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The Best SSDs for Gaming

Find out which SSDs are the best for gaming and learn how SSDs can improve your gaming experience.

The Best SSDs for Gaming Kevin Jones / TechReviewer

Last Updated: March 18, 2023

Written by Brandon Jones

Are you looking to boost the performance of your gaming PC or console? One way to do so is by installing an SSD, but with so many options on the market, it can be tough to know which one is the best for your needs. So if you want to take your gaming to the next level, check out our best SSDs for gaming below!

This article will discuss the key features to consider when choosing an SSD for gaming and provide an overview of the top options available. I will also discuss the impact of an SSD on load times, FPS, and game installation/updates.

Best 1 TB SSDs for Gaming

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Samsung 990 PRO 1 TB:

ADATA Premium SSD for PS5 1 TB:

Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 1 TB:

  • The WD_Black SN850X 1 TB has a max read speed of 7,300 MB/s, and a max write speed of 6,300 MB/s.

  • The WD_Black SN850X 1 TB has an expected lifespan of 600 TBW, which is 600 TBW per TB of capacity.

    WD_BLACK 1 TB SN850X NVMe WD_BLACK 1 TB SN850X NVMe Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1 TB:

Western Digital WD_Black SN850 1 TB:

  • The WD_Black SN850 1 TB has a max read speed of 7,000 MB/s, and a max write speed of 5,300 MB/s.

  • The WD_Black SN850 1 TB has an expected lifespan of 600 TBW, which is 600 TBW per TB of capacity.

    WD_BLACK 1 TB SN850 NVMe WD_BLACK 1 TB SN850 NVMe Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Best 2 TB SSDs for Gaming

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Samsung 990 PRO 2 TB:

ADATA Premium SSD for PS5 2 TB:

Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 2 TB:

  • The WD_Black SN850X 2 TB has a max read speed of 7,300 MB/s, and a max write speed of 6,600 MB/s.

  • The WD_Black SN850X 2 TB has an expected lifespan of 1,200 TBW, which is 600 TBW per TB of capacity.

    WD_BLACK 2 TB SN850X NVMe WD_BLACK 2 TB SN850X NVMe Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2 TB:

Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB:

Western Digital WD_Black SN850 2 TB:

  • The WD_Black SN850 2 TB has a max read speed of 7,000 MB/s, and a max write speed of 5,100 MB/s.

  • The WD_Black SN850 2 TB has an expected lifespan of 1,200 TBW, which is 600 TBW per TB of capacity.

    WD_BLACK 2 TB SN850 NVMe WD_BLACK 2 TB SN850 NVMe Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Best 4 TB SSDs for Gaming

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Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 4 TB:

  • The WD_Black SN850X 4 TB has a max read speed of 7,300 MB/s, and a max write speed of 6,600 MB/s.

  • The WD_Black SN850X 4 TB has an expected lifespan of 2,400 TBW, which is 600 TBW per TB of capacity.

    WD_BLACK 4 TB SN850X NVMe WD_BLACK 4 TB SN850X NVMe Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4 TB:

PNY XLR8 CS3140 4 TB:

  • The XLR8 CS3140 4 TB has a max read speed of 7,500 MB/s, and a max write speed of 6,850 MB/s.

  • The XLR8 CS3140 4 TB has an expected lifespan of 3,000 TBW, which is 750 TBW per TB of capacity.

  • The XLR8 CS3140 4 TB has a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 2,000,000 hours.

    PNY XLR8 CS3140 4 TB M.2 NVMe SSD PNY XLR8 CS3140 4 TB M.2 NVMe SSD Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

ADATA Legend 960 Max 4 TB:

Kingston FURY Renegade 4 TB:

  • The FURY Renegade 4 TB has a max read speed of 7,300 MB/s, and a max write speed of 7,000 MB/s.

  • The FURY Renegade 4 TB has an expected lifespan of 4,000 TBW, which is 1,000 TBW per TB of capacity.

  • The FURY Renegade 4 TB has a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 1,800,000 hours.

    Kingston FURY Renegade 4 TB NVMe M.2 SSD Kingston FURY Renegade 4 TB NVMe M.2 SSD Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Factors to Consider When Choosing an SSD

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When looking for an SSD for gaming, there are some qualities to look for, such as the speed, lifespan, and form factor/interface of the drive.

SSD Speed

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When choosing an SSD for gaming, you should get one with at least 500 MB/s speeds. That said, faster SSDs can perform better and be faster, so it's best to get an SSD with speeds of 2,000 MB/s or more.

Modern hard disk drives can reach up to 200 MB/s for large files. However, for smaller files that aren't located near each other on a hard drive, you can typically achieve read rates of only 1-3 MB/s. In comparison, the latest PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drives can often reach speeds of up to 7 GB/s for large files and 2-3 GB/s for smaller scattered files.

For gaming, this means that your levels could load 35x faster by upgrading to the latest SSD devices and PCI-Express versions. This speed increase assumes that level data is collected into files that correlate with the level or map region. Unoptimized games with no asset organization could see a 1000x performance boost when loading data.

SSD Lifespan

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This lifespan value is an estimate of how long the SSD will last. Various factors can impact the actual lifespan, but estimates indicate how long you can expect the SSD to last.

Lifespan can be measured in MTBF (mean time between failures) and TBW (terabytes written). MTBF is the general estimate of how many hours an SSD will last, while TBW is the amount of data you write to an SSD. If you don't write much to your drive, such as downloading games or copying files, your SSD will last longer.

SSD Interface

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It's important to note that you may need to upgrade other PC components to achieve the fastest SSD speeds. NVMe SSDs currently provide the fastest available speeds.

SATA

The SATA interface can reach a max speed of 600 MB/s. The NVMe interface, on the other hand, is primarily limited by PCI-Express speeds.

SATA HDD

SATA hard disk drives can provide much higher capacities than SSDs, at a lower price. However, their read speeds are limited to about 200 MB/s due to their design.

SATA SSD

Consumer 2.5" SSDs always use the SATA interface, which means that if you want speeds faster than 600 MB/s, you'll need to upgrade to NVMe M.2 SSDs.

SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA 2.5" 4 TB SSD SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA 2.5" 4 TB SSD Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

M.2

M.2 is a small form factor used by storage devices. M.2 devices are typically inserted into a port directly on a motherboard. PCIe expansion cards also exist with M.2 ports.

SATA M.2 SSD

Both SATA and NVMe M.2 cards exist but must be used with a compatible motherboard. When purchasing an M.2 device, ensure that your motherboard supports the form factor, as M.2 cards come in various lengths.

SATA M.2 cards run at SATA speeds, which means they are limited to 600 MB/s.

NVMe M.2 SSD

NVMe M.2 cards use the PCIe connection to provide a high throughput rate, with a max speed of 8 GB/s for PCIe 4.0.

Each version of PCI-Express roughly doubles the supported bandwidth. For example, a PCI-Express 4.0 NVMe M.2 card using x2 lanes may support up to twice the speed of a PCI-Express 3.0 card using the same number of lanes (same keying).

PCI-Express NVMe M.2 Speed (Rounded)
x2 Bandwidth x4 Bandwidth
PCIe 1.0 500 MB/s 750 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 1000 MB/s 2 GB/s
PCIe 3.0 2 GB/s 4 GB/s
PCIe 4.0 4 GB/s 8 GB/s
PCIe 5.0 8 GB/s 16 GB/s
PCIe 6.0 16 GB/s 32 GB/s
SAMSUNG 990 PRO 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD SAMSUNG 990 PRO 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

Learn more in my article, Storage Type Comparison: M.2, U.2, NVMe, SATA, SSDs, HDDs.

Add-in Card PCIe to NVMe M.2 SSD Adapter

If SATA speeds are too slow for you, but you don't have M.2 slots available on your motherboard, you might consider a PCIe to M.2 SSD add-in card adapter. Adapters will run at the speeds supported by your PCIe version.

M.2 PCIe NVMe 4.0/3.0 Adapter M.2 PCIe NVMe 4.0/3.0 Adapter Check Price on Amazon Amazon Affiliate Link

How Can an SSD Improve PC Gaming Performance?

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By using an SSD in place of a hard drive for storage, you are increasing the speed at which your computer can read and write data. Games don't write very much data to storage, so the most critical performance metric is the read speed.

Some games may not even read from your storage device very often. If you have an adequate amount of memory (RAM), optimized closed-world games may load much of the level into memory as the level first loads. Memory is much faster than even a solid-state drive, so it makes sense for a game to keep game data in memory when it can. Learn more about recommended memory capacities in my article, How Much RAM Do You Need for Gaming?.

Installation and Update Times

During gameplay, games seldom write to your storage device. However, game files are written to your storage device during installation and game patches.

During updates, installers can write many gigabytes of data. Game installers first write to your storage device when downloading a compressed copy of the game update. After that, game files are read and extracted, writing individual files to the device again.

You likely won't notice when the update is first written, as your Internet download speed may be around the same rate.

Hard disk drives will extract files slower due to the resulting files being non-contiguous (i.e., spread out across the disk). Because storage device writes are often slower than reading speeds, game patches can be painful to wait for with a slower storage device.

We can estimate that a hard drive could extract an update at an average write speed of 50 MB/s and read speed of 200 MB/s. At this rate, a hard disk drive would take 1.5 minutes to extract 6 GB of files during the game update.

The latest PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs, on the other hand, might write at speeds of 2 GB/s and read at 7 GB/s while extracting 6 GB of files. This type of SSD would take about 4 seconds, assuming that your CPU can keep up.

Loading Times

Have you noticed the long loading screen when a game level starts or when switching locations? A large portion of this time is spent copying game assets from your storage device to memory.

Open-world games may contain too much data to copy all level data to your PC's memory at once. Instead, they load game assets for objects near your character. Games must read additional data from your storage device as you traverse the world. If your storage device isn't fast enough, you may notice stuttering or pausing until the assets load. Depending on the game's design, you may see objects or textures appearing after a delay. However, delayed object loading can sometimes relate to your GPU's capabilities.

FPS

FPS (frames per second) is a measurement determined by what your computer needs to do every time it renders a frame from the game scene. Because games only need to read from a storage device when loading additional level assets into memory, upgrading a storage device will not impact your average FPS.

However, using a fast storage device like an NVMe SSD will significantly improve your experience. A fast storage device will reduce the time it takes to boot your computer, load games levels, and load assets when exploring a game world.

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Other Considerations When Building a PC

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Want to brush up on other new technologies to consider when building a computer? Check out these articles: