If you want to give your gaming hardware an instant speed boost, an SSD is your ideal solution. Gen 5 NVMe drives offer breathtakingly fast performance but can be expensive; PS5-ready SSDs with heatsinks and RGB lighting may cost even more.
WD took its popular Black SN850X drive and turned up the wick. Now offering fast sequential performance and impressive sustained performances while still competing against premium priced PCIe 5.0 drives, WD’s Black SN850X drives have reached new levels of excellence.
1. Crucial T700 Pro
Crucial’s cutting-edge Gen5 SSD offering, the T700 Pro SSD from Crucial is designed to become the world’s go-to consumer SSD. Boasting official read/write speeds of 12400MB/s and 11800MB/s respectively, its official read and write speeds outshone PCIe 4.0 competitors in CrystalDiskMark’s sequential file transfer test; in PCMark 10’s storage benchmark test it outperformed competitors up to 79% faster; both tests demonstrated dramatic speed increases.
These impressive numbers do not always translate to tangible benefits in real-world use; although you will experience some increases in OS and application speeds, whether or not a website opens faster will ultimately depend on both your hardware and internet connection speeds.
For maximum read and write speeds, the T700 Pro uses Micron’s 2000MT/s 3D TLC NAND flash memory technology and features a pseudo-SLC cache to quickly absorb bursts of writes.
The T700 Pro comes in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities and with either or without a heatsink; those opting for the latter feature an integral heatsink to help keep their drive cool while maintaining peak performance, while its non-heatsink model includes a thin copper thermal label to work alongside your motherboard M.2 heatsink or standalone liquid cooler solutions.
The T700 Pro can be quite costly. It costs more than double what our comparison table’s faster but older WD Black SN850X costs, making upgrading worth considering only if your system supports Gen5, or you want to futureproof against future CPUs/motherboards which support Gen5.
2. WD Black SN850X
Like its predecessor, this NVMe SSD was designed to deliver lightning-fast performance for gamers, offering faster load times and reduced lag during gameplay.
Performance for an SSD at this price point is quite good, though slightly slower than its predecessors due to switching from BiCS6 NAND flash memory to 8TB capacity drives, both factors which tend to compromise performance over time.
The SN850X SSD excelled in my benchmark tests, boasting fast read and write speeds with very low latency. It would make a fantastic choice for upgrading PS5 consoles; its 8TB model offering more storage per slot than any other available SSD on the market.
As is typical with WD Black drives, there are no user-accessible features on this SSD drive. However, it does come equipped with a dashboard application to manage its status and activate Game Mode 2.0 which can automatically detect and enable “enhanced” gaming functions. Furthermore, its five-year warranty should provide peace of mind to enthusiasts using multiple games at the same time such as gamers or content creators who may need multiple copies installed simultaneously.
3. T-Force A440 Lite
TEAMGROUP is an established Taiwanese hardware manufacturer known for their quality DRAM memory modules and solid state drives as well as USB flash drives and other peripheral series. Their T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Lite gaming lineup represents cost-cutting alternatives to their A440 Pro model that we reviewed previously.
Like its A440 Pro counterpart, this NVMe SSD utilizes PCI Express 4.0 x4 connectivity and the 2280 M.2 form factor to ensure compatibility with modern systems. The Phison PS5027-E27T four channel DRAM-less controller utilizes TSMC 12nm process technology while supporting SLC caching, average block erasure (wear-leveling), and automatic error correction – boasting 1TB capacity thanks to Kioxia BiCS6 162-layer TLC 3D NAND flash memory storage capacity.
This drive stands out by being a single-sided SSD, with all components situated on just one side. As a result, its design requires less cooling and space compared to most other SSDs, making it perfect for laptops and notebooks.
This drive is an ideal option for gamers as it boasts a sequential read speed of 7,400MB/s – similar to that of A440 Pro – and write speeds up to 6,400MB/s. However, its total bearing warranty (TBW) of 600GB puts it behind MP1Q’s warranty of 512TB.
