I'm tracking all the best Cyber Monday SSD deals live right now, join me in my palace of storage dreams

Oh my goodness I'm doing a live blog I hope this is how it works.

By which I mean, ahem, hello and welcome! My name's Andy, and today I'll be your host for SSD deals. Some great contenders above already, but I'll be keeping my nose to the ground hunting for even more. Join me, won't you, as I press buttons and hope that nothing breaks.

Let's kick things off with the silliest branding I've seen so far today, and let me be very clear, I am NOT suggesting you buy this just for the product name. Even though I definitely am.

Fattydove Racing SATA SSD

(It's awful. Seriously just don't.)

This Lexar NM790 2TB is literally the drive in sitting in my main machine right now, and this is a lower price than I paid for it. Bad for me, very good for you!

Lexar NM790 | 2TB | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400MB/s read | 6,500MB/s write | $124.99 $109.99 at Amazon (save $15)
Lexar has put together a superb SSD in the NM790, and the best bit is it's surprisingly cheap. Thanks to high layer NAND and a low-power controller, you can get tons of storage here on an energy-efficient and great performing drive for not much cash. Often much less cash than the competition, even. Read our Lexar NM790 (4TB) review for more.

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Also worth noting that the 1TB version also has a teeny little discount, and while the saving might be small it's a great performer next to its similarly priced competition if you're looking for a fast 1TB drive on a budget.

Lexar NM790 | 1TB | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400MB/s read | 6,500MB/s write | $69.99 $64.99 at Amazon (save $5)
This is the 1TB version of one of our favorite SSD drives, and it stacks up very nicely against the competition with its excellent read/write speeds, great power efficiency and solid reliability.  Read our Lexar NM790 (4TB) review for more.

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We've been cooing and cawing over this SSD enclosure in the PC Gamer hardware group chat, mainly because it looks like a science experiment on your desktop. Rubbish transfer speeds, but just look at it.

I want one as a desk toy. Now.

Graugear M2 Desktop Enclosure $42.95 $33.99

I'd like to have a little chat, just you and me, and I've entitled it...

SPAAAAAAAACE. 

Ahem. Space is not just the final frontier, or the place where no-one can hear you scream. When it comes to SSDs, it's the amount of storage space you think you might realistically need over the course of the lifespan of your machine. 

Of course if this is your first SSD purchase, you don't have to go all-in straight away and buy a gigantic drive just for the sake of it. If you're building your first machine, 1TB should be adequate to get you started, although with the size of game installs becoming larger and larger seemingly every year, you may find yourself running out a little fast. If you want a load of the latest releases all on your system at the same time, 2TB and up is where you're probably going to be looking.

However, it may just be worth going even larger than that. This year we've seen some really big discounts on some really big SSDs, so if you have the cash to spend you might be better off getting yourself a 4TB monster and just, y'know, not even worrying about it. There are several on this page alone, but may I put my personal recommendation in for this big chungus:

Lexar NM790 | 4TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400MB/s read | 6,400MB/s write | $229.99 $186.95 at Amazon (save $43.04)
This has swiftly proven itself one of the best ways to stuff 4TB inside your gaming PC. You can read up why in my Lexar NM790 review we published very recently, but the short version is it's as fast as the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives yet rather cheap, and comes with a nifty heatsink to keep things cool.

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I know, I know, its another Lexar drive and I've recommended two here already. That being said, we recommend them for a reason, and if you want to know exactly why then check out Jacob's review in which he put one through it's paces and came out very impressed indeed.

Just to prove it's not all Lexar, Lexar, Lexar, how about another one of our favorites: this chunky Nextorage:

Nextorage Japan | 4TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7,300MB/s read | 6,900MB/s write | $649.99 $199.99 at Newegg (save $450)
Nextorage is a relatively new name in the world of NMVe SSDs, but its products are high quality. This drive sports the fast Phison E18 controller and comes with a heatsink to keep thermal throttling at bay. It's also compatible for use in the PlayStation 5.

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It's a big drive this, both in capacity and in heatsink, but not only does it have the storage capacity chops, but it's a speedy ninja as well. Nextorage used to make SSDs for the Sony PS5 until Phison bought a controlling stake in the company, and now they come with some of the very best controllers available.

These two drives prove that you can have gigantic amounts of storage without the caveats, as both of them are fast, powerful, and aircraft-hangar huge.

So endeth the lesson. If you've got the cash, buy big. Your Steam library will thank you.

Did you pick up a Steam Deck in the sales? Upgrade your storage for cheap with one of these compatible SSDs

Steam Deck (original) | 64GB SSD | $349 at Steam
The Steam Deck may have had an OLED refresh but the original version is still pretty much the archetype of what a handheld PC gaming device should be. It's just as powerful as the most recent model so all those Steam Deck compatible games should run well, and while the 64GB storage is rather small, SSD upgrades like the Sabrent 2230 512GB are at a great price for a straightforward upgrade. It's the OG PC gaming handheld, and it demands respect.

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Last generation Steam Decks are one of the hot-ticket items this year, what with Valve making room for the incoming OLED model. If you managed to snag yourself one of the LCD versions above at a discount, you may well have bought one of the 64GB models, and let's face it, while it's at a great price, that isn't a whole lot of storage.

Luckily, here's three Steam Deck compatible SSD drives on discount, to make your mobile gaming dreams come true. All are fast, roomy (at least by Steam Deck standards) and all three are very good deals at this price. Any of these little marvels are worth a consideration if you're looking to upgrade your mobile gaming machine.

Sabrent Rocket 2230 | 512GB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 5,000MB/s read | 3,700MB/s writes | $59.99 at Amazon
This compact 2230 form factor 512GB drive is a great middle-ground for Steam Deck upgrades. Add the price of this and the $399 64GB Deck together, and you still save $160.01 over buying the top tier Deck. That's with well-improved read/write speeds, too.

Price check: $74.99 Newegg

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Sabrent Rocket 2230 | 1TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 4,750MB/s read | 4,300MB/s write | $89.99 at Amazon
This is a very high-capacity version of our favorite 2230 form factor NVMe SSD for the Steam Deck. While you are paying a premium for handheld compatibility, pairing this with the cheap Steam Deck would save you cash over the top capacity Deck and net you double the storage space.

Price check: Newegg $109.99

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Silicon Power UD90 2230 | 2TB | PCIe 4.0 | 5,000 MB/s read | 3,200 MB/s write | Steam Deck + ROG Ally compatible | $199.99 $159.97 at Amazon (save $40.02)
This Silicon Power drive isn't the fastest compact SSD you can stick in your Steam Deck, but it is the cheapest 2TB drive you'll be able to find for your wee handheld gaming PC. And it will also be a little quicker than the stock drive the Deck ships with, too.

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A Public Service Announcement: Watch out for unheard of SSD brands going at suspiciously cheap prices

Cheap is tempting. There's no denying it. That being said, when it comes to SSD deal hunting this Cyber Monday, may I humbly suggest that any of you out there becoming tempted by suspiciously cheap SSD deals, please double check them first.

A case in point: 

A whole SSD for under $18! It's tempting isn't it, even with that tiny capacity of 256GB. Putting aside that it's very very small, and indeed, very, very cheap, I would advise caution buying any product at this point from a relatively unheard of brand.

Now, let me be clear. I haven't tested this drive myself, nor, to my knowledge, has anyone from PC Gamer. It could perform very well, although with stated read/write speeds of 2,800Mb/s and 2,000Mb/s respectively, "well" may be something of a relative term. The user reviews are positive, and for all we know it may actually be a half-decent drive.

Despite this, my personal advice would be, look elsewhere. Great drives from well-established manufacturers are aplenty, and while you won't find one quite as cheap as this on these pages, it's absolutely worth spending a little bit more to get yourself a great drive from a trusted brand. SSDs like this are too much of an unknown factor, and you'd really be better off saving your pennies for a better drive than taking a chance on something like the above.

Our cheapest SSD drive right now is this little corker:

Team T-FORCE CARDEA Z44L | 1TB | M.2 2280 | PCIe 4.0 | 3,500MB/s read | 3,000MB/s write | $59.99 $43.99 at Newegg (save $16)
You're not getting blistering read/write speeds here, just lots of storage for very little money. For a PCIe 4.0 drive, the data rates aren't great but it does mean the SSD won't get very hot, which is ideal for laptops or compact PCs.

Price check: $43.99 Walmart

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Yes it's over twice the money as the "Fikwot" above, but boy howdy is it more than twice the drive on specs alone. You get a whole 1TB of storage (that's four times the capacity of the Fikwot, for those of you keeping count) and read and write speeds that are much more up to par with modern drives. It's not what you'd call particularly fast, the T-Force, but nor could it be reasonably be called slow, and it comes from an established manufacturer we're happy to recommend.

Don't get caught up in the prices, my friends. If you're spending your money this Cyber Monday, make sure it's because the product you're buying is actually good, not simply because it's cheap. 

Wot, no Gen 5 drives?

Some of you may have noticed that we haven't got any Gen 5 SSD drives in our current line up of deals. These drives are available, and very fast indeed, so you might be wondering why.

Well, for a start they're still relatively new. That means that the discounts aren't particularly juicy. But beyond that, when it comes to gaming performance, Gen 5 drives currently don't really deliver any meaningful gains, at least none worth spending the extra cash on.

That's not to say they're not faster in the benchmarks, nor that a Gen 5 drive is necessarily a bad buy. It's more that since you can get Gen 3 and Gen 4 drives with great capacity at very good prices, and that realistically they're going to perform just as well in your games as a Gen 5, we find them a bit hard to straight up recommend as things currently stand.

This one's fun to look at though. Look, it's got a little fan!

Refurbs: Why we don't recommend them in our buying guides, especially for SSDs

I've seen a lot of deals today on refurbished SSDs, and just wanted to write a quick few words about them. Refurbished products can be a canny way of saving a fair bit of money on an electronics purchase, and it's entirely possible to buy a refurb that may well have nothing wrong with it beyond the odd cosmetic mark. 

However, some of you may have noticed we don't currently recommend any in our deal pages, including SSDs, and there's good reason for this.

Essentially, when we make a recommendation on a product, we take every step possible to ensure that what you might end up buying is the best version of itself at the lowest price we can find it for. While it is possible to get refurbished products with very little wrong with them, it does increase the chance that you might end up with something that didn't quite pass inspection when it came back in for testing.

This is especially true of SSDs, as they have a very finite lifespan. Your refurb SSD may have barely been used, or it may have had quite a bit of data written and rewritten over it in the course of its life before it was returned. Given that this might be the case, it's really not a good idea to take a chance on a used drive.

We put a lot of time, effort and care into making sure that when you see one of our recommendations, its for something genuinely high-quality. Therefore, we're just not quite comfortable with recommending products that have been used before, and thereby we don't post any in our guides. We want to ensure you get the best deals on the best hardware available, and we take that responsibility very seriously indeed.

While we're not saying you should never buy a refurbished product, we feel it's best that you're aware of the higher risk that your purchase might not be the product that you hoped it was. Buy brand new wherever possible, and you've got a much better chance of getting something for your money that really lives up to its reputation.

Here is a picture of an SSD with cheetah eyes on it. No reason in particular, it just made me smile.

Does your SSD need a heatsink?

For those of you wondering whether you should be focussing on SSDs with heatsinks in your purchasing decisions, I can give you a definitive answer:

Maybe.

I know, I know. That's why you come to us, for all the useful practical advice. But in all seriousness, its worth having a quick look at the reviews of any potential drive to see whether heat might be an issue. An overheating drive will throttle down its performance to prevent damage, although it must be said that this would only usually be under extremely heavy usage. If you notice the drive you're looking at does tend to get a little toasty, then buying the version with a heatsink is a good idea.

If heat isn't an issue it still might be worth thinking about going for the heatsink version regardless, just for a bit of added peace of mind. Make sure whichever heatsink you're buying isn't too big for your case layout, as its possible that those of you with Micro ATX motherboards might find your main M2 socket is underneath the GPU or similar, leaving limited amounts of clearance.

Check the reviews, check the user experiences, but in all honesty most SSDs will function just fine without one. Look at it as an added bonus, and one that may be worth taking into consideration.

Steam Deck SSDs: it's not that hard to save yourself from storage Deck Heck

Hello, storage warriors. This is Ted picking up for Andy on the US-side. We have a couple recommendations for Steam Deck SSD replacements, but I know it can be a bit daunting, contemplating cracking open a dense handheld as opposed to the roomy desktops we're used to.

I've kept my Deck with its stock 512 gig NVMe—I spent so much on it, and installed so many games, it hasn't felt worth the effort to try and cram in a 2 TB NVMe. I have, however, performed that operation on a friend's machine, and I'm here to tell you: it's not a bad hang!

The Deck is a supremely DIY-friendly device, and I honestly had more trouble futzing around with a flash drive, dock, and external keyboard reimaging the device afterward than I did with the physical installation itself. Consider grabbing an iFixit toolkit to see you through the operation and following along with their guide to replacing a Steam Deck SSD.

While you're cracking the device open, consider swapping in a JSAUX transparent backplate if you're a clear electronics fiend like me. The first run sample that I first tried had some quality control issues, but I recently purchased another and it was a perfect fit—and my Deck looks fresh as hell now.

Sabrent Rocket 2230 | 1TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 4,750MB/s read | 4,300MB/s write | $89.99 at Amazon
This is a very high-capacity version of our favorite 2230 form factor NVMe SSD for the Steam Deck. While you are paying a premium for handheld compatibility, pairing this with the cheap Steam Deck would save you cash over the top capacity Deck and net you double the storage space.

Price check: Newegg $109.99

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Here's to SATA drives and HDDs, you served me well

I upgraded to a PC with M.2 slots in 2021, and aside from having to immediately install a BIOS update to get it to recognize my Samsung stick, I don't think I'm ever looking back. I do still have a 1TB SATA SSD from my previous rig that I've grandfathered in, but I can't imagine I'll have cause to get a new one in the future.

I think I've got another two or three M.2 slots open on my full-size motherboard, and now that we're in the realm of affordable 2TB NVMe drives, the "Ole Reliable" pairing of a 128 or 256GB SSD boot drive with a 1TB hard disc seems almost painfully quaint.

I've nearly doubled my rig's storage this Black Friday season with this fresh 2TB Silicon Power drive (or I will once I install it). With processors and GPUs both failing to impress in their most recent generational refreshes, it really feels like "The Year of the SSD" for any yeoman PC tinkerers out there.

Silicon Power XS70 | 2TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7300  MB/s Read | 6800 MB/s Write | $124.99 $109.97 at Amazon (save $19)
The XS70 was going cheaper last month, but we've seen it pop back up in price recently. I'd perhaps wait a bit longer to see if the price dips again before picking one up. It packs rather a large bang for your buck with its fast read and write times, at least. While the software side of things may be a little lacking, we were impressed with the overall performance and value proposition of this drive. Read our review here.

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I do not recommend this CoD: BlOps-themed SSD, but it does amuse me

I miss the days of the game tie-in graphics card—you know, with a super gaudy plastic shroud, back when GPU box art absolutely ruled? This Call of Duty-themed SSD kinda evokes that for me. It's not the best deal in this Black Friday-Cyber Monday lineup—I say 2TB or bust—but it has charmed me, and that's gotta be worth something these days.

How likely are you to even appreciate that tacticool little nuke symbol when it's slotted into your motherboard, I wonder? I know my Gigabyte board has an integrated heat sink option for M.2 SSDs. Regardless, it's a captivating little artifact.

WD_BLACK COD Black Ops SN850 | 1TB | M.2 2280 | PCIe 4.0 | 7,000MB/s read | 5,300MB/s write | $69.99 $59.99 at Walmart (save $10)
This WD_Black SN850 has excellent read speeds and decent write performance from an established brand with great reliability. Plus this one's Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War branded, so if that's your thing then there's plenty of room here to handle the game and all its future updates.

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Now really is the time to get an SSD

This year's Cyber Monday is coming to a close for me, but I'd like to leave you with a grim prediction from my colleague Nick Evanson: SSD prices are likely to rise in the near future with Samsung bumping the cost of their component parts.

So, not to be an alarmist, but if you're on the fence: join me in partaking of this storage bonanza. Think of how many crummy old RPGs you got on sale from GOG you won't have to delete to make room for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Your installation of The Mystery of the Druids will thank you.

The SSDs that PC Gamer writers bought this year

A new SSD watcher has logged on: Tyler here to point out that we've just posted an article containing the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals PC Gamer's writers personally bit on, and there are a couple SSDs among them. 

I bought a power tool which doesn't have much to do with PC gaming, but your previous SSD curator, Ted, picked up a couple TBs of storage with the Silicon Power XS70 NVMe drive below.

Silicon Power XS70 | 2TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7300  MB/s Read | 6800 MB/s Write | $124.99 $109.97 at Amazon (save $19)
The XS70 was going cheaper just recently, so you may want to keep an eye on it to see if the price dips again before picking one up. It packs rather a large bang for your buck with its fast read and write times, at least. While the software side of things may be a little lacking, we were impressed with the overall performance and value proposition of this drive. Read our review here.

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Tyler C also grabbed some external solid state storage, a 4TB Samsung T7, to use as a backup drive. 

I've been told before that the responsible way to back up files is to pay for a cloud service, which is less likely to fail than any physical media we might keep ourselves, but I'm with Tyler C—I like local backups. Wes, who always outdoes the rest of us when it comes to this kind of thing, just bought 32TB worth of NAS hard drives. I guess convenience and reliability of cloud storage is just no match for our DIY mentality.

Samsung T7 Shield SSD | 4TB | USB 3.2 | 10,50 MB/s reads $239.99 $199.99 at Amazon (save $40)

Samsung has been updating this line of portable SSDs for quite a few years now, and they're reliably some of the fastest compact storage devices you can get that'll fit in your pocket.

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That is Cyber Monday and Black Friday all done and dusted, but that doesn't mean all the discounts have dried up as we're still curating the best storage discounts on our main Cyber Week SSD deals page.