite what was implied mere weeks ago, but that the company may even help pave the way back to reasonable storage pricing.

Historically, QLC isn't what you want anywhere near your SSD, due to its high bits per cell leading to sluggish performance and questionable reliability. But times are changing; last year, SK Hynix introduced 321-layer QLC flash memory chips that boasted 100% faster transfer speeds and up to 56% greater write performance than earlier QLC memory. Long story short, the greater NAND density afforded by QLC tech packing in the layers should eventually mean cheaper SSDs.

Thankfully, the Micron 3610 NVMe SSD doesn't disappoint on performance. As another DRAM-less drive, the 3610 is geared towards energy efficiency, apparently providing an "up to 43% improvement on performance per watt." It also enjoys a sequential read performance of up to 11 GB/s and a sequential write of up to 9.3 GB/s, making for a speedy game drive. However, that's not where the US-based company is aiming its spotlight.

Gaming does still get a look-in during the 3610's product trailer, but it's clearly not the main focus, with the SSD's suitability towards thrashing against large AI models instead being what's pitched as the headline act.

That's perhaps unsurprising for Micron, which goes on to elaborate, "It is capable of loading 20 billion-parameter AI models in less than three seconds, delivering real-time AI insights and high-quality experience for mainstream client devices."

The Micron 3610 NVMe SSD is available in three M.2 form factors—2280, 2242, and 2230—plus capacities up to 4 TB. It's worth noting the 1 TB model is slightly slower than the larger capacity options, only getting up to 7,200 MB/s on the sequential write. That's still fast enough for a lot of games and slim enough to fit inside even the thinnest of gaming laptops, but Micron is clearly more interested in supporting consumer demand for local AI workloads.

Much of CES 2026 has been AI-focussed, though that's despite lacklustre consumer enthusiasm, rather than being fuelled by it. Dell's presentation was a bit of a standout at this year's trade show for keeping their messaging decidedly AI-lite; Dell head of product, Kevin Terwilliger, even went as far as to say, "What we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on AI. In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome."

With memory pricing ballooning to apocalyptic amounts due to demand from the AI industry, it doesn't feel like we've had much good news in the realm of SSDs in recent weeks. Well, Phison Electronics is looking to change that with the PCIe Gen5 controller it just unveiled at CES 2026.

The E37T PCIe Gen5 controller may not sound like the sexiest hardware update, but I promise there's plenty about it that's at least eyebrow-raising. Basically, you can think of it as a great big step up from the Phison E31T, which features in our current budget favourite for the best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming, the Crucial P510 NVMe SSD.

To make that short story a little longer, I'll borrow some of Phison's own words; the company touts the new E37T memory controller's ability "to deliver competitive price-to-performance value for modern consumer workloads across notebooks and mobile devices." To cut through the marketing-speak, this memory controller should make PCIe 5.0 drives not only faster but just a little more affordable, too.

Let's get into the numbers: according to Phison, "E37T achieves up to 14.7 GB/s sequential reads and 13.0 GB/s sequential writes, with up to 2,000K 4 KB random IOPS." Being about 3,000 MB/s faster than the Crucial P510 SSD, that's obviously quick, but that's arguably not even the best part.

For one thing, this SSD controller is geared towards an "active power efficiency measurement of under 2.3 W." Phison then goes on to share, "Its DRAM-less, 4-channel design keeps power consumption and thermals low, making it an ideal choice for next-generation laptops and mobile gaming using compact form factors."

In other words, the days of bulky heat sinks being a necessity for your cutting-edge PCIe 5.0 SSD may be numbered, as this memory controller affords far better temperature regulation and power management.

The E37T PCIe Gen5 SSD memory controller will feature in the Phison E28, the company's flagship PCIe Gen5 x4 NVMe drive. As far as we PC gamers go, we'll see more of it in SSDs from the likes of Corsair or Silicon Power. For those strangely desperate for the AI industry to at least get a look in, the E37T will likely play a part in Phison’s Pascari X201 and D201 enterprise SSDs geared towards data centres, too.

Release and pricing information for all of the above is still thin on the ground, but my fingers are crossed that I'll be entertaining the thought of a PCIe 5.0 SSD upgrade for my gaming rig a long time before 2028…

Sandisk is changing the names of its popular solid state drives. 'Does Sandisk even make any popular SSDs right now?', I hear you ask. Yes, it actually makes two of our top three best SSDs for gaming, though it's not as obvious today as one might expect.

Essentially, SSDs under the WD branding are actually owned by Sandisk. The two companies used to be one and the same—with Sandisk a subsidiary of WD. However, WD decided to separate from Sandisk; WD would focus on the lucrative HDD business and Sandisk would become its own entity focused on SSDs.

The split happened in February last year. It all went off without a hitch; the only problem being the branding. Sandisk, now independent from WD, had the company's name on most of its best products.

Today, that all changes. Sandisk is rolling out the 'Optimus' brand, which includes three tiers:

• Sandisk Optimus
• Sandisk Optimus GX
• Sandisk Optimus GX Pro

Yeah, heavy use of the letter X and the word 'Pro'; nothing out of the ordinary for a tech brand here.

The most important thing is you are still able to spot existing products on the shelves under their new guise.

The popular WD_Black SN7100 will be filed under Optimus GX 7100, and the newly released WD Blue SN5100 as the Sandisk Optimus 5100.

There's also an Optimus GX Pro 850X, a match for the WD_Black SN850X. While the WD_Black SN8100 is not currently listed on the new Sandisk Optimus website, one can assume it will go by 'Optimus GX Pro 8100' from the images provided.

Sandisk has also announced a new, speedy 2230 drive, the Sandisk Optimus GX 7100M, with up to 2 TB capacity and a read speed up to 7,250 MB/s.

"Millions of people around the world know and trust our internal drives, and the new Sandisk Optimus branding perfectly matches the strength of our portfolio," Anil Moolchandani, VP at Sandisk, says in a press release. "The family of internal SSD products are engineered to meet the demands of developer workflows and gaming environments for professionals, gamers, and other prosumers alike."

Though they won't say it, a rebrand is something of a necessity, and will see Sandisk lose out on years of hard-earned reputation and brand recognition for WD drives.

Products under the new brand will begin rolling out through the first half of 2026. And it's only the name that's changing—the underlying hardware, coming largely from a joint venture between Sandisk and Kioxia, remains the same high-octane mix we've come to expect from both WD and Sandisk products over the years.

Okay, you got me: It does feel kind of weird to be celebrating our SSD hardware award nominees right as we stare down 2026, and the surging memory prices that will no doubt have an expensive, knock-on effect over storage. But 2025 isn't over just yet so, while I've got the breathing room, I'm gonna fill my lungs and shout about the SSDs that impressed us the most this year.

Unlike last year, no teeny-tiny 2230 form factor drives get a look in this year. Obviously, handheld gaming PCs are no less popular, but internal NVMe SSDs have simply had a stronger showing this year.

However, that doesn't mean this is anything like a one horse race—even our best SSD for gaming has a veritable stable full of anime horse girls. Confusing metaphors? Me? Never. Anyway, keeping things interesting, it's not just one brand dominating the nominee top spots.

In fact, each of our nominees differ in terms of capacity and even form factor—we've even got an external SSD this year in the form of the exceptional Sandisk Extreme Pro. Obviously the thing all of our nominees share is that they'd all make for an excellent, speedy game drive for your rig—though the WD Black SN8100 NVMe SSD is easily the fastest by a significant margin. Better yet, some of them are even still reasonably priced to boot; you can pick up the Crucial P510 NVMe SSD for comfortably less than $150! So, without further ado, take a gander at our three best SSD nominees below.

Best gaming SSD 2025: the nominees

So, that's our three SSD nominees this year, but which drive will race into first place? Stay tuned, because all of our hardware award winners will be announced on New Year's Eve. Got it memorised?

Users have discovered a registry tweak that can improve NVMe SSD performance on Windows 11, namely those all-important random 4k speeds.

Windows treats most drives as SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), which has been used for decades now and largely intended for hard drives. As such, NVMe drives that offer higher parallel performance than a hard drive are somewhat limited by the SCSI conversion: taking NVMe commands from an NVMe SSD and changing them to SCSI for the benefit of the OS, which introduces processing overhead and latency.

You can see this for yourself by going into your PC's device manager -> Standard NVM Express Controller -> properties -> details -> class. It will be described as 'SCSIAdapter'.

But Microsoft just announced that native NVMe support is now available in Windows Server 2025; essentially circumventing the entire conversion process and speeding things along.

"Switch onto Native NVMe as soon as possible or you are leaving performance gains on the table!" Microsoft says in the announcement blog post.

"With Native NVMe in Windows Server 2025, the storage stack is purpose-built for modern hardware—eliminating translation layers and legacy constraints."

Native NVMe support is an opt-in model, so enterprise users need to enable it via the registry. What some users have found out, however, is that it's possible to apply the same tweaks to Windows 11 and see similar improvements to those touted by Microsoft for enterprise users.

This is made possible through registry tweaks, which can only be carried out at your own risk. You can brick your PC, seriously.

As noted by Heise, the new driver is included with recent updates to Windows Server 2025 and Windows 11. There are three registry values that need to be set in order to get it operational, which, again, I really wouldn't recommend doing on your own machine right now.

• reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 735209102 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
• reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 1853569164 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
• reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 156965516 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

As noted in the above story, once enabled, an NVMe drive will show up under 'Storage Media' rather than 'Drives' in Device Manager. It also may cause some third-party software to incorrectly log the drive twice, not see it at all as some users report with Samsung Magician, or with some strange partition duplication, as noted by Tom's Hardware.

Though early results are very promising. User Jonathanwashere1 found a large increase in random 4K read and write performance as a result of the tweak; 45% and 49% respectively. This metric matters most for OS and gaming and is the metric where we've seen only smaller improvement in speeds with new products over the past few years.

Heise reports access times were reduced in synthetic benchmarks from the tweak. Users on the Guru3D forums also suggest decent improvements to random 4K performance, as did Reddit users testing handheld performance.

Microsoft also notes that enterprise users can see up to 80% higher IOPS (the best metric for random perf) and a reduction of around 45% for CPU cycles—essentially freeing up the CPU by removing the unnecessary translation layer. Users in the comments of Microsoft's post suggest mixed results but general improvements.

Altogether, a promising sign of things to come. should the update roll out to more systems. In order to do that, Microsoft will have to ensure it doesn't break multitude of system configurations. How likely this is to rollout to the wider masses then, depends on how viable that is. Though it does sound like something that should be done. The current implementation is, as this shows, a needless bottleneck for performance.

As for any effect on game load times, our pick for the best PCIe 5.0 SSD, the WD Black SN8100, offers the highest random 4K speeds around and loads FFXIV around one second faster than other comparable drives. I suspect we'll see some drives make larger gains with native NVMe support than others. Lower CPU overheads could make more of a tangible difference to performance on some PCs as a result.

As many users are keen to point out across the board, Linux has native NVMe support and has done for a very long time. So, if you're willing to give it a go, this is all the more reason to try out Linux this coming year.

I'll be honest—the post-Black Friday and Cyber Monday haze has not been kind to SSD pricing. Having finely combed through the best SSD deals for gaming today, I can confirm that surging memory prices have definitely not been kind to the asking price of the speediest drives. However, I have also stumbled across a few unsung SSD heroes.

When I get a little overeager in battling the ol' Steam backlog and fill up my desktop with beefy games I may never actually get around too, I'll admit Walmart isn't usually my first thought for storage upgrades. However, I've been pleasantly surprised by some reasonably priced drives. Chief among these is the 2 TB version of the WD_Black SN850X, which you can pick up for only $159 right now.

To put that into perspective, the same drive with the same capacity sails past the $200 mark at Amazon, Newegg, and even Best Buy. In other words, getting one of the best SSD for gaming for much less from Walmart is a steal.

Now, to be clear, we rate the high-capacity, 8 TB version of the WD Black SN850X specifically in our current guide, but it was our top overall pick for a long time before the new SN7100 launched. Jeremy highly rated the 1 TB version in his WD Black SN850X review, and it remains a great drive today. Regardless of capacity, this is an excellent choice of PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming—besides, picking up multiple, lower capacity drives carries less of a risk of significant data loss than relying only on one beefy 8 TB drive.

But let's get into specifics. The 2 TB WD Black SN850X offers an advertised read and write speeds of 7,300 MB/s. It's worth noting our testing found both the 1 TB and 8 TB enjoyed peak sequential write speeds a little slower than that advertised figure, reaching 5,940 MB/s and 6,590 MB/s respectively. That will still be plenty fast for most of your games though.

Also worth noting is that the deal here only applies to the heatsink-less version. You may be forgiven for thinking that means this SSD will get toasty without the bumpy, funky heat-spreader, but our reviews of the different capacity models found the SN850X to be a surprisingly cool customer. In his review of the 1TB model specifically, Jeremy even says, "For most applications, we’d probably go for the cheaper bare drive rather than this more expensive model with its heat spreader. The revised SN850X is inherently a cooler-running thing, after all."

Now, best of all, if you pick one of these up right now, there's a good chance it'll arrive before Christmas. You know, just in case there's a very unsubtle gamer in your life rapidly running out of storage space that you haven't yet bought a Christmas gift for…Mum.

Prices for SSDs are not very stable right now. While not hit anywhere near as bad as memory, we're seeing price increases on many SSDs on a pretty regular basis. So if the prices here don't match up when you read this, that's likely why. We recommend using a price checker tool, such as CamelCamelCamel, to see if you're still getting a good deal.

It's been one year since I first reviewed the (now Sandisk) WD Blue SN5000, and boy oh boy, what a year it's been. That drive, at the time, didn't have a lot going for it. It was hot. It was slow. It was beaten by cheaper options, and thanks to using aging QLC NAND flash, it didn't quite deliver on the promises it made in a way that it needed to. Thankfully, the brand spanking new Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 I have here on review remedies practically every single one of my initial complaints.

From a newer, refined controller to far more advanced (though still QLC) NAND flash package with higher densities and better all-around performance, it makes a damn good argument for being one of the best SSDs money can buy, at least if the price is right. So much so that it enjoys a lovely 21% increase in score over the OG SSD.

Now, interestingly, Sandisk isn't pitching the SN5100 at gamers. It sees it primarily as a creator drive. An SSD designed for those looking for affordable mass storage, to house those pesky 4K video files and gigantic RAW photography archives we're all secretly hoarding somewhere, probably. In fact, it was a challenge to even get the PR team to send me a sample (Hey Toby!), as they were adamant it wasn't for gamers. Well, let me tell you, Sandisk, you couldn't be more wrong. Why am I so convinced of that? Let me explain.

The big change between this and the SN5000 comes in the form of what Sandisk has done with the NAND.

It's effectively replaced its 162-layer BiCS6 QLC NAND flash with its 218-layer BiCS8 3D QLC setup instead, dramatically reducing the bit size in the process. That's predominantly been done thanks to stacking more layers vertically, but according to Sandisk, there's also been improvements in the "lateral scaling" too, where the company's managed to shrink the cell size horizontally (the bit that holds the 1s and the 0s). This is actually the same tech and number of layers found in the now legendary Sandisk WD Black SN8100 as well (though that's utilizing TLC instead of QLC flash).

That gives us far better scaling and allows Sandisk to effectively house 4 TB of storage in a single NAND package. Which, in turn, improves power efficiency, lowers latency, and drastically helps speed up the drive. Something that the benchmarks show quite clearly, although more on that in a bit. Otherwise overall design has changed very little. It's still a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor, giving it broad compatibility with console, laptop, and PC alike; it still has that Sandisk Polaris 3 controller, and you, of course, get all the same warranties and bells and whistles we've come to expect from SSDs in the market.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi/NZXT N9 X870E | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

The good news is that the performance gains from that one change have been outstanding. It's a semi-budget drive that performs like no other I've tested. Sequential read and writes maxed out that PCIe 4.0 bandwidth with 7.3 GB/s on the read and 6.7 GB/s on the write. 3DMark's SSD benchmark test equally put in a seriously impressive showing, with a score of 3,915, with SSD bandwidth marked at 672.63 and a latency of just 59 ns. That's actually quite close to being on par with some of the more current PCIe 5.0 SSDs I've tested (it's only 100 MB/s off the Crucial T710, for example, and in fact it even beats a lot of those early PCIe 5.0 drives entirely).

But it's the random 4K performance that really shines a light on just how far this drive has come. Simply put, it scored 107 MB/s on the read and 308 MB/s on the write. That read score, arguably the more important for gamers, is the second-highest I've ever tested, beaten only by the SN8100. No other drive, PCIe 5.0 or 4.0, can beat it. Write performance is a little slower, admittedly, but still for the tech, it shouldn't be anywhere near this level.

That then translates into game load times nicely too, and again in our Final Fantasy load time tests, it landed at a comfortable 7.125 seconds, putting it on par with some of Crucial's best offerings as well. All while achieving a cosy 61 degrees on temperature too, far beyond the realms of what I'd consider "hot" (although do bear in mind it is strapped to a passive motherboard heatsink, aka an aluminum block).

Pricing on this, though, is where things get a little nutty. When I initially tested this way back in October 2025 (before the madness that was Black Friday, and the subsequent slow creep of NAND pricing thanks to our ever-favorite AI bubble blossoming into the gargantuan nightmare it's become) it came in at a staggeringly low $130. Since then, Sandisk has slapped an additional $50 onto the price. That's quite the jump.

Although in line with most of the industry at this point, you can also pick up the TLC powered 2 TB SN7100 for the same price. That's a problem as the SN7100 is naturally better suited to larger file transfers, at least once the pseudo SLC cache has been used up, making it the far better pick of the two. Admittedly, our benchmarks don't really show that with slower random 4K read speeds and game load times for the SN7100, but you have to bear in mind that the one tested was actually the 1 TB model, rather than the 2 TB SN5100 we have here (which features a smaller pSLC setup).

For a modern-day QLC drive, then, the SN5100 is impressive. It has its limitations; it's still QLC, so invariably you're going to hit throttling at some point with those massive file transfers, but if all you're doing is loading games off this thing, or running the odd program, it's up there with some of the best TLC SSDs money can buy.

But there's the catch. Right now with such a turbulent market, with pricing the way it is, if you can find a slightly older TLC drive, for the same or less cash, you're invariably going to get better performance for the same cost. Especially when it comes to larger transfers (say, downloading and installing a game with Gb+ ethernet). Sadly, until Sandisk and the wider NAND market get a grip on flash demand (or dare I say the AI bubble "stabilizes"), it's not a situation that's likely going to resolve any time soon. Is the SN5100 good then? Worth buying? Yes, and also no. It just depends on what the price is and whether some CEO in the big seven needs another yacht or not.

SSD prices are not very stable right now. While not hit anywhere near as bad as memory, we're seeing price increases on many SSDs on a pretty regular basis. So if the prices here don't match up when you read this, that's likely why. We recommend using a price checker tool, such as CamelCamelCamel, to see if you're still getting a good deal.

I think I've tested every single combination of controller and NAND flash found in all of the top-end PCIe 5.0 SSDs at this point. At least all of them, trying to match or break parity with Sandisk's WD SN8100, that is, all pinching a little bit of the drive's tech while they do it. Yet this is the first SSD I've found that kind of does manage to do that, yet in a very weird, roundabout way.

This latest batch of Kingston Fury Renegade G5 drives, including this particularly boisterous 8 TB unit we have on display here, touts exactly the same NAND flash and controller combo as found in the SN8100. But, of course, all dressed up in a Kingston skirt. And I'll be frank, it works really, really well. Arguably unsurprisingly, given it's the same hardware combo that catapulted the SN8100 into our best SSD list.

It's been well documented at this point just how good that SSD is; nonetheless, we've not yet seen it in an 8 TB capacity, which is exactly what Kingston is bringing to the table here. Perhaps there's no market demand for it as far as Sandisk is concerned, perhaps it's tariffs getting in the way, or it got sidetracked by its weird and wonderful breakup with WD, but Kingston's taken that same tech and ramped it all the way up to 11, increasing capacity, delivering in some areas, and falling short in others.

So, unlike the Kioxia Exceria Plus G4, which had the same 218-layer BiCS8 TLC NAND but a different controller, or the Acer Predator GM9000, which had the same Silicon Motion SM2508 controller but different NAND, the G5 unabashedly has both as standard. A clone of its SN8100 father. And it's that 218-layer BiCS8 NAND that's the driving force behind this drive—particularly the density.

It was developed and designed by Kioxia and SanDisk, who have had a long-standing joint memory development and manufacturing venture. Its BiCS8 technology is impressive because of its increased vertical layered density (compared to BiCS6), allowing Sandisk and Kioxia to fit more dies into a single 3D package.

This improves efficiency, performance, latency, and maximum capacity, but it's also impressive because the technology manages to increase the efficiency of the lateral size too, making the die footprint even smaller.

What that means is that you can effectively fit 4 TB of high-performance NAND into a single chip on the stick, and stack two of those side-by-side, giving you 8 TB to play with, without having to go to a dual-sided design. That's given the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 the unique advantage of being compatible with consoles as well as PCs, as despite having such a ridiculous capacity and dedicated DRAM, it's still only single-sided.

Don't let the marketing numbers confuse you, either. Comparing that 218-layer NAND to something like Micron's 276-layer TLC or SK Hynix's 238-layer isn't a fair comparison, and that shows in the performance too, as both those technologies, when paired with the SM2508 8-channel controller, struggle to keep up, particularly when it comes to random 4K performance.

So, let's talk benchmark results then. The sequential performance on the G5 is outstanding. In fact, it beats the SN8100, delivering 14,830 MB/s on the read and 14,136 MB/s on the write. That's 100-200 MB/s higher than the SN8100. In a similar vein, the Crucial T710 (Phison and Micron's flagship SSD currently) similarly can't keep up with just 14.1 GB/s on the read and 13.2 GB/s on the write as well.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi/NZXT N9 X870E | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

Things get a little more interesting on the random 4K performance, however, with the G5 only managing 101 MB/s on the read and 338 MB/s on the write. That read is fairly average for this drive, and about on par with the T710, although nowhere near the SN8100's staggering 119 MB/s read speed.

The big difference, though, is temperature, as despite its dual package setup, the G5 manages to keep itself cool at a markedly chilly 63 °C. With both the T710 at 70 and SN8100 at 75, being considerably higher.

All that translates into fantastic game load times as a result, with an average Final Fantasy score of 6.626 seconds overall. That is the second fastest drive I've tested with that benchmark, although it is worth bearing in mind that FF XIV does prefer larger capacity drives to load from.

The G5 is only held back, really, in three areas. Firstly, its random 4K read performance is a little low compared to the likes of the SN8100 (likely a conscious decision made by Kingston for efficiency's sake, in the firmware to keep temperatures low and compatibility broad), and secondly, well, availability. And price.

At the time of writing, US stocks are slim to non-existent, and in the UK, you can only pick one up for £1,000 at Scan. That's not particularly cost-effective at £0.12 per GB, but you are getting more performance than other 8 TB SSDs.

On paper, the G5 is phenomenal. It obliterates benchmarks, in no small part thanks to that superb combination of controller and NAND flash, and yet, for this particular number with its gargantuan capacity and price tag that follows suit, we inevitably fall back onto that same question.

Do you really need 8 TB on a single drive? Or would something like a 4 TB or even a 2 TB still be enough? You'd still get the same hardware setup, the same stellar performance, but for far less.

SSD prices are not very stable right now. While not hit anywhere near as bad as memory, we're seeing price increases on many SSDs on a pretty regular basis. So if the prices here don't match up when you read this, that's likely why. We recommend using a price checker tool, such as CamelCamelCamel, to see if you're still getting a good deal.

Alright, I'll come out and say it, the Lexar NQ780 is a bit average. A bit dull. Usually, when it comes to reviewing hardware like this, particularly SSDs, there's always something to write about. Something that's slightly interesting, or some weird quirk that the manufacturer has tweaked a certain way that's led to some curious performance metric in one manner or another. With the NQ780, though, that's kind of not the case.

It's interesting, sort of, in its own way, because it's not really that interesting. In a world of blisteringly quick PCIe 5.0 drives like the SN8100, intuitive new controller designs, limit-breaking NAND flash technologies with a quadrillion layers up-down, left and right, the NQ780 just kind of exists.

This isn't the best SSD of 2025, not by a long shot. It performs and delivers speed in the same manner that the Samsung 990 Evo Plus did when I reviewed that back in October of 2024, or the Crucial P310 did in January of this year. And it's aimed at that market too. It's a budget solution for those more interested in cheap capacity over speed and load times. It's not particularly awful, it's just outpaced or on par with practically every other PCIe 4.0 drive that's come before it, and it's done this around eight months late to the party.

Its biggest advantage is its pricing, and, although I'm writing this review in the midst of the carnage that is November (thanks, Black Friday), Lexar's aggressive RRP gives the NQ780 one hell of an affordability score. Namely, it's $0.07 per GB in the US and £0.06 per GB in ol' Blighty. With updated pricing across my benchmark database, that is one of if not the lowest price per gig I've seen to date. If it stays that way (a lot of drives are increasing in price right now due to the ongoing memory crunch, that might be its saving grace).

So, now we've got that one interesting element out of the way, let me bore you with the remarkably mundane hardware situation we're looking at here. The NQ780's a bit of an oddity in its component setup. There's no Phison, Maxiotek, Silicon Motion, or Sandisk controllers here; instead, we're greeted with an Innogrit IG5236 eight-channel 12 nm controller, which was initially launched waaaay back in 2020. It's all based on the PCIe 4.0 platform, M.2-2280 form factor, and it's been paired with a stack of Intel's 144-layer QLC NAND flash, which taps out at 1 TB packages. That means for this 4 TB model, we've got four on a single-sided stick (keeping in line with modern trends, making it compatible with many a laptop, console, PC, etc).

That should tell you straight away, then two things. Firstly, it's slightly toastier than most modern drives, and slightly less efficient as well, and secondly, that's a lot of old hardware trundling along in its sultry snazzy stickered form, and you'd be right. This almost feels like a stock clear-out and rebrand rather than a new release, particularly given how old that controller is.

Unfortunately, then, as you may or may not be surprised to hear, performance is what you'd expect from an SSD of this caliber. Although sequentials are initially high, once that pSLC cache fills up, she slows to a crawl.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi/NZXT N9 X870E | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | PSU: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric Future Model 5

CrystalDiskMark measured seq read and write at 7,446 MB/s and 6,601 MB/s, respectively, which puts it on par with the likes of the WD Blue SN5100. Not a bad showing by any means, but drop down to some Random 4K testing, and the battle quickly shifts. The SN5100 dominates the NQ780, registering 107 MB/s on the write, versus the NQ780's paltry 70 MB/s. That figure is actually far worse than at first glance, too, as it makes the NQ780 joint second to last on that metric, across all of the 19 drives I've tested in the last 12 months. Out of 19 drives, it came 17th…

That's important because random 4K read performance is incredibly critical for us gamers, as it's generally comparable with how AAA titles read files on an SSD. Think of it like a CPU pulling a game asset from here, a texture file from there, a mesh from over yonder, audio lines from that place, and you're on the right lines. These assets aren't stored linearly (or sequentially) like with photos or videos, and the NQ780's poor showing here translates into our game load test times as expected.

Final Fantasy's XIV Shadowbrings benchmark chugs along at a staggeringly slow 7.869 seconds on average. Which, although again relatively quick in real-world terms, pales in comparison to its modern SSD competition. That's particularly damning as well, given FF XIV tends to favour drives with a larger capacity, and I am testing the 4 TB model here, whereas most of our results come from 2 TB models.

This thing confuses me. It almost feels like someone let an AI LLM make a business decision here. It spotted a load of cheap NAND, some budget controllers from yesteryear at a bargain price, and slapped it all together for a quick, rapid launch of a drive that just can't quite keep up with its modern 4.0 equivalents.

It's biggest advantage comes in the form of that pricing being as aggressive as it is, but I can't help but shake the feeling that you'd be far better off investing in the additional performance found in those alternatives, the SN5100, for example, has gone for only a little more (though it is now priced much higher, gah), yet delivers exemplary performance in every category by comparison, even with QLC NAND as well. You can just do so much better, and that's a problem. Releasing a drive like this today is just not enough, but industry-wide price increases might keep it in play (if it stays at this sorta price for long).

Another day, another round of bad news regarding the ongoing RAM shortage and rising PC hardware prices. TrendForce reports that the NAND flash wafer supply is getting worse, which will directly impact SSD prices, and it already has.

How long will it take for those price changes to trickle down to the consumer market? And how long will it take for RAM prices to improve? Today's brought us a few interesting findings, so let's dig in.

Starting with the NAND flash prices, TrendForce reports that the demand for NAND flash used in SSDs is strong. To the surprise of no one, that demand is largely fueled by large enterprises (thank you, AI), meaning that's where the manufacturers currently have their focus.

The massive demand has led to a short supply, which then led to a price increase in November. The monthly average prices for wafers rose from 20% to 60%. Triple-level cell (TLC) memory was the most impacted. This type of NAND flash stores three bits of data per memory cell. Quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash is also in high demand and short supply.

RAM is suffering from the same problems as SSDs, but on a larger scale. Even some of the best Cyber Monday deals aren't helping these outrageous RAM prices that we're dealing with currently. Reports show it might only get worse from here as far as that's concerned.

Our first source is SEDaily, which talks about Samsung's Semiconductor Division (DS), which is said to have rejected a request for DRAM from its own Mobile Experience (MX) division. Samsung's mobile sector managed to secure memory on a quarterly basis, meaning it'll have to re-negotiate the terms of the contract every three months instead of longer commitments.

Odd, isn't it? It all comes down to the cost of RAM and profitability, and unfortunately for us PC gamers, the profit lies in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and AI.

To that end, Micron is investing a boatload of cash into producing AI memory chips in Japan. The memory giant is said to be investing $9.6 billion into building a production facility in Japan, focused on next-gen HBM chips.

With all these different companies going all-in on enterprise memory, it's hard not to wonder what'll happen to the consumer market. RAM is already up to 300% more expensive than it was a few months ago, and those NAND flash shortages are likely to affect SSD prices, too.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is said to no longer be bundling VRAM with GPU dies when selling to its board partners, leaving them to find their own deals on memory. Keep in mind that all of that memory comes from the same source—if there isn't enough DRAM for PCs, there likely won't be enough VRAM produced for GPUs, too.

The PC gaming market is just going from one shortage to the next, and it looks like this one will last for a while yet.

Though storing your precious files in the cloud is an ever tempting option, I would still rather rely on my own physical storage media. The great thing about an external SSD is that it's pretty difficult for someone else to access without you knowing about it—unless, of course, you have a bad habit of losing pricey personal hardware. My messy ways aside, Cyber Monday has seen some cracking deals, offering external SSDs for much less.

• We're curating all the Cyber Monday PC gaming deals right here

A case in point is the Samsung T9 Portable SSD 1 TB, currently going for only $95 at Amazon. If you've spent a lot of time perusing our Cyber Monday SSD deals hub, you'll note that it's currently cheaper than the older Samsung T7 Shield, as well as another one of our 1 TB favourites, the Crucial X9 Pro.

I point out these two other drives not just because of the similar capacity and price point, but because the Samsung T7 Shield drive is our current pick for the best budget durable drive, while the Crucial X9 Pro is our budget favourite for the best external SSDs for gaming. But it's not just the grounds of cents per gigabyte that the Samsung T9 Portable SSD is showing up both of these SSDs.

For one thing, the Samsung T9 Portable SSD outpaces both of those aforementioned external SSDs by boasting read and write speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s. Though Jacob notes in his Samsung T9 4 TB external SSD review that USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 external SSDs often see their performance capped by their choice of USB protocol, the T9 surprises by just how consistently it is able to maintain its peak speed.

Jacob digs deeper in his review, writing, "The drive's top speed is maintained by pseudo-SLC cache—a section of the NAND flash acting as speedier memory to make transfers a breeze. This maintains a speed of around 1,800 MB/s. Once this pSLC runs out, the native NAND flash speed for the T9 kicks in. [...] Where the other USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives I tested drop down to sub-500 MB/s—and often much lower—speeds once the pSLC cache has run out, the T9 maintains a steady 900-ish MB/s the whole way through."

So, if you're playing musical chairs with some big game files, the T9 shouldn't keep you waiting around. As Jacob puts it, "if you're thinking of regularly transferring more than 250 GB at a time—perhaps moving across multiple game installs or system backups—then a T9 makes perfect sense. It'll keep things moving smoothly at about 1 GB/s for as long as you need."

However, there are some drawbacks to this speedy drive. Though its rubberised, textured shell does mean the Samsung T9 Portable SSD can endure a drop from 9.8 ft, it's not actually that hardy a drive. Completely lacking an Ingress Protection (IP) score, there's no guarantee your files will be protected from dust or moisture on this drive, severely limiting just how portable this SSD can actually be.

Look after it, though, and it'll serve you well for many years.

👉Click here for all of Amazon's external SSD deals👈

The deals didn't stop after Black Friday or Cyber Monday, as we've had a week of tech deals. We're pretty much at the end now, though it'll just naturally transition into holiday sales. ahead—cyber deals, that is—and this is where we've collected every storage discount worth a second (or first) glance.

We didn't see any record-low prices on the best SSDs for gaming over Black Friday, with the looming memory apocalypse making itself known. Sadly, it's not just RAM feeling the pinch. SSD prices haven't been hit as hard, but we've seen more exciting bargains in past years. The worst news is that prices are only likely to rise, so if you do need a new SSD, it might well be that the SSD deals we're seeing now are as good as they'll get for a year or more.

👉We're curating all the best Cyber Week deals right here👈

As far as size is concerned, 1 TB is the least amount of storage we recommend when buying a new SSD today. It might be tempting to go with something smaller to really cut costs, but you'd be surprised how fast a 512 GB drive can fill up after installing a handful of games these days, or downloading a few videos or doing any kind of creative work. It's just not enough storage to commit a drive slot to today.

Below are the best deals for internal and external SSDs that'll fit your favorite games and media.

Where are the best Cyber Week SSD deals?

• Amazon - Cyber Monday deals on internal and external SSDs
• Walmart - Discounted solid state drives this Cyber Monday
• B&H Photo - Holiday savings on NVMe SSDs
• Best Buy - Great prices on all SSDs this Cyber Monday
• Newegg - Cyber Monday SSDs on offer

💾 1 TB SSD - Western Digital SN5000 | $66 @ Walmart
💾 2 TB SSD - Samsung 990 Evo Plus | $177 @ Amazon
💾 4 TB SSD - Silicon Power UD90 | $288 @ Amazon

Cyber Week SSD deals - Up to 512 GB

Cyber Week SSD deals: 1 TB

Cyber Week SSD deals: 2 TB

Cyber Week SSD deals: 4 TB and up

• Back to top ^

Cyber Week external SSD deals

• Back to top ^

Cyber Week internal SSD deals in the UK

Where are the best Cyber Week SSD deals in the UK?

• 1 TB: Biwin Black Opal NV7400 | £77 @ Amazon
• 2 TB: Biwin Black Opal NV7400 | £135 @ Amazon
• 4 TB: WD_Blue SN5000 | £235 @ Overclockers

• Amazon UK - Cyber Monday sales on all things SSD
• Scan - SATA drives often as low as £35 this Cyber Monday
• Overclockers - Lots of Cyber Monday SSDs to choose from
• Currys - Cyber Monday SSD options galore
• Laptops Direct - Surprisingly not just laptops, SSDs too!
• CCL - SSDs for bargain prices this Cyber Monday

• Back to top ^

Cyber Week external SSD deals in the UK

• Back to top ^

The best PCIe 5.0 SSD deals this Black Friday

• Crucial T705 | 1 TB | $155
• Crucial T705 | 2 TB | $160 (save $40)

If you're looking for a speedy SSD, then you really want a drive that comes with a PCIe 5.0 interface. Unfortunately, these drives represent the bleeding edge of consumer-grade storage media and often come with a price to match. However, I've just found a Black Friday deal that may well justify the upgrade.

• We're curating all the Black Friday PC gaming deals right here

I filled up the 1 TB SSD in my prebuilt machine with a truly alarming swiftness, so picking up another 1 TB or even pushing the boat out with an additional 2 TB drive would give my games room to breathe. Well, you can pick up the 2 TB version of the Crucial T705 for only $160—which is almost the same price as the 1 TB version.

Now, it's worth noting here that this deal only applies to heatsink-less versions of the drive. If you've not already had a chance to read Zak's Crucial T705 1 TB review, that means you'll get the most out of this deal if you already have a motherboard that has a decent slab of metal covering its M.2 slots.

The version that comes with a heatsink is not only more expensive, but the sink itself is not easily removable. Furthermore, it doesn't do a particularly good job at dissipating heat either, as Zak notes: "The T705 came in at 84°C at peak, utilizing that built-in heatsink. That is quite high." So, you really are best off grabbing the sink-less version and popping on your own preferred heatsink instead.

Toasty thermals aside, the Crucial T705 is definitely speedy. Zak breaks it down thus: "Latency is ridiculously low in 3DMark's storage benchmark, scoring a staggering 39 ns. At a guess, this is down to that single NAND package, which, although it may be detrimental when it comes to maxing out sequential speeds, actually reduces latency significantly, in turn bumping up random access times in certain applications."

And to be clear, those sequential read and write speeds leave little to be desired, reaching up to 13,600 MB/s and 10,200 MB/s, respectively. That means this PCIe 5.0 drive can more than handle whatever you throw at it, be it storing games, movies, and more, or the perhaps baffling choice to relegate it to being just a boot drive.

If you're torn on what storage capacity to get, though, bigger tends to be best. Zak explains, "If you're after those highest-rated 14 GB/s speeds, you're going to want to grab the 2 TB solutions and above; any lower than that, and the single NAND package is going to hold you back, being the bottleneck there, although the random 4K numbers are still pretty stellar, even with the singular package, making it a pretty solid pick for gamers."

👉Click here for all of Amazon's Black Friday SSD deals👈

I don't think I need to say too much about the WD_Black SN850X. After all, it was our top choice for the best gaming SSD for a long time, until the WD_Black SN7100 came out. But what I can say is that I can certainly vouch for it, as I have six of them in my collection of gaming, work, and test devices.

With four 2 TB SN850Xs in my main rig (one apiece for the operating system, games, big apps, and documents), plus one more in my PS5, and an additional 1 TB drive that I use in test systems, I feel a bit like Victor Kiam at times; I like them so much I bought... well lots of them. The reason why is simple: they're fast, reliable, and barely break a sweat doing all their solid state stuff.

• We're curating the best deals this Black Friday on PC gaming products we love

Whether it's streaming assets in games, encoding 4K videos, or juggling a mountain of files for an Unreal Engine build, my WD_Black SN850X drives do everything I've asked of them and readily take on more afterwards.

The only thing that's always been a downside is the price tag, as it's often hugely overpriced. Well, thanks to Black Friday, you can bag a 2 TB version for just $139 at Walmart. There are cheaper SSDs on the market, and there are faster ones, but I've yet to find anything that's as good as the SN850X.

Okay, you can stop glaring at me now Mr. WD_Black SN7100...

👉Check out all of Walmart's Black Friday SSD deals👈

I've written articles about the Crucial P510 a few times this year, calling out when this PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD is heavily discounted. Good news, that time has come again, and early on in the Black Friday PC gaming sales.

The Crucial P510 with 1 TB of free space is available for $90 over at Newegg. Or you can splash out on a higher capacity 2 TB model for $140 at B&H Photo. Pick your poison.

• We're curating the best deals this Black Friday on PC gaming products we love

Generally, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are faster than the PCIe 4.0 cohort, on account of the increased bandwidth available over a PCIe 5.0 connection on a motherboard. However, for a long time now, they've cost a pretty penny. Much more than PCIe 4.0 SSDs that have enjoyed a long life and gradually decreasing price tags. And they are also backwards compatible, though you obviously won't get the increased speed of a PCIe 5.0 SSD on a PCIe 4.0 slot.

The P510 puts an end to the whole price premium, though, because at $90, it's the same price as the Sandisk WD_Black SN7100, our pick for the best PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Quick links

• Crucial P510 1 TB | $90 (save $50)
• Crucial P510 2 TB | $140 (save $38)

The deals

In our Crucial P510 review, our SSD reviewer Zak noted its excellent value-for-money at MSRP. He notes the Gen 5 speeds are a little sluggish compared to the best SSDs right now, but it manages temps well and still sticks it to first-gen PCIe 5.0 drives that cost a whole lot more. This latest round of deals makes it that much more tempting.

We did see this drive drop to just $80 for 1 TB over Prime Day. So this isn't the best deal eva on this speedy lil' drive. It's still pretty darn good, however, as one could spend as much as $150 on the fastest PCIe 5.0 drive around—and also our favorite—the Sandisk WD_Black SN8100.

In our testing, the Crucial P510 delivers close to the rated 11,000 MB/s in sequential reads. That decreases to around 9,300 MB/s for writes. Random speeds are pretty good, too, as it again sticks it to older PCIe 5.0 drives and lands more or less on an equal footing with similar, if not more expensive, drives. It can't hold a candle to the SN8100, but nothing can.

It's pretty flexible, too, as it's a single-sided drive and doesn't require lots of cooling.

You can also pick up the P510 adorned with heatsink. Unless your motherboard is missing one, or you're loading it into the PS5, I'd save the cash on the heatsink-free option instead.

The Black Friday SSD sales are only just beginning, but they've started with a bang this year. Amazon, Newegg and Best Buy have put their seasonal deals live already, and we're jotting down all the best ones in our Black Friday SSD deals page.

👉Check out all of Amazon's PCIe 5.0 SSD deals👈

With Black Friday now upon us, I like to remind myself that sometimes less is more—after all, when it comes to external SSDs, I definitely don't want to be lugging around a hefty brick. So I've always looked at the teeny tiny form factor of the Crucial X10 portable SSD longingly… even though you can only get this dinky drive in a traditional black or fetching blue colourway. Not offering purple is a missed trick, because everyone knows hardware in that hue is automatically better.

Okay, so, perhaps not everyone shares my obsession with lilac—but I know for a fact that compact hardware has near universal appeal. But even better than the Crucial X10 portable SSD's ‎50 x 65 x 10 millimetre dimensions, is the fact you can get 8 TB of capacity for only $385 at Amazon. That's a small drive with a mighty price for the large capacity you're getting.

• We're curating all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here

That's more than enough space for a solid chunk of your Steam library (I'm assuming anyone reading this easily has an embarrassment of unplayed riches in the hundreds or even thousands). According to Ian's Crucial X10 review, this portable SSD offers decently nippy transfer speeds—though, if you've not got a USB 3.2 x2 port within reach, speeds can vary wildly over a USB-C connection.

That said, over a Thunderbolt 4 connection you can get a read speed of up to 2003.8 MB/s and a write speed of up to 1933.3 MB/s. That means transferring a 30 GB or so game—such as Arc Raiders—will take less than 30 seconds. While I personally wouldn't recommend actually playing your online games via external storage media, that's still a fast file transfer if you're facing a bit of a storage conundrum or need to play musical chairs with some big game files.

It's worth noting that the Crucial X10 does occupy a weird space in the realm of portable SSDs. A 3.2 Gen 2x2 SSD might seem a little under-kill for new devices that are USB4, while also being overkill for phones which tend to be 3.2 Gen 2x1. However, this external SSD remains a cheaper option than getting a USB4 drive—besides that, plenty of laptops and PCs are still rocking Gen 2x2 ports.

Given this SSD's tiny size and large capacity, it remains a great drive for personal use, even more so in the Black Friday SSD deals. Add to that the fact that Crucial X10's IP65 rating means it's got a decent amount of protection against dust and damp, plus drop resistance rated for a fall of up to three metres, and this SSD is ready for most adventures.

For instance, if you've switched on Steam Family Sharing but your beloved relative or bestie is stuck with an abysmal internet connection, you can more easily bring your Steam library to them with the Crucial X10. 'Tis the giving season, after all.

👉Click here for all of Amazon's Black Friday SSD deals👈

The best PC gaming gear 2025

All our current recommendations

Pick a category Best overallCore ComponentsChairs & DesksSystems & LaptopsScreensPeripheralsCases, Cooling & Storage

Choose a list The best PC gaming gear 2025

---

BEST GAMING CHAIR

1. Secretlab Titan Evo

Check Price

BEST GAMING DESK

2. Secretlab Magnus Pro XL

Check Price

BEST GAMING HEADSET

3. HyperX Cloud Alpha

Check Price

BEST GAMING KEYBOARD

4. Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless

Check Price

BEST GAMING MOUSE

5. Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed

Check Price

BEST PC CONTROLLER

6. Xbox Wireless Controller

Check Price

BEST STEERING WHEEL

7. Logitech G Pro Racing Wheel

Check Price

BEST MICROPHONE

8. Shure MV6

Check Price

BEST WEBCAM

9. Elgato Facecam MK.2

Check Price

---

Read the full guide: The best PC gaming gear 2025

POWERED BY

Folks, I really don't mean to cause alarm but I am looking towards next year and fretfully readjusting my collar. If you're not already aware, we're likely to see memory shortages in 2026 and prices are already on the up as a result. There's a chance DRAM and NAND prices could be impacted by this in the future, though most recently SSD pricing has been fairly steady—I may well be franticly readjusting my collar over nothing.

Still, this Black Friday may well be the best time to grab a deal if you're already thinking of upgrading your SSD. Just for a start, our top pick for the best budget SSD is still hovering around an exceedingly reasonable price point. The Biwin Black Opal NV7400 has more than earned its budget crown, and at $70 for 1 TB of space from Amazon, you can be sure you'll get your money's worth. Just don't forget to tick the box that says 'Apply $25 coupon' on the product page to get the full discount.

Though not the absolute cheapest 1 TB SSD you can pick up in the Black Friday sales, you don't want to skimp too much on any kind of storage media that's going to house your most precious files. Besides, at $70, Biwin still offers strong sequential performance while also maintaining practically chilly SSD temps. That's not just a win-win, that's a Bi-win—c'mon, you knew it was coming!

Alright, done groaning? If you're looking for a drawback, it's this: the truth is, the Black Opal NV7400 doesn't have the greatest random 4K performance, meaning it's not the fastest game drive on the block. That's not to say any games you keep on this drive will load at a snail's pace, though.

According to Zak's Biwin Black Opal NV7400 review, this SSD still rocks a read speed of 7,370 MB/s and a write speed of 6,336 MB/s—which is slightly slower than what's advertised but by no means sluggish. Still, with only 1 TB of space to play with, the Black Opal isn't likely to become most folk's main game drive.

Sure, you could load up your OS and still have room for a few of your most played games on the Black Opal. However, those of us with truly terrifying Steam back logs may be better suited looking elsewhere; currently, it's a little tricky to find greater capacity versions of this particular SSD.

For those still intrigued by this 1 TB SSD costing $70, you can rest assured this drive won't pack it in at the slightest provocation, thanks to its 2,000 TBW endurance rating. Furthermore, a 5-year warranty takes the edge off of any storage media mishap catastrophising. Now that's what I call a Bi-win…okay, I'll see myself out.

👉Click here for all of Amazon's Black Friday SSD deals👈

The best PC gaming gear 2025

All our current recommendations

Pick a category Best overallCore ComponentsChairs & DesksSystems & LaptopsScreensPeripheralsCases, Cooling & Storage

Choose a list The best PC gaming gear 2025

---

BEST GAMING CHAIR

1. Secretlab Titan Evo

Check Price

BEST GAMING DESK

2. Secretlab Magnus Pro XL

Check Price

BEST GAMING HEADSET

3. HyperX Cloud Alpha

Check Price

BEST GAMING KEYBOARD

4. Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless

Check Price

BEST GAMING MOUSE

5. Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed

Check Price

BEST PC CONTROLLER

6. Xbox Wireless Controller

Check Price

BEST STEERING WHEEL

7. Logitech G Pro Racing Wheel

Check Price

BEST MICROPHONE

8. Shure MV6

Check Price

BEST WEBCAM

9. Elgato Facecam MK.2

Check Price

---

Read the full guide: The best PC gaming gear 2025

POWERED BY

Nextorage's webpage for its NEM-PAC SSD range is full of PlayStation 5 imagery and references. That's because the drive has been primarily designed to just slot into Sony's console and boost its storage capabilities.

The thing is, the PS5 just uses a standard PCIe NVMe interface, so if an SSD works in that, it'll work just fine in your gaming PC. And this one really is a great 2 TB storage upgrade, as it's just $115 at Newegg.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

The NEM-PAC is the DRAM-less version of the NEM-PA that we reviewed back in 2023. They're just as fast and efficient, but with no DDR4 cache, they're not quite as speedy when dealing with really big data writes that go on for ages. However, unless you're trying to download a 300 GB game every day, it honestly doesn't matter.

Instead, you're just going to be pleasantly surprised by just how speedy Nextorage's NEM-PAC SSD is. With peak sequential read/write figures of 7400 and 6400 MB/s, respectively, it's absolutely no slouch. That said, it's not the snappiest when it comes to 4K random read/writes, but you can't have everything.

Sticking with the positives, the NEM-PAC's beefy heatsink means that it will never hit a thermal limit and throttle in performance. It is, however, tricky to remove, so you're probably better off binning your motherboard's M.2 heatsink and just using the drive as is. It won't blend as well and might clash with the GPU on some boards, but at least it'll perform just fine.

And at just $115 for 2 TB, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything better right now.

👉Check out the best Black Friday gaming SSD deals here👈

Best gaming rigs 2025

All our current recommendations

Pick a category Best overallCore ComponentsChairs & DesksSystems & LaptopsScreensPeripheralsCases, Cooling & Storage

Choose a list Best gaming laptop 2025Best gaming PC 2025Best gaming rigs 2025Best handheld PC 2025Best mini PC 2025

---

BEST GAMING LAPTOP

1. Razer Blade 16 (2025)

Check Price

BEST GAMING PC

2. HP Omen 35L

Check Price

BEST HANDHELD GAMING PC

3. Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS

Check Price

BEST VR HEADSET

4. Meta Quest 3

Check Price

---

Read the full guide: Best gaming rigs 2025

POWERED BY

So much of data management feels floaty and ephemeral, with just one misplaced click wrecking untold devastation. 'Click, click, wait…no, no, no! I didn't mean to delete the entire folder of fanfic!' So when it comes to intentional data destruction, there's something compelling about a dedicated device that acts like it really means it.

Enter The Destroyinator from 45Drives. This beefy boy billed as an 'industrial-grade' solution to data destruction is capable of wiping up to 60 drives all at once. If you happen to want to blitz an honestly impressive amount of ill-advised, teenaged prose in a hurry, the Destroyinator's wipe speed can apparently reach up to 64 GB/sec. That means I can rest easy in the knowledge that my first few odes to hardware won't turn up in a museum some day in the far future.

This data sanitation device supports a wide range of storage devices, including but not limited to NVMe SSDs, 2.5-inch SATA drives, and HDDs with SAS interfaces as well. Once wiped, the drives are even hot-swappable, meaning you don't need to power the Destroyinator all the way down before loading up another batch of files that will never again see the light of day.

Cutting an imposing silhouette in a 16-gauge industrial steel chassis, it's a suitable coffin for my very worst writing. Joking aside, the device was designed with more straightforward business purposes in mind and is compatible with both Windows and Linux IT environments.

In a post on X, 45Drives shared, "[It's] built for e-recyclers, IT pros, and anyone who needs fast, compliant, and profitable drive erasure with zero cost-per-wipe fees. No subscriptions, no tokens, no surprises."

45Drives makes the case that though physical destruction of NVMe drives is arguably quicker, making the data inaccessible due to damage rather than deleting the files just creates a heap more e-waste. While e-waste processing has improved over the last few years, sucking gold out of old PC hardware, for instance, is still a fairly labour-intensive process and using what you already have remains the most eco-friendly option. Take the not-so-humble disposable vape—some enterprising creators have repurposed this e-waste scourge to do everything from host a website to powering a home.

Each drive loaded up into the Destroyinator and successfully blitzed is bestowed with an official wipe certificate, indicating the still-intact drive is then ready to enter data storage recirculation. This keeps operational costs down and lessens the overall impact on the environment. Despite the super villain name, The Destroyinator is all about reduce, reuse, recycle.

Best gaming rigs 2025

All our current recommendations

Pick a category Best overallCore ComponentsChairs & DesksSystems & LaptopsScreensPeripheralsCases, Cooling & Storage

Choose a list Best gaming laptop 2025Best gaming PC 2025Best gaming rigs 2025Best handheld PC 2025Best mini PC 2025

---

BEST GAMING LAPTOP

1. Razer Blade 16 (2025)

Check Price

BEST GAMING PC

2. HP Omen 35L

Check Price

BEST HANDHELD GAMING PC

3. Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS

Check Price

BEST VR HEADSET

4. Meta Quest 3

Check Price

---

Read the full guide: Best gaming rigs 2025

POWERED BY