Price check: Amazon $139.99
" data-widget-price=""currency":"USD"" data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">The SN850X has been our favorite SSD for games for what feels like a decade. But it's still the best PCIe 4.0 SSD that you can buy. It's a great boot drive, with plenty of room for your games thanks to its healthy DRAM caching." data-widget-price=""currency":"USD"" data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">
When I am asked to recommend an SSD as a replacement boot drive or to store games only, I usually ask two questions: What is your budget and do you write large files to the drive all the time?
If it costs around $140, you can expect to get 2 TB. To be honest, I would recommend it anyway since even 1 TB of storage can quickly fill up with the latest games.
The latter, however, is about determining if the SSD needs a DRAM. DRAM is important only if you are writing large files to the drive. I'm not just talking about a few gigabytes, but hundreds and hundreds of them, over and again.
In the early days of SSDs DRAM was needed to store the map that showed where all the data was located on the drive. Modern SSDs support something called Host Memory Buffer, which stores the map within a small portion of your PC's memory. It's still faster to have it in RAM local to the SSD, but in general it's used to support heavy and prolonged writes.
It's this second question that you should ask yourself when deciding between these two SSD deals. The first drive is from Nextorage, a storage company which was originally a division of Sony. It is a fantastic drive. We have reviewed the DRAM version (NEM PA) and it is blazingly fast. Thanks to the beefy cooling system, it also runs cool.
This DRAM-less NEM PAB version is just the same speed but will not be able sustain that performance if it's being worked hard for long periods.
If this scenario is important to your needs, then the WD Black SN850X will be worth the extra few dollars. It has been our top pick for the best gaming SSD since a very long time, and for good reason. It's incredibly fast, cools down (though this will depend on the heatsink of your motherboard's SSD) and can handle any data writing workload you throw at it.
My main PC has four (one for the boot and primary apps; another for development work, one for games and a fourth for documents). The SN850X SSD is a great SSD, and I'm not regretting my purchase.
SSD prices have historically been lower, but they are now higher as flash manufacturers have lowered production to increase profit margins. Fortunately, whether you choose the Nextorage NEMPAB or WD Black SN850X for your gaming PC, you will have a fantastic SSD that will serve you well for years to come.
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