I've appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news. Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. As used for storage capacity, 1GB = 1 billion bytes and 1TB = one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less depending on operating environment.

IOPS = input/output operations per second. Performance will vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations. This aesthetic isn’t for everyone, of course, so the My Passport remains our Editors’ Choice for best external hard drives. The P10 is also a poor choice for people who have just a few games and plan to load them without transferring them to their PC’s internal storage. In this case, you’ll want the added speed of an external SSD. However, other real-world tests show much smaller differences.For instance, our 'Copy to M.2' benchmark consisted of timing how long it took to move four games totaling 192.6 GB ( Mass Effect: Andromeda, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Elden Ring, and Astro's Playroom) from the internal PS5 SSD to the expansion drive. In most cases, we only logged a difference of a few seconds, and converting to MB/s the fastest and next-slowest drive only showed a 10% difference. The Sony PS5 requires an M.2 SSD that communicates over the NVMe protocol. Officially, you'll need a PCIe 4.0 x4 model that can deliver up to 5,500 MBps of sequential read throughput. In practice, you can use slower SSDs, even PCIe 3.0 models, and they'll still work — you'll just get a warning that performance may be inadequate. The console supports 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB models.

Sony has detailed instructions on how to install a PS5 SSD. As you can see in the video above, installing the SSD is a simple process that only requires a #1 Phillips head screwdriver. After you've installed the SSD, you can navigate through the menus to the 'Settings→Storage→Installation Location' area and change it to your new SSD. All new games will now install directly to the SSD. Sleek heatsink design to customize and intensify your gaming rig while helping to maintain peak performance

SN850 with heatsink is intended for Desktop PCs and PlayStation™ 5 (PS5 system software version 21.02-04.00.00 or higher required). Some of the best SSDs for the PS5 are either specifically designed for the console, or come with an integrated heatsink. However, some drives don’t come with a heatsink, so we equip them with the Sabrent M.2 NVMe heatsink for the PS5 to both meet the requirements for the PS5 and to ensure a level playing field. We’ve found that this cooler is a great solution if you’re looking for a cheap, versatile, and easy-to-install solution. With a five-year warranty and an incredible 3,200 TBW endurance rating, the odds are that the KC300 will solider on for longer than your PS5. You can also find this drive in a 4TB model, too.This is a budget drive, so you'll have to plan on buying a third-party heatsink. Sporting Phison’s beastly, penta-core PS5018-E18 NVMe SSD controller and Micron’s fast 176-Layer TLC flash, the FireCuda 530 has a solid five-year warranty and support service that includes three years of data rescue. However, its high performance, endurance, and data rescue support add quite a bit to pricing, making it a very premium buy for the average gamer.The drive comes with an integrated heatsink. The Western Digital Dashboard helps users maintain peak performance of the Western Digital SSD in Windows operating systems with a user-friendly graphical interface for the user. The Western Digital Dashboard includes tools for analysis of the disk (including the disk model, capacity, firmware version, and SMART attributes) and firmware updates.Do you absolutely need a heatsink for a PS5 SSD? Yes, but you can even add your own heatsink to SSDs that aren’t marketed specifically for the PS5. You can also use one of the best external drives with the PS5 to store games, but these are only for game storage — you'll need an internal expansion drive to actually play the games.

As used for transfer rate, 1 MB/s = 1 million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon host device, usage conditions, drive capacity, and other factors. Engineered and built with Western Digital 3D NAND to give you the reliability and endurance needed to sustain pro-level performance. Likewise, extensive testing has failed to expose meaningful differences between the drives — it's common to see at most a one to two second difference between drives in game load times. Other testing we've seen from multiple outlets indicates very few meaningful differences, if any, for game loading times.Overall, you're unlikely to notice the speed difference between most Gen4 SSDs and could make a good argument for simply selecting the most cost-effective drive that meets the capacity target that you want — 4TB and 2TB drives are particularly popular.What size of SSD should you buy for the PS5? Most will be fine with a 1TB drive, but we recommend selecting a 2TB or 4TB model due to the current low pricing trends for these models. Besides, who wouldn't want more storage for extra games? WD also supports the SSD with a respectable five-year warranty that will let you game with peace of mind. This drive is made for the PlayStation 5, but it is a bit pricier than other options, so you'll need to keep an eye out for sales. It's also super fast for gaming on a PC, particularly with DirectStorage on the horizon. When it comes to transferring files to and from the drive, the P10 took 12 seconds to move a 1.2GB folder full of various file types. Its score of 1,896 on the trace-based PCMark 7 storage subtest is also about what we expect from external hard drives.(We ran this older version of PCMark's storage test on the P10 since many of the competing drives we have tested were benchmarked well before the current version of PCMark, version 10, debuted.) The Sony PS5 has an internal benchmark measuring how fast the system can read data from the drive. This is the most critical performance metric for gaming, as a speedy response time is responsible for ensuring a smooth gaming experience. As you can see in the 'PS5 Read Benchmark' column above, the fastest SSD in our test pool was 90% faster than the slowest model. Sony will even flag performance as being potentially inadequate if the read score is below about 4,000 MB/s. Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University.

Designed with an M.2 2280 slim, light, and compact form factor to easily slide into your gaming rig. It’s worth noting, however, that all of these results pale in comparison to what an external SSD is capable of. Take the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch, for instance, which completed the folder transfer test in just two seconds and recorded read and write speeds of around 1,000MBps. The Sabrent PS5 heatsink is available separately. The primary caveat is that significantly cheaper options that will get the job done with the PS5, but there are very few available with a blend of such spacious capacity and speedy performance. Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. Read our editorial mission & see how we test. In addition to bringing an in-game element to the real world, the P10’s ribbed enclosure also helps protect the drive inside. WD isn’t claiming that the P10 meets MIL-SPEC durability tests, but the company does describe the enclosure as “durable.” The P10 comes with a relatively standard warranty length of three years. Like most drive warranties, it applies to the drive itself, but it won’t cover data recovery if your drive malfunctions.

The FireCuda 530 is available in capacities of up to 4TB, comes in that small M.2 form factor, and delivers incredible sustained write speeds for a flash-based SSD. However, it wasn't among the top performers on our list, but the spacious 4TB of capacity will be the main draw for most users looking to fill their PS5 to the brim with games. Naturally, not all of the drives that we test will make the final cut for our list of Best SSDs for the PS5, but that doesn't mean those drives failed the test, or wouldn't be a great deal if you can catch them on sale. The Solidigm P44 Pro is a great SSD that delivered respectable performance in our PS5 SSD benchmarks, and given the slim difference between the fastest and slowest SSDs on our list, it could make a great drive if the price is right. The only thing we'd try to avoid is any SSD that uses QLC NAND, as those drives can slow down significantly as they're filled to capacity.