Best overall
The drive that stays fast when it is nearly full and when the writes keep coming.
The SN850X is the drive most gaming builds should have, and the reason is consistency rather than peak numbers. It pairs a strong controller with its own DRAM cache, so random reads stay quick and sustained writes do not fall off a cliff partway through a large install — the two behaviours that separate a good drive from a cheap one in daily use. It is PCIe 4.0, which is the right call: it delivers effectively the same in-game load times as PCIe 5.0 drives while running cooler and costing less. Heatsink and bare versions both exist; buy the bare one if your motherboard already ships with an M.2 heatsink, which most current boards do.
- PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe — fits the primary M.2 slot on any modern board
- DRAM cache on board — holds its speed as the drive fills
- Strong sustained write performance for large game installs
- Sold with or without a heatsink; boards with an M.2 heatsink need the bare version
Catalog price: $399.99 at Central Computers
Best value
Nearly all of the flagship experience, without the flagship badge.
The T500 is the drive to buy when the money is better spent elsewhere in the build. It is also a DRAM-equipped PCIe 4.0 design, so it avoids the failure mode that makes budget drives annoying, and in real load-time testing the gap to the pick above is small enough that you would need a stopwatch to find it. Where it gives ground is sustained writes on the largest transfers and peak sequential figures — neither of which is what a gaming drive is actually judged on. If you are choosing between a larger T500 and a smaller flagship at the same price, take the larger T500 every time.
- PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe
- DRAM cache — the feature that matters most below the flagship tier
- Runs cool enough that a motherboard M.2 heatsink is plenty
- The right pick when the budget is better spent on the graphics card
Catalog price: $349.99 at Central Computers
Best budget
The cheapest drive here that still belongs in a gaming PC — with one caveat.
The NV3 is a DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 drive, and that single fact tells you both what it is good for and where it will disappoint you. Loading games from it feels much like loading them from a more expensive drive, because reads are what games do. Writing to it does not: copy a large game library onto it and the speed drops sharply once its cache fills, which is a real annoyance if it is the only drive in the machine. As a second drive holding a library you are not actively playing, or in a build where the alternative was a SATA SSD, it is exactly the right compromise. Prefer the larger capacity — DRAM-less drives behave better with more free space.
- PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe
- DRAM-less — sustained writes slow once the cache is exhausted
- Reads well, which is most of what gaming asks of a drive
- Best used as a secondary game library drive, or in a tight budget build
Catalog price: $280.98 at Amazon
Best PCIe 5.0
The fastest drive you can buy, and the one most gamers should skip.
If you want the highest sequential throughput available on a consumer platform, this is it, and for moving very large files or working with high-bitrate video it is a genuine upgrade. For gaming specifically it is close to a waste of money: load times are bound by latency and by the game engine long before they are bound by sequential bandwidth, so the gap to the PCIe 4.0 picks above is small enough to be invisible in normal play. It also runs hot and effectively requires active or substantial passive cooling, and it needs a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot — check your motherboard before buying, because many boards give the Gen5 slot lanes shared with the graphics card. Buy it if you want the best; do not buy it expecting faster games.
- PCIe 5.0 M.2 2280 NVMe — needs a Gen5 M.2 slot
- Highest sequential throughput of any pick here
- Runs hot — a substantial heatsink or active cooling is not optional
- On many boards the Gen5 M.2 slot shares lanes with the GPU slot
Catalog price: $388.50 at Amazon
Best for PS5
A pre-heatsinked, Sony-validated drive that drops straight into the console bay.
The PS5 has a spare M.2 slot and firm requirements: a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, fast enough to keep up with the console's own storage, and physically able to fit under the expansion bay cover with a heatsink attached. The SN850P is sold specifically for that job with the correct heatsink already fitted, which removes the two things that go wrong — buying a drive that the console rejects on speed, or buying one whose aftermarket heatsink will not fit. It is the same underlying design as the desktop pick above, so it is not a compromise part. Installed games run from it directly, and 2TB roughly triples what the console shipped with.
- PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe with a pre-fitted heatsink
- Sized to fit the PS5 expansion bay without modification
- Meets Sony's read-speed requirement for the expansion slot
- Works as a normal desktop drive too, if the heatsink clears your board
Catalog price: $228.99 at Newegg