Crucial's new SSD was already our favorite budget PCIe 5.0 drive and then Prime Day happened, making it less than $100 at Amazon

Crucial P510 | 1 TB | M.2 2280 SSD | PCIe 5.0 | up to 11,000 MB/s read | up to 9,500 MB/s write | $143.99 $99.99 at Amazon (save $44)
You'll be hard-pressed finding another PCIe 5.0 SSD for less than $100 that's as hard-working as this one. Offering compelling sequential performance and manageable temps even without a heatsink, it's our top pick for the best budget PCIe 5.0 SSD for good reason.

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My already installed, internal 1 TB SSD and I are very happy together, or rather, I'm very happy with it—I think the drive itself would have a thing or two to say about my 5,000 or so Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 screenshots. My point is, I'm not yet looking to upgrade…even if I am currently rocking the WD Blue SN580, a PCIe Gen 3 drive.

In my defence, I took a wee kip and when I woke up the world had moved on to PCIe 5.0. Joking aside, a whole new generation of SSDs tend to boast a wave of prices that crest somewhere outside of my budget. Not so with the Crucial P510 1TB internal SSD, which, thanks to the Prime Day sales, is only $100 at Amazon.

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To think, for the same price as some Gen 4 SSDs, I could be enjoying Gen 5 performance—truly, I've been sleepwalking. Though definitely not as fast as our tippity-toppity pick for the best PCIe 5 SSD, the WD Black SN8100, Crucial once again hits that sweet spot between a reasonably robust performance and an affordable price point.

After all, few drives are so good they can claim the honour of spawning an entirely new guide category as our top pick for the best budget PCIe 5.0 SSD. And though this budget SSD can't compete with pricier options on random 4K performance or load times, our Zak still found plenty to like in his Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review.

Zak wrote, "sequential performance is off the charts. Even for this 1 TB config I have on test here, in CrystalDiskMark it rips and roars along at 10,973 MB/s on the read and 9,394 MB/s on the write. That's dramatically faster than both the Exceria Plus G4 and Corsair's MP700 Elite, both of which (probably unsurprisingly) averaged around 10,200 MB/s and 8,600 MB/s, respectively."

As a later PCIe 5.0 drive too, the P510 is also a touch less toasty. Even without a heatsink, Zak recorded a temp of 64 °C which is a darn sight cooler than the 80 °C or so some earlier drives suffered through. That means, though you could get better temps by whacking a heatsink onto this drive, you don't necessarily need to compromise its versatile form factor to get very respectable performance out of it.

Whether you're looking to introduce this slim 1 TB drive to your rig, console, or laptop, you're unlikely to find a harder working SSD for under 100 bucks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spitball some nicknames for this drive…Maelle? Verso? Nah, those don't quite fit—I need a name for a drive that can easily carry way too many screenshots on its back…'Esquie'? That's perfect!

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Best SSD for gaming 2025

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1. Best overall: WD_Black SN7100

2. Best budget: Lexar NM790

3. Best PCIe 5.0: WD_Black SN8100

4. Best budget PCIe 5.0: Crucial P510

5. Best 4 TB: TeamGroup MP44

6. Best 8 TB: WD_Black SN850X

7. Best M.2 2230: Lexar Play 2230

8. Best for PS5: Silicon Power XS70

9. Best SATA: Crucial MX500