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When it comes to storing all the stuff on your gaming PC, you have two options: cheap and big hard drives (HDD) or more expensive but much faster solid-state drives (SSDs). A good SSD makes everything you do on your PC feel speedy. Programs pop right open. Files copy in seconds. Perhaps most importantly, your games will load faster, and big open-world games that load data as you play will run smoother, with fewer hitches and hiccups.
Before you buy, you need to know what kind of SSD you want. Newer motherboards have sockets for M.2 drives—long flat sticks of storage that lie flat against the motherboard and connect via the PCI Express or SATA interface. If you don’t have that, you can buy a Serial ATA (SATA) drive that plugs into power and data cables just like an HDD. Those are typically not as fast as M.2 drives, but are more affordable and compatible. If you're rocking an older setup you can buy inexpensive (about $20-30) PCIe cards to add M.2 sockets, too.
Whichever way you want to go, these are your best options.
Crucial gives you a lot of bang for the buck with the MX300. Don’t be fooled by other inexpensive drives with slightly faster specifications—in real-world testing, the MX300 consistently outperforms them, with performance just a little bit slower than drives that cost considerably more. It’s a value champion, with the entry-level 275GB option costing just $100, and even a full terabyte for less than $300. Want to go big? A 2TB drive is only $530. The sweet spot between price and capacity is probably the 525GB model, which will set you back about $160.
Samsung 850 EVO - Best Overall SATA SSD
Samsung makes two variants of its 850 Series SSD: the EVO and the Pro. Trust us; you want the EVO. The Pro uses 2-bit MLC instead of 3-bit TLC NAND flash, which makes it a bit faster and gives it slightly higher formatted capacity. It’s also got a somewhat better controller on the smaller capacity models, but in the real world these differences won't make a very big difference. Overall the Pro costs about 30% more for a performance difference you won’t even notice, particularly on a SATA drive. Get the EVO in whatever capacity you desire and you'll be set for at least the length of its super-long five year warranty.
Intel 600p - Best Budget M.2 Drive
If you need an affordable M.2 drive with high capacity, the 1TB Intel 600p is a good pick. At about $370, it’s considerably less expensive than most high-quality, large-capacity M.2 drives. At lower capacities, the price advantage is much smaller, however. The 600p’s performance can best be described as “okay,” and in fact a few of the best SATA drives outperform it in some tasks. So we recommend it only in the 1TB capacity where the price savings are substantial, and only if you’re really opposed to buying a SATA drive, as the Samsung 850 EVO is just about as fast and might even cost a little less.
Samsung 960 EVO - Best Overall M.2 Drive
Just like the 850 series SATA drives, Samsung’s 960 M.2 drives comes in both Pro and EVO models. Once again, the Pro uses 2-bit MLC NAND instead of 3-bit TLC NAND, giving it slightly higher performance and formatted capacities. In the end, it’s not nearly worth the price premium, and so we recommend the 960 EVO. At about $220 for the 500GB version and $480 for 1TB, the 960 EVO isn’t the cheapest M.2 drive around but it is one of the best. Sequential read and write speeds hover around the 2GB/s mark, which is several orders of magnitude faster than even the best SATA SSDs. Random read and write performance are excellent, too.
Okay Richie Rich, you just want the fastest consumer drive you can stick in your gaming computer, price be damned. Spring for the 960 Pro instead of the EVO. Yeah, you’ll pay 20-30% more (depending on the capacity) for a relatively minor increase in performance. You’ll mostly get better write performance and improvements under heavy load, but it’s not likely to make a noticeable difference in gaming. What you do get is much bigger maximum storage capacity. The 960 Pro is available in a 2TB model, while the 960 EVO maxes out at 1TB. Sure, it’ll cost you almost $1,200, but you’re worth it, right?
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