PC gamers have it easy. Adding on cheap storage for game downloads is easy, especially during Black Friday—you can pick any good option available and then just pop the drive right in. Meanwhile, PlayStation 5 owners have to meet certain guidelines when looking for a compatible SSD. And those don’t often come cheap.
Thank goodness for this week’s Black Friday sales. Right now you can pick up M.2 SSDs that are fast enough for peak PS5 performance and meet Sony’s heatsink recommendations, all while saving a solid chunk of cash. They’re all down 20 percent or more from their recent street prices, with the fastest of the lot a satisfying 32% percent off. Nice how that works out.
You can also roll your own solution by pairing a higher-performing drive with a separate heatsink purchase. Our recommendation? The SK Hynix P41, which beats both the Samsung 980 Pro and the Crucial P5 Plus in speed tests. (As shown in Tom’s Hardware benchmarks, it’s up to 25 percent faster for PC gaming-related tasks, like accessing and transferring files—the difference is likely similar for the PS5.) At over 30 percent off for the 1TB and 2TB capacities, you’ll get top-notch performance for not much more than the Crucial P5 Plus (which is the slowest of these deals).
And in case you’re concerned, adding a heatsink to an SSD is extremely easy—the hardest part is finding a screwdriver for the tiny screws. (Usually a Phillips #1 will work, but it can be useful to have a Phillips #0 on hand, too.)
Regardless of which deal you pick, the good news is no matter what capacity you pick, you can always reuse the SSD elsewhere if you later upgrade. Just stick it into your laptop or desktop PC for a little bonus storage.
