The Best PS5 SSDs in 2024: Speedy NVMe storage for your console

The Best PS5 SSDs

Finding the best PS5 SSD might seem like a daunting task due to the wide range of choices; there are plenty of SSDs for the PS5 on the market that will provide a simple and hassle-free capacity upgrade for your game library. To narrow down the options, we put a wide range of the speediest drives from our SSD benchmarks hierarchy through a battery of our tests to find the best SSDs for the PS5, and then we picked the cream of the crop based on both performance and pricing. Given that nearly any new drive you buy for the PC can also be used in the PS5, you can also find many of these same picks on our list of Best SSDs for desktop PCs.

The PS5's internal SSD is a restrictive 825GB, and after formatting, updates, and bloatware it typically leaves you with about 670GB free for games. That's bad news, because today's games are becoming larger with each new release, and you'll also need somewhere to store all the screenshots and video clips you gather while you play. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War all by itself uses more than 200GB!

The good news is that Sony has an M.2 expansion slot where you can put a second SSD for the PS5, and updated system firmware now allows you to use an SSD with up to 8TB of capacity. That capacious amount of storage should satiate even the most demanding of gamers, but there are also more affordable options, and modern 2TB and 4TB models are particularly attractive choices for the PS5.

The TLDR: Best SSDs for the PS5 (more info below):

Here's the quick list of the best SSDs for the PS5, but we have further breakdowns and testing results below. When searching for the best SSD for the PS5, you'll want to be careful about which drive you pick. The Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850X are great SSDs for the PS5, though pricing has been trending upward for the past several months — on all SSDs. The SN850X also comes as an SN850P that's just an overpriced SN850X with a different heatsink and PlayStation 5 branding.

We've broken things down by category, with our top picks being the WD SN850X, Samsung 990 Pro, and Kingston KC3000. For capacity or budget minded shoppers, we also have the Addlink A93, Silicon Power US75, and Crucial T500. Which drive will fit your particular needs best depends on what you're after, and we have alternate picks for each category as well.

Best SSDs for PS5

WD took its popular Black SN850 SSD and turned it up to 11, but luckily the price isn't nearly so extreme. The current $156 price on Amazon for the 2TB model is a great deal, even if it's now $25 than it cost last year. The Black SN850X leverages an improved controller and newer flash to get the most out of the PCIe 4.0 interface, thus delivering excellent performance with the Sony PlayStation 5. Performance is improved across the board, and the drive comes with a heatsink option at 1TB and 2TB.

WD also supports the SSD with a respectable five-year warranty that will let you game with peace of mind. This drive is made for the PlayStation 5, and while it can be a bit pricier than budget options, overall it's still our top pick. It's also fast for gaming on a PC, particularly with DirectStorage starting to become useful.

WD has taken the course of releasing an officially-licensed SN850P. That drive is a glorified heatsinked SN850X and should only be picked if you want the heatsink at 4TB. Even then, it's far less expensive to get a bare SN850X and add your own heatsink. The SN850X also shines when used in a PC.

Read: WD Black SN850X Review

The Kingston KC3000 was one of the fastest SSDs around when it first launched in late 2021. Today, it doesn’t necessarily stand out on its own, using common hardware that’s been a PCIe 4.0 SSD staple for quite some time — it has a Phison E18 controller paired with 176-layer Micron TLC NAND. However, this mature platform performs very well in the PS5. You'll likely want to add your own heatsink, however.

The KC3000 comes in a wide range of capacities, from 512GB (why bother?) to 4TB. That should be enough for most gamers, though if you want an 8TB drive, we suggest looking into the Inland Gaming Performance Plus that comes in that capacity — and costs $859, yikes! While the KC3000 may not sparkle and shine like the newest PCIe 4.0 SSDs, this drive is a good value for PS5 and desktop gaming. The SN850X and 990 Pro might be slightly faster, with the SN850X getting the edge thanks to slightly lower pricing.

There are a lot of other drives with the same hardware combination that we've tested under Windows 11, but most of these weren't tested with the PS5. These include the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX, Corsair MP600 Pro XT, Inland Gaming Performance Plus, Kingston Fury Renegade, Netac NV7000, PNY CS3140, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G, Seagate FireCuda 530, Silicon Power XPower XS70, and Teamgroup A440 Pro. Of these, the Inland Gaming Performance Plus 2TB at $139 and Silicon Power XS70 2TB at $139 currently have a slightly lower price, though we haven't tested those with the PS5 due to no longer having the SSDs in hand, which is why the KC3000 gets the nod — but the drives are all basically the same, otherwise.

Newer drives, like the Lexar NM790 and Crucial T500, are more power efficient. Those are also heatsink-optional, though we think it’s worth investing in cooling for the PS5 for long-term use. While it's not our top pick, the Kingston KC3000 hardware provides great performance consistency, it's readily available, and it has good support.

Read: Kingston KC3000 SSD Review

High-Capacity SSD for PS5

The Samsung 990 Pro ranks as both the fastest overall SSD we've tested with the PS5, and if you want a large and spacious SSD, it also ranks as a top pick. Which isn't to say there aren't some potential alternatives (see below), but paying extra for peace of mind isn't a bad approach.

The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB provides excellent performance. More importantly, it's available as a single-sided drive with 4TB — many 4TB drives will use both sides of the SSD, which could create issues if you try to stuff them into the PS5. Samsung's latest 236-Layer V-NAND is what allows for such a high capacity with just two NAND packages, and the drive generally runs cool.

The 4TB model now sells for $320 at Amazon (up from a low of $249 a few months back), however, so pricing is definitely not as nice as it once was. Likewise, the 2TB drive now costs $189 (up from a low of $119 last Black Friday). Still, many other SSDs that aren't even as fast cost more.

Do you want to save money and forego the Samsung name? There are a few reasonable alternatives below.

Read more:
Samsung 990 Pro 4TB review
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB review

Addlink isn't a familiar name among SSDs for most enthusiasts, though the hardware is sound enough and the company seems to be gaining some traction. The A93 pairs the Maxio MAP1602A controller with 232-layer YMTC TLC NAND for a potent combination of performance, efficiency, and perhaps most importantly: price. Right now, you can pick up the 4TB model for just $249 — $90 less than the Samsung 990 Pro. (The drive formerly went for as little as $193, but prices are on the rise.)

In our testing, the Addlink A93 performed just as well as more expensive PS5 SSDs. The PS5 read speed test, as well as our copy to and from results, were practically indistinguishable from most other drives. The drive even comes with a heatsink as standard equipment, though we still think the Sabrent PS5 heatsink is a better option overall (since it provides direct airflow access rather than putting the SSD under a cover).

Note that the Maxio MAP1602A doesn't include DRAM, and on Windows PCs it would use the HMB (host memory buffer) feature to get around this. But even in the PS5, performance was fine. If you want other alternatives, the Lexar NM790 4TB and Silicon Power US75 4TB (see below) use the same controller and NAND, while the Netac NV7000 4TB opts for a Phison E18 controller and 176-layer Micron TLC NAND.

Read: Addlink A93 Review

Best Cheap SSD for PS5

The Silicon Power US75 is another Maxio MAP1602A SSD, like the above Addlink A93. Performance will be similar, and there's a 4TB option as well. But we're mostly interested in the 1TB drive that can be had for as little as $71, and the 2TB drive that costs $116 — though there's also a 4TB model for $219.

Performance in our PS5 testing for the US75 was very good, landing in the upper portion of our results where just about everything hits the same speed limit. The important thing to note is that the 2TB drive costs about $25 less than our alternative budget pick, and $40 less than our top pick overall. If you just want a lot of decently fast and affordable storage for your PS5, it's a great option.

Silicon Power has been around for quite a few years as a purveyor of inexpensive SSDs, though support and warranty service tend to less than what you'd get from a major brand like Crucial or Samsung. You get what you pay for, in other words. The Addlink A93 and Lexar NM790 mentioned above are viable alternatives here as well, depending on current prices, as they use the same controller and NAND.

What about 8TB SSDs? Technically, they can work in the PS5, but prices are way too high to justify the added capacity. Just give a look at the 8TB M.2 drives listed on Newegg: The cheapest options cost over $800, which is far higher than the price per GB of inexpensive 2TB and 4TB drives.

The Crucial T500 is a high-performance PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD that dishes out speeds of up to 7.4 GB/s of read and 7.0 GB/s write throughput, along with up to 1.18 million IOPS. It leverages the latest Phison E25 controller with DRAM, paired with Micron's 232-layer TLC NAND to deliver excellent performance and efficiency.

The drive delivers out plenty of performance for the PS5, and while it's not quite as fast in the PS5 read test as the top drives, it was basically just as performant in our real-world file copy tests. As noted in our test section, the differences between the fastest and slowest SSDs in real-world gaming are incredibly slim, meaning that the T500's price tag could draw in the value seekers among us.

Prices, as we've stated elsewhere, are increasing on all SSDs right now. The bare 1TB T500 currently sells for $79, while the heatsinked version costs $10 extra. The 2TB model offers a better value, at $138 for the bare drive, or $144 for the heatsink version. You can find plenty of similar capacity PCIe 4.0 SSDs for less money, though many of those will be older and/or slower drives from a couple of years back, and $144 for a 2TB drive that includes a heatsink is a great value.

The cheapest 1TB PCIe 4.0 drives start at around $60, while 2TB drives start at $105. If that's what you're after, check out drives like the Teamgroup MP44L, Addlink S90, Corsair MP600 GS, and Silicon Power UD90 that all use the Phison E21T controller with TLC NAND. They should be reasonably capable in a PS5, but they are also DRAM-less and we reviewed all of those prior to starting our PlayStation 5 testing. Newer drives like the Inland TN470, Corsair MP600 Elite, and Sabrent Rocket 4 use the DRAM-less Phison E27T controller with Kioxia TLC NAND and have decent read performance, though they fall behind in our copy tests and aren't any cheaper than the T500.

The endurance ratings on the various T500 models are a bit lower than some of the competition, topping out at 1,200 TBW for the 2TB drive, but is anyone really going to completely fill and erase the drive 600 times while using it in a PS5? We think not. You can also look at the Crucial P5 Plus as a similar performing alternative that may save you a few dollars, depending on sales.

Read: Crucial T500 Review

Benchmarks / How We Tested PS5 SSDs

Some of the best SSDs for the PS5 are either specifically designed for the console, or come with an integrated heatsink. However, some drives don't come with a heatsink, so we equip them with the Sabrent M.2 NVMe heatsink for the PS5 to both meet the requirements for the PS5 and to ensure a level playing field. We've found that this cooler is a great solution if you're looking for a cheap, versatile, and easy-to-install solution. There are other similar heatsinks, like the SK hynix Haechi H01 that will work just as well.

The Sony PS5 has an internal benchmark measuring how fast the system can read data from the drive. This is the most critical performance metric for gaming, as a speedy response time is responsible for ensuring a smooth gaming experience. As you can see in the 'PS5 Read Benchmark' column above, the fastest SSD in our test pool was 90% faster than the slowest model. Sony will even flag performance as being potentially inadequate if the read score is below about 4,000 MB/s.

However, other real-world tests show much smaller differences. For instance, our 'Copy to M.2' benchmark consists of timing how long it takes to move four games totaling 192.6 GB (Mass Effect: Andromeda, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Elden Ring, and Astro's Playroom) from the internal PS5 SSD to the expansion drive. In most cases, we only see a difference of a few seconds, and converting to MB/s the difference between the fastest WD Black SN850X and the Solidigm P41 Plus is only 10%. But then there's a pretty big step down to the Samsung 990 Evo and the various Phison E27T-equipped SSDs, followed by the Transcend 250H, and in dead last (for now) sits the Inland TN470 1TB — another Phison E27T drive. How much will this matter in terms of gaming performance? Probably not at all, but when you move a bunch of data from the integrated SSD to the M.2 drive, it will take longer.

On the flipped side, we also tested this process in reverse, moving the four games back to the internal drive for our "Transfer From M.2" benchmark. Here, the sustained write speed (and encryption/security protocols) of the integrated 825GB SSD becomes the limiting factor, and there's only a 1.1% difference between the fastest and slowest SSD we've tested. The current 825GB SSD only appears to write data at up to 250 MB/s, and all of the M.2 SSDs are easily able to maintain read speeds much higher than that figure.

Likewise, real-world testing (i.e. launching games) has failed to expose meaningful differences between the drives — it's common to see at most a one to two second difference between drives in game load times. Other testing we've seen from multiple outlets indicates very few meaningful differences, if any, for game loading times. Overall, you're unlikely to notice the speed difference between most PCIe 4.0 SSDs and could make a good argument for simply selecting the most cost-effective drive that meets the capacity target that you want — 4TB and 2TB drives are particularly popular.

Naturally, not all of the drives that we test will make the final cut for our list of Best SSDs for the PS5, but that doesn't mean those drives failed the test, or wouldn't be a great deal if you can catch them on sale. The Solidigm P44 Pro is a great SSD that delivered respectable performance in our PS5 SSD benchmarks (it's the same hardware as the SK hynix Platinum P41), and given the slim difference between the fastest and slowest SSDs on our list, it could make a great drive if the price is right. The only thing we'd try to avoid is any SSD that uses QLC NAND, as those drives can slow down significantly as they're filled to capacity.

There's also no benefit at present to selecting any of the PCIe 5.0 SSDs, as they tend to use more power then PCIe 4.0 drives, making them a poor choice for the PS5. We originally tested the Crucial T700 2TB, which like all currently available PCIe 5.0 drives uses a Phison E26 controller with Micron TLC NAND. The PS5 initially limited read performance to around 4,100 MB/s on such SSDs, even though in theory they should be fully backward compatible with the PCIe 4.0 interface. Newer firmware has fixed the previously observed issue with reduced performance, as seen with the T700 2TB/4TB and T705 2TB Crucial drives, but given current prices there's no real purpose in using a PCIe 5.0 drive and we haven't tested other models.

Tips for Finding the Best SSD for the PS5 in 2024

Which SSDs are compatible with the PS5? Luckily, finding a spacious PS5 SSD to complement your console's internal drive isn't too difficult — any PCIe 4.0 SSD that provides a minimum of 5,500 MB/s of throughput over the NVMe interface can be used as a PS5 SSD, provided it comes with a heatsink that doesn't take the overall height above 11.25mm. In fact, even slower SSDs will also be perfectly fine (PCIe 4.0 is still required), though the PS5 may warn you about the potential for reduced performance if you opt for such a drive.

Do you absolutely need a heatsink for a PS5 SSD? Sony says yes, and you can easily add your own heatsink to SSDs that aren't marketed specifically for the PS5. You can also use one of the best external drives with the PS5 to store games, but these are only for game storage — you'll need an internal expansion drive to actually play the games.

What size of SSD should you buy for the PS5? You might =be fine with a 1TB drive, but we recommend selecting a 2TB or 4TB model due to the current low pricing trends for these models. Besides, who wouldn't want more storage for extra games?

Ultimately, the best drive for your PS is one that provides enough capacity to hold your games and data at a price you can afford. To help you choose, we've tested a number of the top SSDs in our labs — see the results further down the page — and pulled out the top performers for a list of the Best PS5 SSDs.

Sony PS5 SSD Requirements

The Sony PS5 requires an M.2 SSD that communicates over the NVMe protocol. Officially, you'll need a PCIe 4.0 x4 model that can deliver up to 5,500 MB/s of sequential read throughput. In practice, you can use slower SSDs, and you'll just get a warning that performance may be inadequate — note that PCIe 3.0 models are explicitly prohibited from working. The console supports 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB models.

These small, rectangular drives look like sticks of RAM, only smaller, and the PS5 accepts both single-sided and double-sided versions. You'll also need to ensure that your drive has a cooling solution pre-applied. These can consist of thin copper heat spreaders that look like a label, or a full-fledged metal heatsink with a thermal pad.

Not all of the best SSDs for the PS5 come with a heatsink, but you can easily use your own double- or single-sided heatsink. We recommend the Sabrent M.2 NVMe heatsink for the PS5, which actually replaces the outside SSD panel on the PS5 with a heatsink, giving the SSD access to nice cooler air from outside the system. We've found that this cooler is a great solution if you're looking for a cheap, versatile, and easy-to-install solution, but there are many options on the market. For instance, TeamGroup has its new TForce AL1 heatsink, which operates similarly, coming to market soon.

Just make sure the SSDs don't exceed 110 x 25 x 11.25mm. M.2 SSDs are usually 80mm long by 22mm wide, described as size 2280, but some may be shorter or longer. The PS5 supports M Key Type 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110. Some M.2 drives are also SATA interfaces instead of NVMe, but those are rare and would not be listed as being PCIe 4.0 compliant. Regardless, make sure your SSD supports NVMe.

Sony has detailed instructions on how to install a PS5 SSD. As you can see in the video above, installing the SSD is a simple process that only requires a #1 Phillips head screwdriver. After you've installed the SSD, you can navigate through the menus to the 'Settings→Storage→Installation Location' area and change it to your new SSD. All new games will now install directly to the SSD.

To move existing games to your new drive, select the internal SSD, highlight the item you want to move, press the Options button, and then select 'Move Games and Apps.' Select any other games that you would like to move in the checkboxes, then select 'Move.' As noted in our above testing, moving from the integrated SSD will generally be much faster than moving to the integrated drive.