With this Crucial M.2 SSD at its lowest ever price, you're getting swift Gen 5 speeds for *almost* Gen 4 prices

Crucial P510 | 1 TB | Gen 5 | NVMe M.2 | 11,000 MB/s sustained read | 9,000 MB/s sustained write | $139.99 $99.99 at Best Buy
If you've found yourself running out of storage, or your current storage is a little slow, we reviewed the Crucial P510 Gen 5 SSD literally last month and it's already discounted by a hefty $40. This is comfortably the best budget PCIe 5.0 SSD on the market right now.

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Do you need a Gen 5 SSD for gaming? The answer, up until now, has been 'eh, it's probably not worth the extra cash.' After all, there's only so high certain read and write speeds can get where you actually notice. However, when you're getting some Gen 5 M.2 SSDs for Gen 4 prices, the bump to both standard speed and random 4K performance makes it an obvious choice.

Right now, you can get the Crucial P510 1 TB SSD for $100 at Best Buy, which is $40 less than usual. Our favourite budget SSD, Lexar's Gen 4 NM790, offers the same storage size for $86.26, but I'd pick the P510 for its better speeds.

It doesn't need a hefty heatsink to stay cool (we know, we tested it), the swap from a controller built on a 12 nm process node to 7 nm process node means this drive can stay performant without getting super toasty in the process. We spotted that sequential performance is excellent, with it zooming along at a 10,974 read and 9,394 MB/s write speed.

In Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers' load time benchmark, we noticed the P510 is a tad sluggish in comparison to other Gen 5 drives, taking 8.07 seconds to load. The best performing drive we've tested (the WD Black SN8100) manages to do the same benchmark in 6.58 seconds.

Effectively the Gen 5 equivalent of Crucial's P310 line-up of SSDs, this budget range of SSDs offers a good pairing of speeds at a reasonable price point. Being a budget drive, you won't get the absolute best performance, but you do get arguably the best price/performance ratio.

The random 4K performance is average for a Gen 5 drive, placing similarly to Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 and Corsair's MP700 Elite 2 in our testing. It did, however, get outpaced by competitors like the SK Hynix Platinum P51 and the WD black SN8100.

It may place middle of the Gen 5 pile in some of our testing, but the Gen 5 pile is a great one to be in. If you're looking for an upgrade or just have a spare slot in your rig, to think you can get such fast speeds for this price is astonishing.

Best SSD for gaming 2025

👉Check out our full guide👈

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