An SSD is now an essential component of a modern gaming PC. With your operating system and applications

stored on an SSD, Windows will boot faster than you can grab a drink from the fridge. Applications will load in seconds. Once you’ve tried an SSD, you’ll never want to go back to a hard disk. So what makes an SSD the best? Striking the right balance between speed, reliability, and price. These are the best SSDs for your dollar. The 850 Evo is the recommended SSD for most users, given the balance of price, performance, and capacity.

The 850 Evo is the recommended SSD for most users, given the balance of price, performance, and capacity. The 850 Pro is the fastest SATA SSD, but if you're interested in paying more for a faster drive, you should consider an NVMe drive . Meanwhile, TLC is increasingly common in the budget sector, but outside of the 850 Evo, performance can be a real concern, so we recommend sticking with the 850 Evo or finding an MLC drive. Our budget recommendation has been updated, after we did some testing of the Silicon Power S55; it's not the fastest SATA drive, but it is the least expensive, and that counts for something.

The best SSD
Hits 500 MB/s read speeds Outperforms more expensive SSDs Great price per gigabyte Speed can drop under heavy prolonged write loads Lower capacity models are slower

What does the term 'best' mean, when talking about a storage device? Best value for money, great real-world performance, or a brilliant feature set? The ideal SSD for a gaming PC strikes that perfect price/performance/reliability balance, andmanages this, and then some.

The technology behind the 850 Evo is similar in many ways to Samsung’s high-end 850 Pro. Samsung is the only SSD manufacturer that operates an entirely vertical business, owning the means of production for every aspect of its products. It designs the controller, programs the firmware, manufactures the NAND flash memory, and sells the finished product. Every other company is forced to rely on a third party for at least one of these aspects of its SSDs.

The advantage is closer collaboration between teams. When designing the controller, the engineers know exactly the type of NAND it will be used with. When writing the firmware, every last detail of the 850 Evo is known to the programmers.

The 850 Evo uses the same vertically arranged 3D NAND flash memory as in the 850 Pro. This arrangement allows for larger chip densities without having to go down the path of shrinking cell sizes, which begins to introduce problems that affect performance and reliability.

Samsung calls its proprietary 3D flash memory technology V-NAND, and has managed to stack 32 layers of flash cells on top of each other (and newer V-NAND is now capable of 48 layers). Each layer is connected to the next via unbelievably tiny wires, with a far greater number of connections between cells than you might expect from a 2D (planar) arrangement.

The 850 Evo is sold in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, with prices on Amazon ranging from about $70 (£50) for the 120GB model, to around $290 (£228) for the 1TB, or $603 (£498) for the massive 2TB drive.

It’s not quite the most affordable SSD, but it’s around 20 percent less than the top-end Samsung SSD 850 Pro for example, and cheaper than SanDisk’s high-end model, the Extreme Pro. It’s probably best classed as a midrange drive, although if you look at the results table, you’ll see it outpaces more expensive drives in many tests.

The 850 Evo offers excellent value for the money, and it's still a good performer. How has Samsung managed it, given that V-NAND is an ambitious undertaking that is more complex and expensive than standard flash memory? The answer is cheaper triple-level cell (TLC) flash memory. The 850 Evo is the first drive to combine TLC memory with a 3D flash arrangement, which is an interesting combination, vastly different from the planar MLC drives from other manufacturers.

But TLC flash memory typically has considerably worse performance and endurance than 2-bit MLC flash. Samsung gets around this major issue with what it calls TurboWrite, with a dedicated portion of the drive configured as SLC flash, acting as a cache. By only allowing each cell in the cache to hold a single binary value, this area has far greater endurance and reliability than the TLC portion, or even a standard 2-bit MLC drive. Samsung isn’t the only firm to do this. SanDisk has its own similar nCache 2.0 technology used on the Ultra II SSD and Extreme Pro.

All writes go to the SLC section first, and are quickly flushed to the TLC portion when the drive is idle. The size of the SLC cache is larger in the bigger 850 Evo capacities, with 3GB in the 250GB model, up to 12GB in the 1TB model.

In normal everyday use, you’ll never notice the SLC cache exists or see it impact performance. It only becomes apparent under extreme testing conditions where the 850 Evo doesn’t get a chance to flush the data, such as those conducted by AnandTechand other hardware review sites. According to AnandTech, when this happens you’ll see a more severe performance loss with smaller capacities. When writing to the TLC area, the 120GB 850 Evo drops to 150 MB/sec, the 250GB model to 300 MB/sec and the 500GB and 1TB models to 500 MB/sec and 520 MB/sec respectively. It’s worth stressing that filling up the SLC cache with a full-speed continuous write is not something you’ll do on a daily basis.

Endurance is barely affected by the use of TLC flash. With some firmware optimizations as well, the SLC cache reduces the number of writes to each TLC cell, boosting longevity. Samsung quotes 75TB of writes over five years for the 120GB and 250GB models, with 150TB for the 500GB and 1TB models. That’s a lot of writing, averaging to either 41GB per day, or 82GB per day, every day, for five years. Unless you're putting the 850 Evo through a ton of use, you won't go over this limit.

Another perk of Samsung's SSDs is its bundled Magician management software. It's very well designed, with easy access to SMART information, a benchmark tool, and a function to secure erase your SSD (which creates a USB boot disk). It also enables something called Rapid Mode, where a portion of your system memory acts as a cache for the SSD, so when you write a file, it can be written at speeds well in excess of 4GB/sec to system memory, then flushed to the SSD during idle periods. A chunk of your system memory is used up when it is enabled, so this is best used only if you have 16GB or more RAM in your PC. Rapid Mode looks great on benchmarks, but in real-world use its impact is smaller.

It should also be noted that when talking about the SSDs, the performance differences between them are tiny. In PCMark 8 for example, rival brands are within 0.1 seconds. Some come out slightly ahead, some slightly behind, but these differences are so small, they're not worth losing sleep over.

Finally, we circle back to price. When we reviewed the 850 Evo SSD, we noted that it was a fantastic SSD that was just a bit too expensive to be our new favorite. Remember, when it comes to SATA SSDs, the performance differences are often barely noticeable. When it launched, the 250GB Samsung 850 Evo cost $140 on Amazon. Now it costs only well under $100, making it a much better value. For most people, this is the SSD to get.

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The best budget SSD
Great SSD for the money 480GB for $100 Decent speed and performance Struggles under heavier sustained workloads

The days of using a spinning HDD for primary storage in a desktop are over, as SSDs are quickly taking over the role of system drives. Flash memory is getting cheaper all the time, though it's still more expensive than than spinning platters. Even if you go with a cheaper SSD, you'll still see a huge jump in performance over a spinning drive, and the Silicon Power S55 receives good marks for performance without demanding a premium like the Samsung 850 series.

While the Samsung 850 Evo offers the best and most consistent performance for consumer SATA SSDs, the Silicon Power S55 isn't that far behind. Perhaps most impressive is that for just $10 more, making a nice round $100, you can pick up the 480GB model and nearly double the capacity of the 250GB 850 Evo. Performance will be a bit lower, but for gaming and general use, you'll likely never notice.

In fact the price was so impressive that we had to see for ourselves if the drives were any good. It's worth noting that the S55 is offered in both MLC and TLC trim, with the MLC drives carrying a performance advantage but at a higher price; we nabbed the TLC model and it still managed to best several other TLC drives we've tested, at the current lowest price point we can find: just $0.208 per GB. By comparison, the Samsung 850 Evo is $0.36 per GB--that's still a far cry from the $0.032 per GB you'll pay for a 2TB hard drive, but then hard drives can be a couple orders of magnitude slower for random IO.

If the 850 Evo is out of your range, or maybe you're just looking for a single drive capable of holding a moderately sized gaming library, you can do worse than the Silicon Power S55. Just don't forget to backup important files--good advice regardless of what sort of storage you're using.

If you're looking for other budget options, the SanDisk Ultra II 480GBsits about half way between the S55 and the 850 Evo. It tends to be a bit faster than the S55 but still slower than the 850 Evo.

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The best high-end SATA SSD
Fastest consumer SSD 10 year warranty Pricier than Samsung 850 EVO for small speed gains SATA bottlenecks

Update: If you have a motherboard with an M.2 PCIe slot, consider NVMe drives at the high-end of the spectrum. The 850 Pro remains the pinnacle of SATA performance, but SATA is a bottleneck on most of our current SSDs.

Samsung has reached the top spot in a second category in this SSD group test for a good reason. The Samsung 850 Prois simply the fastest consumer SATA SSD money can buy.

It came out before the 850 Evo, and was the first consumer SSD to use V-NAND. Like the 850 Evo, the NAND flash memory is 40nm, with 32 vertical layers. However it doesn’t use TLC NAND: everything here is 2-bit MLC. There’s no need for an SLC cache then, which gives it a slightly higher formatted capacity. But the extra cost of V-NAND means a generally higher retail price than other SSDs.

The 850 Pro uses a triple core MEX controller running at 400MHz, which is a step up from the 850 Evo’s dual-core MGX controller. We've tested multiple capacities, and the 512GB and larger models are slightly faster and slightly better value for the money, but things can get pricey rather fast. If you want the fastest SATA SSD, no one has managed to top Samsung's 850 Pro, and at this stage it appears no one will; the future of high performance SSDs is PCIe and NVMe. But do you really need to spend the extra money on a high-end SSD? Our recommendation is no .

In nearly all real-world situations, there’s not a huge benefit to using a Samsung 850 Pro over a cheaper SSD. It costs quite a bit more and that money is better spent on a faster GPU, a better CPU, or more system memory. Or, say, a 1TB SSD instead of a 500GB one. The 256GB 850 Pro costs more than the 480GB SP S55, and the 512GB model is slightly more expensive than the 960GB S55.

If you’re building the ultimate rig and want the very best possible performance in any situation, never mind the cost, you're better off investing in an NVMe SSD. About the only real advantage of the 850 Pro is the massive ten-year warranty supplied with the 850 Pro. The 256GB drive is rated for 150TB of writes, or around 40GB per day for ten years, which is certainly enough for workstation use.

But if you're looking for a professional solution, you probably won't want to be using the Samsung 850 Proin five years, let alone ten, as storage technology (and speeds) will have moved far beyond the limitations of current SATA controllers. And the long warranty won't recover any lost files, just the hardware replacement, so you still need to keep a backup of your important files!

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How we tested SSDs and others we tested

SSDs make your whole system faster and more pleasant to use. But they matter for gaming, too. A fast-loading SSD can cut dozens of seconds off the loading times of big games like Battlefield 4 or MMOs like World of Warcraft. An SSD won't affect framerates like your GPU or CPU, but it will make installing, booting, dying, and reloading in games a faster, smoother process. When shopping for a good SSD for gaming, one of the most important factors is price per gigabyte. How much will you have to spend to keep a healthy library of Steam games installed, ready to be played at a moment's notice?

To find the best gaming SSDs, we researched the SSD market, picked out the strongest contenders, and put them through their paces with a variety of benchmarking tools. We also put in the research to know what makes a great SSD great, beyond the numbers—technical stuff like types of flash memory and memory controllers.

To be clear, this article only covers 2.5-inch SATA SSDs , the standard internal drives most PC gamers are accustomed to. There are newer, faster SSD form-factors (M.2 and PCie) that can deliver far greater performance than SATA drives. If that's what you're after, head on over to our best NVMe SSDs guide.

Testing SSDs

To test the SSDs, we used a PC with an Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB of DDR4 memory, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, and an Asus Z170-A motherboard. Windows 10 was installed on the main system drive, AHCI was enabled, and all the drives were connected to the motherboard’s SATA III ports. We used a combination of synthetic and trace benchmarks. This included AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark, and PCMark 8, which runs a set number of timed traces of popular applications.

SSD Technology

The single specific advantage that makes an SSD so much faster than a hard disk is access times that are orders of magnitude faster. A hard disk depends on a mechanical arm moving into position to read data from a platter, while in an SSD, data is stored and accessed electronically. Although modern hard disks are astonishingly fast at accessing data, they’re no match for an SSD; the fastest HDD access times are still around 10ms, while any decent SSD will usually have access times closer to 0.1ms.

An SSD is a physically simple device. It’s made from an array of flash memory chips and a controller, which comprises a processor, memory cache, and firmware. But like most things in computing, it starts to get complicated when you look at it in more detail. NAND flash chips store binary values as voltage differences in non-volatile memory, meaning they retain their state when power is cut off. In order to change the state of a single cell (i.e. writing to it), a strong voltage is required. But because of the way the cells are laid out, it can’t be done on a cell-by-cell basis: an entire row has to be erased at once.

Each cell is insulated from its neighbors to preserve the value it holds, but every time a cell is programmed, the insulator becomes slightly less reliable. Eventually, after a certain number of writes, the cell becomes unable to hold any values, which is why SSDs have a limited lifespan. In the early days of flash memory, this limited number of writes was a concern, but clever tricks, improved technology, and software improvements mean it’s no longer a real issue.

If you want further proof, then have a gander at the SSD endurance experiment over on TechReport. In one of the only tests of its kind, they set about continuously writing data to select SSDs until the drives became completely unusable, in a test that went on for months. Although the odd bad sector crops up relatively early, at 100TB of writes, most of the drives survived until nearly a petabyte of data or more was written to them, far beyond the manufacturers’ rating, and it took months of non-stop writing to reach that point.

The best drives managed 2.5PB of writes. It’s fair to say endurance for all but the most extreme workload is no longer an issue.

SLC, MLC, and TLC memory

A given quantity of physical flash memory cells can be programmed to hold either one, two, or three bits of data. A drive where each cell holds a single bit is known as SLC. Each cell can only be in one of two states, on or off, and only needs to be sensitive to two voltages. Its endurance and performance will be incredible, but a large amount of flash memory is needed to provide a given capacity, so SLC drives have never really taken off beyond expensive server and workstation setups.

2-bit MLC memory is currently the most popular kind used in consumer SSDs. Each cell holds two values, with four binary states (00, 01, 10 and 11), so the cell needs to be sensitive to four voltages. The same amount of flash memory provides double the amount of space as SLC, so less is needed and the SSD is more affordable.

3-bit TLC memory goes even further, with three values per cell. Now each cell has to hold eight binary states (corresponding to 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111), and performance and endurance begins to really suffer as there are eight distinct voltages that represent data. Since each cell needs to differentiate between eight voltage values, reading them reliably requires more precision, and wear and tear reduces the number of write cycles. The plus side is you get even more capacity from the same amount of flash memory, resulting in even cheaper SSDs, which is something everyone wants.

As we’ve found from testing some SSDs, manufacturers are using tricks to mitigate these negative effects with TLC flash memory, so prices can continue falling without impacting performance. These days, we're seeing increasing numbers of TLC SSDs, particularly in the budget sector, and performance has reached the point where they're generally an acceptable compromise.

Sequential Transfer Speeds

Whenever you read about an SSD or look at a review, the first figure you’ll usually see is a headline-grabbing transfer rate. Imagine read and write speeds up to 550MB/sec, or even faster in the case of PCIe SSDs. These numbers always look really impressive, and it typically represents the best-case performance you'll see from a drive. It usually means doing large sequential file transfers, which means all the blocks are laid out one after the other and caching and other advantages are at their peak.

In the real world, most software applications deal with both large and small files, and at times a program might be waiting for input before it carries on, so you’ll rarely get the maximum sequential speed of your SSD. You might see these speeds when reading or writing a large 10GB movie file, but things will be a lot slower when copying a folder full of 10,000 jpeg images, HTML documents, or even a game directory. These smaller files could be spread all over the disk, and will be slower to transfer.

In the case of a hard disk, that entails moving the disk head over the correct position on the platter, which adds a really long delay. SSDs are far quicker to do this, which is where the real improvement in overall responsiveness comes from.

To further complicate things, some SSDs handle uncompressed data much better than compressed data. Specifically, there has been a big difference in performance with these two types of data with SSDs that use older SandForce controllers. If there’s a difference, the faster speeds when dealing with uncompressed data are the ones that are quoted. Therefore, although faster sequential speeds are always nice to see, it’s best not to judge an SSD on these figures alone, as you won't see these speeds all the time.

IOPS

IOPS is another term that is often used in relation to performance of storage products, usually quoted with SSD specifications, but its direct application to real-world use isn’t simple. Put simply, IOPS means input-output operations per second. The more a device can manage, the faster it is. Except, not all IO operations are the same. Reading a tiny 512-byte text file isn’t the same thing as writing a 256KB block from a 10GB movie.

There’s no standard for how figures should be advertised, but the general agreed format is that companies quote the QD32, 4KB block size figure, or IOPS when 32 4KB read or write commands are queued. In the real world, applications won’t be constantly queuing up 32 4KB blocks. It will likely be a random mixture of block sizes, reads, writes, and times when the storage device is idle. For random IO (like booting the OS when lots of files from many applications and drivers are requested), the IOPS figures are important, but they're not the only figure that matters.

Much effort goes into measuring IOPS for patterns that simulate databases, web servers, file servers and so on. For gaming, it really depends on the application, since no two games will be identical. Some might involve huge textures being loaded from disk, while others might be structured differently. Although the 4K QD32 IOPS figure is relevant, it’s best thought of as an indicator of SSD performance with a heavier workload rather than a definitive, comparable benchmark for overall performance.

Competitors

We started with a collection of nine SSDs by researching the most popular and competitive drives around. At the time, 240-256GB drives offered the best blend of capacity and performance, but as time has passed we're now looking toward 480-512GB drive--256GB can go fast with a few games and Windows 10! There are plenty of other SSDs out there and new ones arrive regularly, so we've added additional drives to our database over time.

Focusing on just one or two tests doesn't usually tell the whole story, so we've run a variety of benchmarks along with simply using each drive. Outside of specific benchmarks or copying large amounts of data, what's surprising is how little difference there is between the 'best' and 'worst' SSD we've tested. Applications (and games) may take a bit longer to install, but otherwise they all feel remarkably similar for light use. That's why for gaming specific use, we recommend going for the lowest price per GB as the primary consideration.

At the high end, the SATA bus is now the limiting factor in SSD performance. Fortunately, SSD manufacturers can take advantage of the PCIe interface, including add-in boards like the Intel SSD 750 and newer M.2 'gumstick' drives. But even the affordable SSDs are starting to hit the SATA performance ceiling, and prices continue to fall.

Over the past year and more, we've tested many drives. The Samsung 850 Evo, Samsung 850 Pro, and Silicon Power S55are currently our primary recommendations, but depending on pricing and availability, many other drives are worth considering. Here's what we've looked at, in alphabetical order:

Corsair has had an SSD line under the Neutron name for several years now, and performance has generally been good, but pricing is higher than we like. Unfortunately, the Neutron XTcan't match the 850 Evo, despite a similar price.

Crucial's BX100was a great budget option that was replaced by the slower Crucial BX200. Crucial also has their MX200and now MX300that boast better performance along with higher prices, and the MX300 (with TLC 3D NAND) is now available at a variety of capacities, all priced around 25 cents per GB.

Intel’s 730 series SSDhas been on the market a while and has been surpassed by the firm’s PCIe 750 series, which is a lot more up to date. Frankly, we’d ignore the 730 as its pricing is just not good value for money, and its write speeds suffer compared with Samsung, Crucial, or Plextor’s drives.

Kingston’s V300is rather old now, and it has generally poor write performance and isn't worth buying, despite its affordability. The newer UV400 driveslook much more promising, using a combination of TLC NAND and an SLC cache to deliver better performance than many other TLC drives.

A few years back, OCZ ran into some financial difficulties, but they were saved by Toshiba, who now owns their assets and continues to sell drives under the OCZ brand. The OCZ Trion 100and newer Trion 150are the first drives to come post-acquisition, with the 150 replacing the 100 and offering some minor updates. The Trion 150 is a budget offering, using TLC NAND with the relatively common Phison S10 controller. Phison had a deservedly bad reputation in the past, but their S10 is doing quite well. With MLC it can come relatively close to the top drives, though the TLC models are less impressive.

More impressive is OCZ's Vector 180, a drive that can actually come relatively close to matching the 850 Evo's performance. But you get 20GB more capacity with the 500GB Evo compared to the 480GB Vector 180, plus a bit better performance, so barring further price cuts it's not the best choice.

Plextor seemed to be making headroads into the world of consumer SSDs at one point, and then they pulled out and focused on the more lucrative enterprise market. Their M6 Pro linehas decent performance, but at the current prices it's no longer competitive--you can get twice the capacity for a lower price.

Samsung is the current 800 pound gorilla of SSDs. They have the advantage of owning the NAND and controller fabrication facilities, plus they do all their own firmware. That allows them to compete on price while also offering better performance than many other companies. V-NAND allows the 850 Evoand 850 Proto claim two of our three SSD recommendations. Simply put, you can't go wrong with a Samsung SSD.

SanDisk's Extreme Prois one of the few SATA SSDs that can go head-to-head with the 850 Pro. It doesn't win every battle, but with a lower price it doesn't need to. Like Samsung, they make their own NAND, which is a big advantage in the cutthroat world of consumer SSDs, and they also have a lot of experience building controllers. It's interesting that the Extreme Pro is still their best SSD, considering it came out in 2014; maybe we'll see an NVMe drive from the company in the future?

Meanwhile, the SanDisk Ultra IIis a serious contender for the best budget SSD, losing out mostly due to the added $25 compared to the SP S55. The Ultra II is a bit faster than the S55, thanks to its continued use of MLC NAND, and if you're willing to spend up it's worth a closer look.

Silicon Power's S55is one of our latest additions. The TLC models are currently the least expensive SSD you're likely to find, at $100 for 480GB or just under 21 cents per GB. We might be tempted to say you get what you pay for, but in practice we've been pleasantly surprised by the drive and it's now our budget recommendation. The MLC S55 drivesmay perform better, but at their higher price we'd stick with a Samsung 850 Evo.

Our final entrant--again, alphabetically--is Transcend, with their relatively new SSD370S series. Unlike many other companies, Transcend is sticking with MLC NAND on the SSD370S, combined with a Silicon Motion 2246EN controller. The results is relatively impressive performance--a bit behind the 850 Pro and 850 Evo, but worth a look, particularly if pricing comes down. Note that like the 850 Pro, this drive also gives you 512GB at our recommended capacity, a bit more than most other options.

Closing thoughts and a look to the future

Now that an SSDs are such good value, there's simply no reason not to have one in your PC. If you were an early adopter with a 64GB or 128GB drive and find that capacity to be rather limiting, it might be time to consider an upgrade. A 512GB SSD now costs a lot less than a 128GB model did a few years ago, and we strongly recommend at least 240GB for your OS and primary applications, with 480GB and larger providing plenty of room for some games and other goodies.

While ubiquitous, standard 2.5-inch SSDs are now fundamentally limited by the speed of the SATA bus, which has a maximum theoretical throughput of 6 Gbit/sec. In real world terms, the performance ceiling is around 550 MB/sec for an SSD, and it’s clear this is imposing a limit on flash memory technology.

The solution is to switch to the PCI Express bus, where Gen3 offers 985 MB/sec per lane, with a x4 card allowing for up to 3.94 GB/sec. Unfortunately, the PCIe SSDs to date are expensive, and they're limited to either PCIe add-in boards or the M.2 form factor, which means only newer (basically Z97, X99, and Z170 motherboards) have the requisite NVMe support. Quite a few laptops are switching to M.2 drives due to the space savings, however, and long-term the standard has a lot of room to grow.

In another 10 years, solid state technology may make today's SATA SSDs look like floppy disks. But for now, SATA SSDs still offer the best performance you're going to get for your dollar, and the Samsung 850 Evois currently the best choice for a great gaming SSD.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to stores like Amazon. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which helps support our work evaluating PC components.

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