The best SSD for gaming

The WD_Black SN850 is built with PCIe Gen 4.0 — a super-fast interface that delivers read/write speeds up to 7000/5300MB/s, 1 million IOPS, and a transfer rate of 64 GT/s (gigatransfers per second).

It’s a serious upgrade, offering double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 SSDs. Indeed, WD boasts that it’s “irrationally fast, impossibly real”.

Ultimately, the WD_Black SN850 is designed to keep you up to speed with the latest gen games. You won’t get caught lagging behind. However, it does require a PCIe 4 compatible-PC for the very best results.

The WD_Black SN850 helps you keep full control, with a downloadable WD_Black dashboard. This allows you to keep tabs on your drive and gear the performance towards your own specification.

It’s also built with Western Digital 3D NAND technology, a non-volatile flash memory with memory cells stacked vertically in multiple layers. This ensures added reliability, endurance, and capacity.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is another next-gen SSD that’s built with a PCIe 4 interface for top speeds. It gets an extra boost from Phison E18 controller, which has five CPU cores, four PCIe 4.0 lanes, and 1 million IOPS. That means reaching read/write speeds of 6,600/7,100MB/s.

It also boasts a Micron-made 3D TLC flash memory and 2GB of DDR cache. Some bigger brand SSDs struggle to keep up with this performance.

On paper this looks more expensive than the WD Black SN850, but this one gives you 2TB. And the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus maintains that level of value in much larger capacities, from this 2TB version to a max capacity of 4TB. Plus, the price of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus has continued to come down since its launch, so you're always getting a deal.

Like other SSDs on this list, the Kingston Fury Renegade is a PCIe 4.0 drive that uses a Phison E18 controller, and combined with 3D TLC NAND memory. But it promises slightly bigger numbers that competing SSDs, with read and write speeds of 7,300MB/s and 7,000MB/s, and up to 1 million IOPS.

It’s essentially an upgrade of Kingston’s KC3000 SSD, so if you’re already using that model and need an extra boost, this is the perfect option. It’s also made specifically for gaming, and is advertised as being PS5-ready. It certainly has the capacity for the latest games.

It has a low profile graphene aluminium heat spreader, designed to dissipate heat and keep the drive cool. Not only that, this competitively priced SSD fits snugly into PCs, consoles, and motherboards.

Not everyone needs the very fastest read and write speeds. It’s also true that not everyone wants to spend a fortune on an SSD. If that's you, look no further.

Available in various TB versions, the Silicon Power UD85 sits at the budget end of the market. But don’t count it out. With an AIC PCIe 4.0 interface, Phison E16 controller, and Kioxia 96L TLC, it has respectable power and read and write speeds of 3,600 MB/s and 2,800 MB/s, and 750,000 IOPS.

Of course, that doesn’t match the higher-spec options on this list — SSD tech from other brands, not to mention the sheer heft of next-gen games, has changed the playing field — but it’s a solid (state drive) option at a lower price. And it will match some top models for read/write endurance.

If you’re a seasoned gamer, you’ll know the Acer Predator already — Acer’s hardware range. The name is appropriate. This Acer Predator SSD is killer stuff, built for serious-minded gamers who need hard-wearing kit. And it’s not that expensive (within the fairly-pricey realm of top-line SSDs).

It clocks up impressive numbers, with read and write speeds of 7,200 and 6,700 MB/s, and 990,000 IOPS. This all comes courtesy of some excellent components: A four-lane PCIe 4.0 drive, a Micron 96-layer TLC NAND flash, and Innogrit IG5236 controller.

The Acer Predator is also equipped with a graphene-laced foam pad that works to dissipate the heat as its churns through data. Not everyone likes the foam pad solution though — you may want to opt for the additional heatsink, though it's sold separately and is too bulky for the PS5.

Samsung’s SSD line gets an upgrade with the Samsung 980 Pro. It’s the first Samsung SSD to use PCIe 4.0, which — along with the quality and other top-of-line components you can expect from Samsung tech — makes this the fastest SSD you can find. Reviewers have noted that it’s 90% faster than the previous gen Samsung SSD, which should give you some indication of just how much of an upgrade PCIe 4.0 delivers.

Also packed inside this stellar drive is Samsung’s NAND flash technology, an energy efficient 100-plus layer of cells, and custom Elpis controller, which is four times as powerful as Samsung’s previous controller. The Samsung 980 Pro manages heat dissipation with Dynamic Thermal Guard technology and a nickel coating.

Like other PCIe 4 SSDs, it requires a PCIe 4 compliant system for you to get the best out of it. Otherwise, you won’t see much difference from PCIe 3.0. Which is another way of saying, only fork out for the Samsung 980 Pro if your computer is ready for the upgrade — or if you’re a PS5 gamer.