SSDs bigger than 500GB used to be quite expensive and I’m talking less than a year ago. But now you can load up your gaming PC or laptop with 1TB of storage, without having to pay a small fortune or sacrifice performance.
I set a budget limit of $60 to see exactly what deals I could get for this money and four offers stood out from the crowd.
The first from Team Group isn’t a rocket ship, considering it’s an NVMe PCIe 4.0 drive, but you’re paying less than $45 for something that will leave any SATA drive in the dirt. One advantage of its slower transfer rates is that it won’t get very hot, which makes it ideal for laptops or small PCs.
If you want a little more oomph from your SSD, then for a whole $6 more you could get the Solidigm P41 Plus. It’s read speed is 18% higher than the Team model and it’s write speed is within 2% of the competition. Having a faster read rate is useful for booting Windows or loading apps quickly, so it’s definitely worth a few extra bucks.
If you’re feeling the need for some speed, though, you might be surprised by just how insanely quick cheap SSDs can be. As before, I have two suggestions for you and just as with the slower drives, they’re roughly the same.
The Nextorage model might not have a name that you’re familiar with but don’t worry: It’s a quality SSD with Sony heritage that isn’t just quick for its price, it’s quick full stop. The Solidigm P44 Pro is just as speedy, but gives up a little read performance for a faster write rate than the Nextorage.
Ultra fast SSDs can get a bit toasty when working really hard, so if you know you’re going to be using them heavily then ensure your PC case has good airflow, especially over the area where you’re going to install them.
But if you’ve got an older PC that only offers PCIe 3.0 support then don’t worry, you can use any of these drives. What will happen is that SSD’s read/write speeds will be lowered to fit within the 3.0 limits, which in turn will help keep temperatures under control.
You really can’t lose with any of these four offers. Just get any of them and treat your gaming PC to some silky fast storage, all for less than $60.
