Best NVMe SSD for gaming in 2022

The best NVMe SSD makes you never want to go back to a regular old hard drive again. In the race to load your games fast and move your data around, NVMe SSDs are always in first place. They're incredibly fast, reliable, and worth investing in. Outside of a new GPU, which can be tough to get a hold of right now, an NVMe SSD is the next biggest upgrade for your rig.

Even modern consoles are touting some of the best NVMe SSDs—both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 boast speedy NVMe SSDs and you don't want to get left behind by the consoles now, do you? The technology that makes the most of the Xbox's storage (DirectStorage) will be finding its way onto our systems soon. What that means, is storage is about to get a lot more important for gaming PCs.

Thankfully, the SSD market is fierce right now, so great deals on quality SSDs are not uncommon. A speedy 1TB NVMe SSD might only set you back $120, which isn't much more than you'd pay for a clunky old SATA SSD. As long as you have an M.2 slot on your motherboard, NVMe is the place to be. 

We've tested loads of NVMe SSDs recently to find the very best options out there. Each drive we've looked at is available in a range of capacities with prices to match. And remember, larger drives perform better thanks to more controller channels being used at higher capacities, so buy a big a drive if you can. It'll be worth it.

Best NVMe SSD

Our favorite WD Black SN850 config:

Western Digital has released some quality drives lately, with the SN750 being a mainstay of our best SSD for gaming guide and the likes of the SN550 offering incredible value for money. With the release of the SN850, Western Digital gets to add another trophy to its cabinet—the fastest PCIe SSD around. Thanks to the latest generation of PCIe interface, you will not find a faster, more reliable NVMe drive today.

The Phison E18-powered Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus has higher quoted sequential read and write figures. And while it's true that the SN850 trails slightly in some of the synthetic benchmarks, we put more weight on the real-world tests, and here the SN850 is head and shoulders above anything else in this group test. It's the fastest at the FFXIV game load and PCMark10's full storage test, and it isn't exactly sluggish in straight throughput either—managing 5,920MB/s reads and 5,021MB/s writes in AS SSD.

It shouldn't come as much of a shock to discover that this incredible performance comes at a cost, and this drive is definitely at the pricier end of the spectrum, working out at $0.23/GB. It's also a toasty drive, hitting 77°C in operation. This shouldn't be a problem in a well-ventilated case but maybe an issue in a more cramped system. Still, if you want the fastest drive around, this is it. 

Read our full Western Digital WD SN850 review.

Our favorite WD Black SN750 config:

Western Digital has been a stalwart in the platter HDD world for many long years now. Its foray into the SSD market has shown an inherent competency in providing sensible, consumer-friendly storage. The new SN850 shows just how far that competency has extended into the latest generation of PCIe interface. Though it's not without its faults, this M.2 form factor NVMe drive is a speed demon, made faster by a Gaming Mode you can toggle on or off in the company's integrated SSD Dashboard software. 

Of course, kicking it into overdrive also means cranking up the heat, which, according to Western Digital, necessitates the use of a thermal heatsink. Sold separately, the heatsink model comes at something of a premium, but the company claims its “passive cooling features” aid with ushering in “optimal levels of performance.”

In regular use, it's practically as fast as the 970 Evo Plus. For the most intense workloads, Samsung wins out, but gamers aren't likely to fall into that user category. Several other drives use the same SM2262EN controller, which often means similar performance (e.g., the Mushkin Pilot-E). 

Our favorite Seagate Firecuda 530 config:

Of course Western Digital and Samsung are the big names in storage, and most especially in the world of SSDs. Seagate may have taken a while to get into the solid state game, and especially the PCIe 4.0 market, but it has arrived with a bang with the Firecuda 530. With or without the heatsink (something that's necessary for its PlayStation 5 compatibility) the latest Seagate drive is a stunner.

Of course the rated sequential read/write speeds are fantastic, but it's the endurance levels that really stand out compared to the competition. The 2TB drive we tested has an unprecedented 2,550 TBW rating when it comes to endurance, which is something you won't see this side of an SSD made for Chia mining.

It combines brand-new Micron 176-Layer TLC NAND—the same memory Crucial is using to great effect with the new P5 Plus drives—with a Phison PS5018-E18 controller. Micron claims that its 176L TLC NAND is the best in the industry with a 30% smaller die size and a 35% improvement in read and write latency over its previous generation 96L NAND.

And in terms of performance the FireCuda 530 either matches or beats the big bois of the storage world, and when you add its leading sequential performance and endurance rating, the Seagate 530 is at least the equal of any consumer SSD on the market. 

Read our full Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB review.

Our favourite Samsung 970 EVO Plus config:

There was a time it was hard to beat Samsung SSDs in the high-performance M.2 NVMe space, but with the shift towards PCIe 4.0 drives, we've seen the likes of Western Digital and Sabrent take the mantle forward. But PCIe 4.0 SSDs are still expensive, and back in the last generation, Samsung still has some fantastic drives. The Samsung 970 Evo Plus is still one of the fastest PCIe 3.0 M.2 drives around.

Like the 970 Pro, the more recent 970 Evo Plus rates well for endurance, which bodes well for its longevity; the 1TB model is rated for 600TB of writes over five years or a whopping 329GB of writes per day. You'd need to fill up and then wipe the drive every three days to manage that many writes, which isn't a consumer or even prosumer workload. For reference, the SSD I've used the most still only has 40TB of writes after four years.

The 500GB and 2TB models are certainly worth looking at if you want a lower price or more capacity, respectively. But for most users, the 1TB drive strikes the sweet spot between performance, capacity, though Samsung's drive is still pretty pricey.

Our favorite Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus config:

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the first drive in the lab to use the new Phison E18 controller, the follow-up to the immensely popular Phison E16 controller found in every first-gen PCIe 4.0 drive. Offering peak reads of 7,100MB/s and writes of 6,600MB/s, it's not only a major step up from the first generation of PCIe 4.0 drives but a notable improvement over the Samsung 980 Pro, especially in terms of write performance.

In testing, this performance was born out, too, with the faster write performance dominating Samsung's drive in the write tests. Real-world performance didn't always tell the same story, although the differences between these top three drives can be slight. Even so, you're looking at AS SSD hitting 5,868MB/s for reads and 5,630MB/s for writes. Impressive stuff.

An important factor here is that the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the cheapest of these second-generation drives. The performance is so close that it makes the Sabrent SSD the sensible choice if you don't need the absolute best performance around. This drive also runs cooler than the WD_Black SN850, which may be a factor if you're looking for a drive for a cramped case. 

Read our full Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus review.

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Our favorite Crucial P5 Plus config:

Crucial is one of the big names in affordable solid state storage, but has been notably slow at getting us a new PCIe 4.0 SSD. It's been worth the wait, however, as the new P5 Plus is a fantastic entry-level Gen4 SSD. It may not have the peak speeds of the WD or Sabrent competition, but it can make a big splash in terms of those all-important price/performance metrics.

And, also importantly, it can easily outperform any PCIe 3.0 drive you can to mention, and for practically the same price. Even if you're not running a motherboard with a PCIe 4.0 interface this will still work in an older PCIe 3.0 setup, and at the limits of that connection.

Since the first Gen4 SSDs launched there has been a quite significant price premium as a barrier to entry, and with the P5 Plus that has come down a hell of a lot. Using parent company, Micron's latest NAND flash memory, and it's own in-house controller, Crucial has been able to keep costs down and performance up. 

In the rarefied air of PCIe 4.0 speeds it's maybe a little lacklustre in peak and random performance, but it's rocking TLC memory, not QLC, is still pretty damned quick compared to older drives, and is fantastically affordable.

Read our full Crucial P5 Plus review.

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