Best SSD for gaming in 2021

by Robert Mullins

  Give your gaming PC a serious speed boost with the best SSD for gaming.

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  Give your gaming PC a speed boost with the best SSD for gaming. (Image credit: Future)

  The best SSD for gaming is the vital slice of silicon that will cut the time it takes to get you into your games. Try going back to a spinning platter hard drive and see how long it takes you to load into Apex. Unlike a GPU, a new SSD will not increase your game performance in the traditional sense, but what it does do is make your PC faster and more responsive.

  If you go for a larger drive, too, it will give you enough speedy space to cope with the incessant demands of gaming's biggest storage hogs. We're looking at you, CoD: Modern Warfare and Red Dead Redemption 2.

  As we said, the performance difference between an SSD and a standard hard drive is night and day, and the same can be true between SATA drives and the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs too. Suddenly everything is right there at your fingertips—no frustrating waiting for your data to chug around your rig like some old steamboat. At some point, you get tired of your games taking forever to load up.

  In the early days, it was recommended that you use a small SSD as a boot drive and a large HDD to keep all your games. SSDs have become more and more affordable at different sizes; if you want to play your games at the highest speeds possible, investing in a quality SSD is your best bet. It should help you to defend against the incoming storage space onslaught.

  Our pick of the best SSDs includes both 1TB and 500GB drives because smaller SSDs, though cheaper, lose performance. And, with games taking up well over 150GB each, you need a lot of storage space these days to avoid a whole lot of inventory management.

  To buy SSD UK of the bese for gaming

  1. Addlink S70

  The best SSD for gaming

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB

  Controller: Phison PS5012-E12

  Memory: Toshiba 3D TLC

  Interface : M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4

  Seq. read: 3,400 MB/s (512GB version)

  Seq. write: 2,000 MB/s (512GB version)

  REASONS TO BUY

  +Great value+Top-end PCIe 3.0 performance+Excellent endurance

  REASONS TO AVOID

  -Below average low queue depth performance

  Addlink came out of nowhere to drive down the prices of every competing NVMe-based SSD. And it seems to have been the catalyst for bringing nigh-on price parity across the PCIe and SATA SSD ecosystem. Addlink who? So yeah, it may not be a recognised name in storage, but given that the S70 is still using a completely recognisable Phison E12 controller and Toshiba's 3D TLC memory, there's not much that can go wrong.

  With the sticker off, the Addlink drive is almost identical to the pricier Seagate Firecuda. It also performs practically the same as the WD Black SN750, which subsequently had to drop its price to compete. At the 512GB level, the Addlink S70is arguably the best SSD to build your system around, and the 1TB version has even better writes... and we've seen that as low as $120 before too.

  We've no concerns around reliability either, despite the relatively unknown name, having used both the 512GB and 1TB variants regularly as part of our test rigs without fault. When SATA drives are costing the same, and Samsung SSDs cost more but don't deliver much extra performance, then the Addlink S70 is our pick of the bunch.

  2. WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD

  The best PCIe 4.0 SSD

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity: 1TB

  Controller: WD_Black G2

  Memory: BiCS4 96-layer TLC

  Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4

  Seq. read: 7,000 MB/s

  Seq write: 5,300 MB/s

  REASONS TO BUY

  +Blistering PCIe 4.0 throughput+Excellent real-world performance+Solid 5 year warranty

  REASONS TO AVOID

  -Runs hot-No AES 256-bit encryption

  The Western Digital Black SN850 makes a fashionably late entrance to the PCIe 4.0 party. It's capable of hitting 7,000MB/s reads and 5,300MB/s writes in sequential transfers, which is well beyond most drives' capabilities. That's because it uses the latest PCIe 4.0 interface, which has double the theoretical bandwidth limit of other PCIe 3.0 drives.

  Performance ultimately defines any SSD; the WD SN850 really stands out from the crowd. The synthetic benchmarks, spearheaded by ATTO and AS SSD, show that this is very much a second-generation PCIe 4.0 drive, with peak sequential read speeds knocking on 6,750MB/s and 5,920MB/s, respectively. Writes are lower than the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, but still healthy, at either side of 5GB/s. The 4K write performance in AS SSD manages to flip this over, and the WD SN850 outpaces the Sabrent drive.

  Out of the new PCIe 4.0 drives on the market, the SN850 is hands down the most impressive out of the gate with its impressive real-world performance though it does run a little hot. If you want the fastest next-gen drive, this is it.

  Read the full WD Black SN850 1TB review.

  (Image credit: WD)

  3. WD Black SN750 1TB

  The best 1TB SSD around

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity : 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

  Controller: Western Digital

  Memory: SanDisk/Toshiba 3D TLC

  Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4

  Seq. read: 3,470 MB/s

  Seq. write: 3,000 MB/s

  REASONS TO BUY

  +Competitive pricing+Serious SSD performance+In-house technology

  REASONS TO AVOID

  -High idle power consumption

  Like it's move into PCIe 4.0 drives, Western Digital's entry into the SSD arena as a whole was a long while coming, especially at the speedier end of the market. But the WD Black SN750 was worth the wait. It nails solid-state performance on par with the best consumer Samsung EVO SSDs and undercuts them on price too.

  The combination of an in-house memory controller and Toshiba memory (also essentially in-house after the acquisition of the SanDisk/Toshiba memory division) means what we've got here is a drive that can match Samsung in its build methodology too. And that all means WD can be very aggressive on how much it charges people for the privilege of having a speedy PCIe SSD in their gaming PC.

  There is a more expensive version on offer with a heatsink attached to it. Still, so long as you don't bury your drive in an M.2 slot beneath your GPU, you should be golden, and the SN750 will maintain peak performance without burning out.

  4. Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB

  The best SSD with PCIe 3.0 performance option

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

  Controller: Samsung Phoenix

  Memory: Samsung 3-bit MLC

  Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4

  Seq. read: 3,500 MB/s

  Seq. write: 3,200 MB/s

  REASONS TO BUY

  +Samsung SSD technology+Outstanding real-world performance

  REASONS TO AVOID

  -Could be better optimised for efficiency

  The Samsung 970 EVO Plus offers a slight bump in write performance over the 970 EVO, all for the same price. There was a time when you could pick up the non-Plus version for slightly less, but those drives seem to have disappeared now. If you can find a straight 970 EVO for less, then go for it but they're a rarity.

  Both drives still use the same Samsung Phoenix controller, which means they can outperform the competition in real-world usage. If you want peak PCIe 3.0 performance, then the Samsung drives are hard to beat, but you have to pay for that little speed hike. Compared with the 512GB Addlink, the Samsung is a little quicker in real-world testing but costs another $20.

  That's not a huge issue at this half-terabyte level, but when the 1TB version comes in at close to $170, it does make the higher capacity 970 EVO drives a bit more of a difficult recommendation. The 500GB 970 EVO is still a great drive, smartly specced, well-made, and with a more competitive price.

  5. Crucial MX500 1TB

  The best SSD for secondary storage

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity: 1TB

  Controller: Silicon Motion SM2258

  Memory: Micron TLC

  Interface: SATA 6Gbps

  Seq. read: 560 MB/s

  Seq. write: 510 MB/s

  REASONS TO BUY

  +One of the fastest SATA drives+Competitive price per GB

  REASONS TO AVOID

  -Low endurance rating for heavy data writes-Slow compared to any NMVe SSD

  It seems strange that the Crucial MX500 is the only SATA drive left on our list of the best SSDs for gaming, but when the price delta between PCIe and SATA is so small, it's difficult to make an argument for the far slower technology. But, as there is a hard limit on the number of M.2 slots on your motherboard, there is still a place for SATA SSDs as secondary storage.

  And the Crucial MX500 is one of the best. With SATA's maximum theoretical bandwidth limit of 600MB/s, it's nearly as quick as you'll get, and Crucial's drives have long been among the best-value options available too. This is the most affordable 1TB SATA drive you can pick up and make a great second home for your Steam and Epic libraries.

  It will happily function as a boot drive on systems with no M.2 sockets, or at least no bootable M.2 sockets anyway. You will still be missing out on the zippy response of your operating system running on the SSD-specific NVMe protocol, but if that's not an option anyway, this drive will see you right.

  6. Sabrent Rocket 4

  A solid PCIe 4.0 package for not a lot of cash

  SPECIFICATIONS

  Capacity: 2 TB

  Controller: Phison PS5016-E16

  Flash: Toshiba 96-layer TLC

  Interface: M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4

  Seq. read: 5,000 MB/s

  Seq. write: 4,400 MB/s

  Best CPU for gaming: the top chips from Intel and AMD

  Best graphics card: your perfect pixel-pusher awaits

  Sabrent has plenty of quality drives in its arsenal, but the Rocket 4 2TB stands out for offering a great all-round package at a reasonable price. Now we're beset with second-generation PCIe 4.0 SSDs, it's lost some of its shine, but only in the sense that it's no longer up there with the best drives around when it comes to peak synthetic throughput. In practical terms, this is still a great offering, and if your budget doesn't quite stretch to the newest drives, this is worth picking up.

  Powered by the powerful combo of the Phison E16 controller and Toshiba 96-layer TLC NAND flash, this is the drive that really put Sabrent on the map for us, and showed that having the right components is key to a quality SSD. The fact that you get a free copy of Acronis TrueImage means that migrating to the new drive is a breeze, while the Sabrent Toolbox makes checking your SSD straightforward too.

  Performance is impressive, thanks to a healthy amount of overprovisioning, SLC cache, and DRAM. In testing, it managed peak sequential read and writes in AS SSD (using incompressible data) of 4,205MB/s and 3,749MB/s which is decent for a first-gen drive. As with Sabrent's other offerings, you can also pick this up with a heatsink bundled for an extra $20—useful if your motherboard doesn't come with a heatsink for the M.2 slots.

  Read the full Sabrent Rocket 4 2TB review.

  Best SSD for gaming FAQ

  Q: What's the difference between SATA and NVMe PCIe-based SSDs?

  As the prices of NVMe SSDs fall every day, we don't see much difference in cost between the best NVMe SSDs and their SATA-based equivalents. When the cheapest 2.5-inch 1TB SATA SSD is only $24 less than an equivalent capacity NVMe PCIe drive (and four times slower), why bother with older SATA technology when you can move into the future for so cheap?

  Many of the best SSDs for gaming still use the PCIe 3.0 interface, but we're starting to see more PCIe 4.0 drives sliding into the market. Corsair was an early pacesetter here, and the newly launched 500GB Samsung 980 Pro SSD did well in testing, but the value proposition isn't the greatest, unfortunately.

  Where SATA's theoretical performance limit is 600MB/s, and PCIe 3.0's is 4,000MB/s, the newer PCIe 4.0 SSDs can double that figure to a maximum of 8,000MB/s. The current top speed of available Gen4 drives is around 7,000MB/s, which is double that of the previous generation, top out at 3,500MB/s, in the real world.

  How big an SSD should I buy?

  The easy, slightly dumb answer is: as big as you can afford. With SSDs, the higher capacity, the quicker they are. That's because you end up with more memory dies plumbed into a multi-channel memory controller, and that extra parallelism leads to higher performance.

  We would traditionally say that an entry-level SSD should come in at least 512GB in order to pack in your operating system, for slick general system speed, and your most regularly played games. But such is the increasing size of modern games that a 1TB SSD is increasingly looking like the minimum recommendation. That's also where the performance starts to go up too.

  Is PCIe 4.0 worth it for SSDs?

  If you want the absolute fastest drives available then PCIe 4.0 SSDs are the way to go. They're quicker than any PCIe 3.0 drive, and will make large file transfers for such things as video editing lightning fast. They will also be prepared for the future of gaming in Windows 11 with the DirectStorage feature being used to take the load off the CPU and fire data directly at the graphics card to improve performance and shorten, or even remove, load times in tomorrow's open world games.

  Can you put a PCIe 4.0 SSD in a 3.0 slot?

  Yes, you can. They M.2 socket is identical between the two generations of interface and so a PCIe 4.0 SSD will fit comfortably inside a PCIe 3.0 slot. They will also function perfectly well too, except the Gen4 drive will be limited by the speed of the older interface.

  That is is theoretically 4GB/s, but is actually closer to 3,500MB/s due to various overheads. PCIe 4.0 SSDs do cost more than their PCIe 3.0 counterparts though, so unless you're planning to upgrade to a supporting platform soon, it's probably worth sticking with a more-affordable PCIe 3.0 drive.

  Q: How do we test SSDs?

  A: SSDs make your whole system faster and more pleasant to use. But they matter for gaming, too. A fast-loading SSD can cut dozens of seconds off the load times of big games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, or MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV. An SSD won't affect framerates like your GPU or CPU, but it will make installing, booting, dying, and reloading in games a faster, smoother process.

  When shopping for a good SSD for gaming, one of the most important factors is the price per gigabyte. How much will you have to spend to keep a robust library of Steam games installed, ready to be played at a moment's notice? With many new games surpassing the 50GB and even 150GB mark, this becomes even more critical.

  To find the best gaming SSDs, we researched the SSD market, picked out the strongest contenders, and put them through their paces with various benchmarking tools. We also researched what makes a great SSD great, beyond the numbers—technical stuff like types of flash memory and controllers.

  PCIe 4.0 SSDs are supported by 2nd and 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen CPUs and X570 and B550 motherboards as well as by Intel's latest Rocket Lake platform. Sure, they're mighty for bandwidth, but when it's crunch-time in-game, there's not a vast amount more it can deliver than a PCIe 3.0 drive, at least not until Microsoft delivers DirectStorage, which will be exclusive to Windows 11.

  Is PCIe 4.0 worth it for SSDs?

  If you want the absolute fastest drives available then PCIe 4.0 SSDs are the way to go. They're quicker than any PCIe 3.0 drive, and will make large file transfers for such things as video editing lightning fast. They will also be prepared for the future of gaming in Windows 11 with the DirectStorage feature being used to take the load off the CPU and fire data directly at the graphics card to improve performance and shorten, or even remove, load times in tomorrow's open world games.

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