Now’s a Great Time to Buy an SSD for Your PC or PlayStation 5

If you’ve watched our daily deals coverage or the recent Amazon Prime Day sales excitement, you may have noticed that we’re seeing some of the lowest solid-state drive prices we’ve ever seen.

it was not He Not long ago it was believed that choosing an SSD over a hard disk was an expensive endeavor best left to cash-strapped PC builders and hardcore enthusiasts. Now? You will get every PS5, Xbox Series

How much drop in price are we talking about? Consider this: Best Selling Internal SSD on Amazon is one 2TB Samsung 980 Pro, which is selling for about $120 and has dropped 60 percent in price since this time last year—which accounts for most of its 76 percent decline in its lifetime. As for its smaller, more attractive and faster running sibling, 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (The highest ranked seller on Amazon among new SSDs)? At $150, it has lost about 58 percent since its November 2022 launch at $309.

It’s a breath of fresh air that valuable and essential technology for us gamers and PC builders has gotten really affordable, as it seems like a lot of devices and streaming services are slowly trending upward in price over time. . Plus, more devices now require SSDs than ever before, with many consoles, laptops, and desktops offering a second M.2 slot that you can fill, and handheld consoles like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Alli more asking for a place.

Compared to traditional hard drives, even a fairly basic M.2 NVMe SSD is lightning fast and more than enough for the average user. Now, however, we’ve been seeing a steady decline in prices for some of the fastest and most sought-after SSDs on the market for several weeks, and the downward spiral may just get worse.

Prices are going down because major chip makers like Samsung have a glut of inventory and not enough demand, resulting in prices falling. according to a reuters reportsThose prices aren’t expected to come down until later this quarter and probably won’t improve until next year.

That’s why it’s a good time to share with you the best deals we’re seeing.

Tied with Samsung for a second, the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 1TB SSD, with sequential read speeds of 6,400 MB/s, is fast enough for use in the PlayStation 5, and adding one brings the console’s usable 667GB manufactured doubles. -in the space. It is now sold with a heatsink – which Sony says the PS5 requires – for only $79.99 at retailers like Amazon And best Buy, That’s $70 cheaper than last July and $170 less than those sold in Fall 2021. For even more storage, the 2TB 980 Pro with heatsink is currently $139.99 ($130 cheaper than it was a year ago). best Buy,

We’ve covered previous deals on those exact drives several times before, but these latest discounts expose old sale prices. Yes, they dropped even further recently during Amazon Prime Day ($69.99 for 1 TB / $99.99 for 2 TB), but we’re hovering around the lowest they’ve ever been.

Even the new Samsung 990 Pro, which is overpriced for a PS5 but suitable for a top-tier gaming desktop, can be had with 1TB of storage for just $79.99. Amazon And best Buy — a price you wouldn’t have thought possible when it launched just eight months ago for almost $100 more.

But what’s really surprising is the 2TB version of Samsung’s 990 Pro, which currently costs $149.99. Amazon And for a short time it was also sold for $129.99 on the Prime Day Lightning deal. Even without that additional time-sensitive discount, today’s price for 2TB is about $163 less than what Amazon charged before the price drop in December.

Stepping out of the Samsung world for a while is the Western Digital WD_Black SN850 1TB (complete with heatsink) built by Mark Cerny, PlayStation’s principal systems architect. uses for your own ps5 Selling for $89.99 Amazon And best Buy (which is $150 less than its original price), and the 2TB version is near its all-time low. $149.99 ($130 off when Amazon first sold it in September).

Hey, even the Adata XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1TB that I bought myself a few months back is now available for only $59.99 (about $68 less than when it first went on sale). best Buy And Amazon, It felt like a great value when I got mine in March for about $80, but just yesterday and during Prime Day it came down to a ridiculously low $54.99 — which is also $10 cheaper than the 512GB model that’s mostly unavailable now (because who wants that at the moment anyway).

For cost-conscious PS5 owners who want to expand their console’s storage, the S70 Blade is a great value, as it also comes in 2TB and 4TB sizes. 2TB only costs $109.99 best Buy And Amazon After a decline of $60 in six months. Extra Large 4TB model costs $279.99 Amazon And best Buy (Just two months ago this thing still cost over $500).

you can see more general Pricing Trends on PCPartPickerAnd it shows us how most 2TB NVMe SSDs fared – which tracks pretty well with some of the prices covered above.

Another example: The extra-fast WD_Black SN850X with heatsink (which reaches read speeds of up to 7,300 MB/s) is selling for only Rs 200. $119.99 (Over 60 percent off MSRP). But this drive also comes in 1TB and even 4TB capacities – the first of which is fine. $69.99 (60 percent off the same as 2TB), and the latter is (albeit without the heatsink). The SN850X is one of the fastest drives you can buy for PC or PS5 right now, and the 4TB model gives it an edge in storage capacity over Samsung’s competing 990 Pro. It also helps that Western Digital’s 4TB drive currently costs $430 less than it did when it launched less than a year ago.

But the pricing trend isn’t just for the benefit of PC and PS5 gamers, there’s even Seagate’s SSD expansion cards for proprietary slots on Xbox Series X/S consoles. eventually got a price cut back in May (even though they still cost more than standard drives). And Western Digital now offers a bit of competition to Seagate with its more affordable WD_Black line for Xbox. Getting 512GB of add-on storage for or for 1TB That seems somewhat like a cheat compared to the standard NVMe prices above, but if you have an Xbox, that’s unfortunately the price to be paid for plug-and-play convenience.

Thankfully, it stings a little less for owners of Valve’s Steam Deck or Asus’ ROG Alley. If you want to be brave and get your hands on an upgrade to the stock SSD, you can get the Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVMe 2230 SSD for $109.95. Amazon, The tiny drive cost $159.99 before it suddenly dropped in price in mid-May. The 2230 size of SSD hasn’t dropped as much as the larger models because they’re a bit more specced, but the $50 drop in price is sizeable.

Now, at this point, you may also be asking yourself, “What about those of us who aren’t yet using the M.2 slot in our older PCs?” Well, I’m happy to inform you that the deals also include older, slower SSDs like the Samsung 870 Evo 2TB and the Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5-inch SATA Drive — both of which remain in the top-13 of drives currently being bought on Amazon (remember, not everyone is on the bleeding edge). At what price is Samsung 2TB selling? $109.99 (a far cry from its original peak of $299.99 in late 2021), and the Crucial 1TB is just $47.99 After debuting in 2019 starting life at $259.99.

The same Crucial model is also available in a 4TB capacity if you really want to max out your storage with a 2.5-inch SSD $206.99 ($143 off), though it’s down to $164.99 on the Prime Day Lightning deal.

These drives max out around 500MB/s write speed, so their days of winning speed tests are long gone, but it still beats a spinning disk.

Overall, this has become the best time to buy solid-state drives of all types, be it for gaming, productivity, or both. The prices may continue to slide down a bit further, though it will certainly hit lower levels somewhere.

One note: While this trend is great for us shoppers, be careful and know that what you’re buying is the real deal from a reputable seller. For example, one of our tips for buying tech (or really anything) on ​​Amazon is to make sure it’s shipped And Sold by Amazon.com – or at least Fulfilled by Amazon and sold by a reputable third party such as the manufacturer of the product. The tech world is sometimes exploited by scammers with some dodgy listings.

Buying storage may not be the most exciting part of building a PC (yes, I know many people obsess over which fancy RTX graphics card they’re going to spend the big bucks on), but it’s essential. And, frankly, getting the right amount of storage for your needs helps avoid the worst game ever: constantly moving or deleting huge games that exceed 60, 80, and 100 GB to make room for the next game you’re downloading. It’s the inventory management minigame from hell.