If you've been holding out for a bargain SSD deal before taking the plunge with your next upgrade, then now's the time to dive head-first into the Amazon Prime Day sales and bag yourself a new SSD. Several of our favorite drives have been awarded hefty discounts, with 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs going for just $59.99, and super-fast 2TB PCIe 5.0 drives available for under $240.
You'll find a lot of these drives in our guide to the Crucial. There are many SSDs discounted right now, though, and not all are genuine bargains. That's where I can help, as I've been testing SSDs since the early days of IDE drives, right up to the PCIe 5.0 drives of today. Here is my expert advice on which SSD to buy on Amazon Prime Day.
Samsung 980 Pro 1TB
I'll start with my personal favorite of the bunch, which is the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB, a fast, all-purpose PCIe 4.0 drive that I've been using in my own gaming PC for a while now (those are my fingers in the image above). This drive usually costs around $100, but you can now bag one for just $79.99. In our Samsung 980 Pro review, we were impressed by this drive's sequential read speed, which hit 6,866MB/s – twice the speed of the standard PCIe 3.0 Samsung 980. It gets hot when it's running at full speed, though, so I recommend fitting a heatsink to it.
Crucial T705 (2TB)
Next up, at the extreme end of the scale, is the fastest SSD we've ever tested, with a 2TB Crucial T705 now costing just $239.99. In our Crucial T705 review, we were blown away by the raw performance available from this drive, with the fastest result we've seen in the PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark, and it got very close to Crucial's claimed top speed of 14,500MB/s in our CrystalDiskMark sequential read speed test as well.
This drive runs seriously hot when it's running at full pelt, though, and you'll need to fit a hefty heatsink to it. We found that the drive still throttled a bit with Crucial's own heatsink in place, so make sure yours is up to the job. If you have a chunky heatsink specifically for PCIe 5.0 drives on your motherboard, then this is the one to use with this drive. Bear in mind that you'll need a 4x PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot on your motherboard to run this drive at full speed. It will work in a PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot but at around half the speed.
WD Black SN850X (4TB)
If your top priority is capacity, I've found a couple of great deals going on 4TB and 2TB drives. Let's start with the 4TB WD Black SN850X – our current favorite PCIe 4.0 drive which is going for just $255.54 on Amazon, working out at around $64 per terabyte.
Although Amazon says this drive has a 63% discount from its usual price of $699.99, this drive usually goes for around $299 right now. You're still saving a decent amount of money, but not the colossal amount implied by Amazon.
In our WD Black SN850X review, we were impressed by this drive's balance of performance for the money, being faster than the Samsung 980 Pro when it comes to write speeds, and also offering some gaming perks. This drive has a Game Mode that comes courtesy of WD's software, which can genuinely cut game load times in our tests. For example, its load speed of 965MB/s in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was significantly quicker than the 739MB/s from the Samsung 990 Pro.
WD Black SN770 (2TB)
Another top tip for getting a decent amount of capacity for not much money is to buy the 2TB WD Black SN770, which is currently going for just $119.99. In our WD Black SN770 review, we found this drive offered a decent balance of speed and capacity for a fair price.
It's not as quick as the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850X, but it's faster than any PCIe 3.0 drive, and it hit a top sequential read speed of 5,226MB/s in our own tests. At the time of review, we criticized the Black SN770 for its pricing, but it now offers great value at $60 per terabyte in this current deal.
Crucial P3 Plus (1TB)
Finally, if you want to save as much money as possible, and still get a reasonably fast drive, the 1TB Crucial P3 Plus is currently going for only $59.99, which is a great price for this drive. It can't quite catch the WD Black SN770 when it comes to performance, but it's not far off the pace, and it's also quicker than any PCIe 3.0 drive.
For more bargains on the latest PC hardware right now, check out our install an M.2 SSD, where we take you through the whole process, including fitting a heatsink.