![]() ![]() The WD Black SN850 we recommend below in the console section is also a great pick. The P5 Plus comes in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB varieties. With sequential read speeds of 6600MB/s, it’s not the absolute fastest Gen4 NVMe you can buy, but it offers about the best value. If you have the necessary hardware and money to spare, it’s hard to beat the high-end Crucial P5 Plus. With all that boring stuff out of the way, here are some go-to best SSD recommendations. Drives can slow dramatically as they approach capacity, and you will probably end up purchasing one with a larger storage capacity down the line. From a practical standpoint, the worst thing you can do is buy a type of SSD that’s too small for needs. If your budget forces you to choose between a 1TB Gen3 NVMe and a 512GB Gen4 model, go for the former. The sequential read and write speeds you see manufacturers list on their drives are theoretical and real-world performance varies less than you think. The best buying advice I can offer is: don’t get too caught up about being on the bleeding edge of storage tech. That said, check your computer’s documentation before buying a drive to ensure you’re not trying to fit one it can’t support. Some boards can accommodate more than one size of NVMe SSD thanks to multiple standoffs. (The first two numbers represent width in millimeters, the latter denote the length.) For the most part, you don’t have to worry about that since 2280 is the default for many motherboards and manufacturers. From shortest to longest, the common options are 2230, 2242, 2260, 220. One last thing to consider is that M.2 drives come in different physical sizes. Speaking of backward compatibility, it’s also possible to use a Gen4 drive through a PCIe 3 connection, but you won’t get any of the speed benefits of the faster NVMe. Unless you want to continue using an old M.2 drive, there’s little reason to take advantage of that feature. Note that you can install a SATA M.2 SSD into an M.2 slot with a PCIe connection, but you can’t insert an NVMe M.2 SSD into a M.2 slot with a SATA connection. ![]() As an added bonus, there aren’t any wires involved, making cable management easier. That may sound intimidating, but in practice the process involves a single screw that you first remove to connect the drive to your computer and then retighten to secure the SSD in place. You add M.2 storage to your computer by installing the SSD directly onto the motherboard. We’ll see the first ones arrive alongside AMD’s next-generation Ryzen 7000 processors later this year, but if the price of early Gen4 drives is any indication, they will be expensive.Īs for why you would buy an M.2 SATA drive over a similarly specced 2.5-inch drive, it comes down to ease of installation. At the moment, only Intel’s 12th-gen desktop CPUs support PCIe 5 and there aren’t any Gen5 NVMe SSDs out on the market. You might have also seen something about Gen 5 NVMe drives. Keep in mind you’ll pay a small premium for a Gen4 SSD. With Intel, meanwhile, you’ll need a 11th or 12th Gen processor and a Z490, Z590 or Z690 motherboard. If you’re running an AMD system, that means a Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU and an X570 or B550 motherboard. You can get twice the performance with a Gen4 SSD, but you’ll need a motherboard and processor that supports the standard. SSDs with the latter are known as Non-Volatile Memory or NVMe drives and are significantly faster than their SATA counterparts, with Gen3 models offering sequential write speeds of up to 3,000MB/s. M.2 drives can feature either a SATA or PCIe connection. The form factor represents your ticket to the fastest possible consumer storage on the market, but the tricky part is navigating all the different standards and specs involved. If your PC is newer, there’s a good chance it includes space for one or more M.2 SSDs. And with 1TB SATA SSDs costing about $100, they’re a good bulk storage option. ![]() But even the slowest SSD has a significantly faster transfer speed than the best mechanical drives. The one downside of SATA drives is that they’re slower than their high-performance NVMe counterparts, with SATA III limiting data transfers to 600MB/s. Once you’ve secured the internal SSD in a drive cage, all you need to do is to connect it to your motherboard and power supply. For that reason, 2.5-inch SSDs are the best buys if you want to extend the life of an older PC build. It’s also one of the easiest if you don’t want to worry about compatibility since almost every computer made in the last two decades will include a motherboard with Serial ATA connections. The most affordable way to add fast storage space to a computer is with a 2.5-inch SATA drive. ![]()
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