Best SSD For Gaming And Why SSD Is Preferable To Gamers

The speed of your PC’s storage device makes a huge difference in gaming and therefore, getting the Best SSD for Gaming is mostly the first thought of any gamer these days. Still, the most common mistake made when choosing the SSD is overspending on a Gaming SSD while simultaneously under sizing the SSD, given the size of modern games. So, I will share everything I know along with the experience of fellow gamers to help minimize the SSD problems and choose the Best Gaming SSD.

• Recommended Because: Reliability and software support using Western Digital Dashboard.
• Not Perfect Because: Older generation and not a long term investment for your gaming PC if you plan to upgrade MOBO.

Western Digital gives you a lot of bang for the buck with the WD Blue SN 570 NVME for the price under $100. This SSD offers Some solid read speeds at 3500 megabytes per second, making it run faster than some of the best PCI-E 3 SATA SSDs.
Therefore, you should have limited PC lag and load times. This one terabyte SSD uses PCI-E 3.0 technology which is not the fastest that is currently available. But at this price point it can’t be beaten the Western Digital Blue SN570. It also offers a good deal of reliability, thanks to features that protect your content.
WD Dashboard SoftwareYou also get access to the WD dashboard which offers software and firmware updates. The official software ‘WD Dashboard’ which you can download from ‘https://support.wdc.com/’ in order to monitor the health of your drive, plus you can see available space in the temperature. And the beauty of this APP is when you turn on the Gaming Mode 2.0 for supported Western Digital SSDs.

The warranty of 5 years or 600 total drive rights which is often the standard means that you can have peace of mind. That this small investment will last and since you saved a bit of money. Here you can spend more Elsewhere on your PC build.

• Recommended Because: It performs like a true Gaming SSD should perform, With the added optimization of WD Dashboard Gaming Mode.
• Not Perfect Because: Doesn’t include the Heatsink with the storage drive, You buy the heatsink for extra cost.

Western Digital has also stepped up its game for PCI-E 4 with the WD Black SN 850x. The speeds on offer here are near the top of what the PCI-E 4.0 interface can possibly offer. This drive delivers 7300 megabytes per second read speed so your games will load up insanely fast with minimum latency. And the 6350 megabytes per second write speeds, meaning you’re in for some quick saves.

This NVME Drive is compatible with WD Dashboard Gaming Mode. When you turn it on from the dashboard it automatically changes the theme to Black and you get a tool to further optimize your gaming experience that should boost performance when gaming with features like faster game-assets loading and thermal management. But turning it on or off requires you to restart your PC.

The Western Digital Black SN850x uses 112 layer TLC in 3D NAND and it delivers a fairly reasonable price for a one terabyte drive without making the sacrifice to longevity that comes from going for QLC and AMD. And I would also recommend buying the heatsink with it to get it working on its full potential. This drive comes without a heatsink, but you can snag it with one for around $15 extra to keep things running cool.

The Top Gaming SSD on our list is Crucial P5 Plus. The crucial P5 plus offers fast speeds with solid endurance and even better value with its up-to 2 terabyte of storage space and 6600 megabytes per second sequential read speed. It packs a powerful punch, all for under $150, making it our Top Choice for the best SSD.

This NVMe SSD with PCI-E 4.0 technology makes it much faster than drives with PCI-E 3.0 technology. We tested it on both 3 and 4 gen PCI-E boards and got noticeable boost in performance. This SSD is perfect for hardcore Gamers, creative content creators, or those with intensive workloads.

Additionally, Crucial P5 Plus meets the optimal requirements to work with the PS5 when used with heatsink which can be bought along with the drive. The advanced controller technology and AMD will make the device faster, hold more information, run more efficiently, and use less energy.

Moreover, the crucial P5 offers a warranty of 5 years, right for your next gaming PC build. It’s the perfect part to go with any High-end CPU and motherboard.

If you have an old motherboard that doesn’t have an M.2 slot, And you want to get the maximum possible performance without spending too much money then this is the Best SATA SSD for Gaming Under $50 tested by me.

TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan G is a budget-friendly SATA SSD with the 2.5 Inch form factor. Vulcan G uses a TLC (Triple Layer Cell) Flash Memory to store data which is the most common memory type in all SSDs.

When looking for the best storage for gaming, we have three options to choose from. And for better understanding, I’m going to explain them based on their technology and speed while staying in the current era of technology and not talking about anything obsolete.

The hard disk is the most common option as a storage device for decades with a large storage capacity and SATA interface. The last generation of HDDs uses SATA 3 interface which can provide up to 600 MB/s data transfer rate. But unfortunately, the Hard Disk drive cannot achieve full speed to transfer data on SATA 3 interface. Even a good HDD with 7200 RPM is seen around transferring 108 MB/s of data mostly because the physical nature of hard disks limits them to use a fraction of full SATA3 speed.
Although it’s the cheapest option in terms of TeraByte storage these days, it should be avoided as a boot drive definitely, and is also suggested to avoid it as a gaming storage drive if possible.

SATA Solid State Drive comes in two form factors which include a 2.5″ SSD that uses a SATA cable and M.2 SSD that is plugged directly into the motherboard on M.2 slot or using an add-in PCIe card. SATA Solid State Drives use the same interface as HDD but because they rely on flash memory instead of physical moving components in them, they can achieve speeds far higher than the old hard drives, with most SSDs nearing the saturation point for the full SATA 3 speed.
It’s important to know that there is no speed difference between 2.5″ SSDs and M.2 SSDs. So in most cases, it would be a waste of money to spend more for the M.2 form factor which uses the SATA 3 interface.

NVME Drive is the fastest storage drive for now. It is plugged into the M.2 slot on the motherboard or is connected using an add-in PCIe card. There are two different speeds in NVME drives currently, PCI-E 3.0 which can be up to five times faster than the fastest SATA SSD, and PCI-E 4.0 which can be up to 10 times faster than the fastest SATA SSD.
A thing to remember when going for the NVME drive is the compatibility with the motherboard and CPU. A PCI-E 3.0 drive can work with PCI-E 3.0 or PCI-E 4.0 M.2 slot while PCI-E 4.0 drive will need a PCI-E 4.0 compatible M.2 motherboard and CPU combo to get the full speed of NVME 4.0 drive but it can also work on PCI-E 3.0 while limiting its full potential.

Before you choose your gaming SSD, go through these guiding suggestions to help you decide the best SSD for gaming for yourself.

Always remember your current PC components before adding another component whether it’s a GPU or a storage device. Unlike old hardware, We can’t just add another hard drive to increase space simply by connecting it with SATA cables. SSDs are available in different form factors for many connecting interfaces that change their performance. Use utility software to identify details of your PC and choose the SSD best suitable for you. Speccy is a trusted and tested free software that gives you in-depth details of your PC hardware.

Before buying an SSD, ask yourself why do you actually need the SSD? Are you planning to install games on it so their loading times get better, Or do you want to improve the overall performance of your PC? You can improve PC performance with an NVME drive that is dedicated to OS and essential software and use SATA for storage because the latest SSD drive can be an expensive choice for storage as AAA games now take around 100 GBs.

If you have 8 GB of RAM and you are buying a large-size NVME drive then instead of doing this you can optimize your budget and get a better experience by buying a SATA SSD for data and spending extra money to increase your RAM. Or if you have a high-end build, Then I strongly recommend a minimum of 500 GB for your boot drive and 1 or 2 TB for the games and files.

One thing to know is if you have a high-end motherboard and you are buying the latest PCI-E 3.0 or PCI-E 4.0 SSD. Most of those SSD drives have metal heatsinks but many medium-range drives don’t need them. However, I recommend buying a heatsink for PCI-E 4.0 drive. And on many cheaper drives, the sticker on them itself serves as the heat spreader and is not recommended to remove it for aesthetic reasons. You can buy a 3rd party good-looking heatsink for M.2 instead.

Currently, AMD Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs using either a b550 or x570 chipset motherboard, Intel 11th Gen CPU using a 500 series chipset motherboard, or the upcoming Intel 12th Gen Alder lake CPUs using 600 series will support PCI-E 4.0 nvme drives at the full speed. Moreover, New Ryzen 5000 APUs which have “G” at the end of their names like the Ryzen 5600g and Ryzen 5700g do not support PCI-E 4.0.
You may also need to use a specific M.2 slot or make a change in BIOS to enable the PCI-E 4.0 speed depending on the motherboard, You can refer to the motherboard manual for that.

The only noticeable difference between the different types of drives in gaming is the loading times. For example, The M.2 NVME PCI-E 4.0 drive won’t give you more FPS than an old SATA hard drive once the game is loaded and this has been tested by many different PC enthusiasts like Linus Tech Tips, Tom’s Hardware, and many more. But this may change in the coming 5 years when 8K gaming is common.
So keep in mind that the except for the loading times, nothing will improve in the game performance when you upgrade storage.