SATA isn't what most of the best SSDs use anymore, but SATA SSDs will still bring you a strong upgrade over traditional hard drives, especially if you want a lot of fast storage on the cheap. In our SK Hynix Gold S31 review earlier this year, we gave the SSD our Editor's Choice Award. Today, you can get the 1TB drive for $83.19 (opens in new tab) , down from $159.99, though it was $105.99 when we reviewed it.
The Gold S31 has key features like LPDDR3 DRAM and offers a lot of performance for the price. It's a 2.5-inch drive that connects over SATA III and comes in sizes ranging from 250GB to 1TB (the 500GB version is also on sale right now for $48.79 (opens in new tab), down from $60.99). The 1TB version we're suggesting here has an LPDDR3 DRAM cache and scored sequential read / write speeds of 560 MBps / 525 MBps in our testing.
The Hynix Gold S31 also comes with free cloning and migration software, which our review praised as key pros alongside its performance and long five-year warranty. With a new generation of games around the corner, it’s not a bad idea to stock up on some extra storage space while it’s cheap.