Our Favorite PS5 SSD Hits All-Time Low for Cyber Monday

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The WD SN850X is one of the fastest drives you can get.

WD Black SN850X
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Designed and marketed toward gamers of all kinds, the WD_Black SN850X currently ranks high on our list of the best SSDs and at the top of our list of best PS5 SSDs with the only serious complaint being a price that was higher than competitors'. But NAND prices are falling, and it's Cyber Monday, with the result being some excellent Cyber Monday SSD deals. 

The WD Store now has the SN850X 2TB for $169 without a heatsink and $179 with a heatsink, which you need for PS5 use. That's a massive 41% discount form its original launch price! The 1TB and 4TB models are also on sale at a steep discount.

WD_Black SN850X 2TB: $169 at WD Store

WD_Black SN850X 2TB: $169 at WD Store (was $289)
One of the fastest SSDs around can now be picked up for one of the lowest prices you'll find on a PCIe 4.0 drive with read/write speeds of 7300/6600 MB/s.

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WD_Black SN850X 4TB: $599 at WD Store

WD_Black SN850X 4TB: $599 at WD Store (was $699)
Need even more storage and don't want to use multiple 2TB drives? Check out this 4TB model, which now falls below the 10 cents per GB barrier.

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WD_Black SN850X 1TB: $99 at WD Store

WD_Black SN850X 1TB: $99 at WD Store (was $169)
If you only need a 1TB drive, or you just don't want to spend more than $100, this smaller model might be just what you need. It still has all the great features and performance of the larger drives, all for a single Benjamin.

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Whichever model you choose, you'll still get the same great performance. Be sure to pick the model with heatsink (which is $10 more than the base model in every case), if you plan to use the drive in a PS5. 

We tested the reviewed the WD_Black SN850X back in August when it first launched and it delivered excellent results, topping some of the charts and generally placing in the upper echelon of high-end SSDs. Our biggest complaint was with the high pricing and we weren't overly impressed with the optional Game Mode 2.0 feature, which helps optimize performance while playing. Here's a quick look at the performance of the 2TB model:

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WD Black SN850X
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

With the current sale, what was once an extremely fast but expensive SSD now rates as one of the best overall values while still maintaining its high performance. With bloating game install sizes and dropping NAND prices, now is as good a time as we're likely to get for upgrading your PC storage.

There aren't that many 4TB M.2 SSDs around to begin with, and prices on the faster PCIe 4.0 variants have traditionally been in the $600 range. $379 is still expensive, now doubt, but if you're looking at an RTX 4090 or RTX 4080 and a Core i9-13900K or Ryzen 9 7950X processor, why not go all the way with a capacious boot drive? But the 2TB drive remains the best deal overall, priced at $0.0845 per GB — an interesting change of pace, as the 1TB drive ends up with the highest per GB cost of $0.099.

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Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    The SK Hynix P41 2TB, which you indicated in your chart performs higher, is on sale at Amazon for the same price though, cheaper if you use an Amazon store card, so why buy the WD?
    Reply
  • TechieTwo
    Where are all of those Gen 5 SSDs that were going to be available in November?
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    TechieTwo said:
    Where are all of those Gen 5 SSDs that were going to be available in November?
    Gen 5 controller was just demonstrated... I would imagine first of the year you will see early adopters, but Q2-Q3 before the established players(Samsung, Kioxia, WD, Micron, & Hynic) start to release their pcieGen 5 SSDs.

    Pointless upgrade, does not improve latency or Random IO performance, still SATA levels of performance. The uplift from top of line gen 3 to gen 4 SSD is barely perceivable(Sequential much faster if you can keep the pcie gen 4 cool), gen 4 to gen 5 will be even less perceptible. Why do people pine for gen 5 SSDs? You need 14GB/s transfer speed???
    Reply