Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe 3.0, 3D NAND, NVMe, M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT4000P3PSSD8

Product Information

A standout feature: the 990 Pro's sequential writes significantly outpace both its predecessor and competitors. Additionally, it showcases impressive read speeds, nearing PCIe 4.0's maximum of 8,000MB/s. We've been continuously impressed by the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX since getting our hands on it earlier in the year. This compact Gen 4.0 NVMe drive is capable of excelling with lightning-fast read speeds and sequential write figures that are hard to argue against. Our tests reflect this for the most part, recording a sequential read speed of 7,256MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8, with a somewhat lower than expected sequential write speed of 6,082MB/s in the same test. Interestingly though, it had the highest random write performance of any drive we tested (4,938MB/s), including the vaunted Samsung Pro 990, which had a roughly 17% slower random write rate (4,105MB/s). It also had the best average data copy rate of all the drives we tested recently with 1,733MB/s, so this is not only a great gaming SSD, it’s a fantastic all around performer at a great price. If you want a high-performance M.2 SSD that goes the distance, the Viper VP4300 will still be running strong long after its rivals falter.

Corsair offers various cooling options for this drive, with the MP600 Pro LPX tailored with a low-profile heatsink fit for the PS5. The SK Hynix Platinum P41 is a worthy choice for anyone looking to buy a high-performance PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSD without breaking the bank. It blew away several of our benchmark records. The P41 provides AES hardware-based encryption and a clone utility tool as well as SSD management software. Just be forewarned that with its blistering speed, you will want to add a heatsink, the one item of note that it is missing.

ADATA XPG Spectrix S40G

You want a smaller capacity PS5 SSD: While the Nextorage NEM-PA is available in other capacities and performs well, the price point is less aggressive at 1TB and 2TB than at 4TB. Of all the M.2 SSD's on this list, the Samsung EVO Plus is the most expensive, in some cases (against XPG SX8200, for example) by a good margin. If you have the money to spend and you want the fastest SSD your PCIe 3.0 board can handle, then you can't go wrong with the Samsung EVO Plus. The Samsung SSD 990 Pro, the company's flagship PCI Express 4.0 NVMe internal solid-state drive, has a hard act to follow in the Editors' Choice-winning SSD 980 Pro, but for the most part it makes a great product even better. This power-efficient drive gets high marks for raw speed, everyday application performance, a strong software suite, and hardware-based encryption. The heatsink-equipped version of this drive performed slightly better than the non-heatsink version (which we tested using our testbed's motherboard's heatsink) in most of our benchmarks. It doesn't quite merit the 980 Pro's Editors' Choice award, because other recent internal SSDs have outpaced it in our gaming benchmarks, but its overall capability makes this Samsung a versatile drive well-suited for creative tasks. Who It's For It’s not just internet bandwidth you need, when using Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The hardware matters too. Welcome to the cutting edge! You're shopping for a kind of drive that many folks don't even realize exists. As a result, you need to pay attention to several factors that may not be documented very well while you shop. Let's recap.

We actually like these because often, you often get a robust heat sink on the M.2 drive. Some PCI Express-bus M.2 SSDs can run hot under sustained read/write tasks and throttle their speed. That said, unless you're running a server or something similar, where a drive is constantly getting hammered with reads and writes, that's usually not something you have to worry about. That's because many of these drives are so fast, they get their transfer duties done before they have a chance to get all that hot. Portable SSDs are a great way to boost your system. Learn more about the benefits of external SSDs, how they work and more, at Crucial

Not only does this M.2 SSD offer fantastic performance pretty much across the board, it's much cheaper than rival gaming SSDs.