Which is better: blazing speed or great value for money? Choose between these two SSD deals
Every week I search through the usual online retailers to find the best gaming SSDs around. It's been a little disappointing to see that prices haven't changed much over the last nine months. There are still many great deals available, but it all comes down to your needs.
You'll pay a premium if you want the fastest speed possible. If you want to get the best value for your money, you will have to sacrifice speed. Most SSDs fall somewhere in the middle, but sometimes compromise is not an option.
If that's you, I've got the SSDs for you. Whether it's for the best performance or the highest amount of bytes per dollar, there's a perfect pick for both.
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- 1 TB
- 2 TB
NVMe SSDs
Price check: Amazon $162.99 (w/ heatsink)
" data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">The latest motherboards with AMD and Intel CPUs have at least one M.2 PCIe 5.0 slot. Installing a PCIe 5 (aka Gen5) SSD is essential to getting the full performance benefits. Unfortunately, most of these SSDs are still quite expensive.
It's true that this Crucial T700 is a bit expensive, but at $140 it's still the cheapest I've seen for a long time. It's also a very fast SSD, which we discovered when testing a preview sample.
It's important to note that a Gen5 SDD won't make games run faster, and you won't notice a difference in the speed at which Windows boots. This is because the interface is responsible for all the raw speed. Once you start reading/writing from another drive or source of data, the performance will be limited by the interface.
If you're only moving files around the T700, it will blow your mind with how fast it can do everything. How would it feel to copy 30 GB of data in just 40 seconds from one folder into another?
The Crucial T700 and all Gen5 SSDs are also subject to a warning: the high performance can make the drive run hot when under load. If your motherboard does not have a heatsink that is adequate for the M.2 slots on it, you will need to purchase an additional cooler.
If you don't do this, the vehicle will bounce off thermal limits. All that speed is for nothing.
This DRAM-less Nextorage SSD is a great choice if you need to add an extra game library drive for your growing library but still want some storage speed. This cheaper option is a great way to save money on a new build, or an upgrade. Use the promo code SEPT524924 for a full discount." data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">
You'll only pay six cents for each gigabyte. You can go even lower, but then you'll have to spend more than $120 total. The lower-priced drives are usually 4 TB models, and they cost upwards of $200.
One terabyte is sufficient for Windows, applications and a lot of games. However, with the recent growth in the size of games, if you are a games hoarder, one terabyte won't last long. I only use 2 TB SSDs in any gaming PCs that I build today.
The Nextorage 2TB M.2 model is one of the most affordable SSDs on the market, but it does not skimp on performance or hardware. It will last many years, even if you regularly hammer it.
These performance figures (7.400 MB/s Read and 6.400 MB/s Write) are peak values. There is no DRAM cache, so the price can be kept low. It won't be able sustain a high throughput if it is asked to write hundreds of gigabytes to the drive, but it is perfect for PC gaming.
It's an excellent M.2 SSD that's suitable for all types of scenarios. However, it isn't the fastest one you can get. If you don't care about that, then $120 is a great deal for 2 TB. Use the code SEPT524925 to get the full discount.
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