There's nothing quite like upgrading a machine with a speedy NVMe SSD. Going from a hard drive or even a SATA SSD up to the latest storage standard can be incredible. Load times are slashed and general Windows operations can suddenly feel so much smoother. As the guy that's tested loads of NVMe SSDs, I heartily recommend upgrading to a PCIe 4.0 SSD if you possibly can.
There's a problem here though. The very fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs are not cheap, especially if you're looking for a single drive to do everything. And by that, I'm talking about a single 2TB M.2 drive. That's really what you want. Unfortunately, something like the utterly impressive WD_Black SN850 in 2TB trim will set you back $530. Gulp.
At least normally it would. Right now, you can enjoy a massive 36% saving on that beastly drive and get it for just $339. In fact, Amazon has had it at this price for the best part of the last month. It's still the cheapest it has ever been, but it isn't technically a Black Friday deal.
Don't get me wrong, that's still a big chunk of cash, but it's nowhere as terrifying as I was expecting. Still, if you don't have a spare $340 burning a hole in your back pocket, does that mean you can't enjoy some super slick drive performance? There are alternatives.
You could go with a slightly updated take on the old paradigm of a speedy boot drive (NVMe SSD) and a slower drive for storage (SATA SSD), but it's not really what you're after. You want everything you do to be speedy and responsive, regardless of where it sits on your system.
Well, hold that thought, because right now this 2TB NVMe SSD from Kingston rolls in at an outstanding $149.99.
Yes, it's not the fastest drive around, and in fact, with headline figures of 2,100MB/s on the reads and 1,700MB/s on the writes, it's a long way off the numbers that the top PCIe 4.0 drives can manage. Or even decent PCIe 3.0 drives for that matter. Even so, that's still three times faster than a SATA drive will manage, and this NVMe drive is actually cheaper than any 2TB SATA drive I can find.
The main takeaway here is that it's a great time to upgrade your storage. Somehow SSDs have managed to escape the silicon shortage that's been blighting the PC industry. Not only that, but they're available at great prices too. Check out this guide to the best Black Friday SSD deals for proof.
