The best SSD hard drives for PlayStation 5: 64 models compared

Top Pick for

Speed

Lexar NM800 PRO

Top Pick for

Price

Samsung 980 Pro

Top Pick for

Overall value

PNY CS3140

Top Pick for

Heatsink included

Lexar NM800 PRO

After a long, arduous wait, the internal storage expansion bay for the PS5 was unlocked in September 2021. For gamers who, like me, had been deleting and moving games about on the internal SSD, it was music to our ears. But it's not just about more games. You could even upgrade your PS5 to a faster read speed, bringing with it more spritely gaming performance.

Upgrading your storage space is different with the PS5 compared to the PS4. With the older console, you could just plug in an external SSD to store extra content. However, the PS5 was designed to be heavily reliant on the latest generation of SSDs to function as advertised. More specifically, NVMe m.2 Gen 4 PCI-e SSD cards. And there's a number of PS5 SSD deals about.

External hard drives are too slow and indeed Sony won't even let you try and play a stored PS5 game from one such is the impact on the title's performance. As such, it's an M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4 SSD or bust. In this article I will take you through the contenders currently available on the market in Australia and nail down the best SSD deal for your PS5.

Best PS5 SSD drives

Below you will find a list of all the compatible PS5 NVMe SSD drives in Australia. There are others you may come across online, such as the Inland Performance, the Kingspec XG series, Netac nv7000, Nextorage and Oscoo, but they are not readily available locally. Below the table you can read my methodology. Looking at the Cost per GB and Value Index columns is a good place to start in hunting down the best PS5 SSD deal.

Methodology

There are 2 key parts to the table above in determining "best value". The most obvious is the cost per gigabyte. This compares how much space you are getting for your money; a figure that will float based on deals as they come and go. This does give you some guidance, but it doesn't account for the read and write speed potential of a card. Nor the reliability of the brand.

Reliability is a hard metric to compare, but we can account for read and write speed.

The Value Index column looks at the cost per gigabyte, but also looks at how much faster the drive is than the minimum 5,500MB/s required by Sony for the PlayStation 5. It then examines the gap between a drive's read speed and write speed – how much does it drop – and takes that into account. Our algorithm computes these metrics to produce an ultimate value. This can help provide further guidance for you.

Can you install a heatsink on a PS5 SSD?

While some of the above SSDs don't come with a heatsink as standard, that shouldn't necessarily scare you off. They don't cost too much more to buy, and they its easy to add a heatsink to a m.2 SSD. One of the best options if you already have, or want, a Gen 4 NVMe m.2 SSD card, is to get a heatsink cover. This is custom fit for the PS5, and does the job in cooling your PS5 in the easiest possible fashion. The PNY XLR8 SSD cover is a great option in this regard. You can pick it up for less than $40.

What SSD works with ps5: compatible specifications

There are plenty of NVMe m.2 Gen 4 PCIe x4 SSDs on the market, but not all of them are compatible with the PlayStation 5. The expansion bay slot has physical limitations, while the hardware itself has certain read and cooling demands that must be met. All the SSD cards in this article meet the requirements, but should you want to check an alternative option you've come across, this is what you must look out for:

• M.2 SSD between the lengths of 30 and 110mm.
• No wider than 22mm.
• Generation 4 PCIe M.2 x4 NVMe 1.4 SSD card.
• Read speed greater than 5500MB/s.
• Capacity between 50GB and 4TB.
• Must have a heatsink.*
• The heatsink cannot extend more than 8mm above the card, or more than 2.45mm below the card.

* Note that you can attach a heatsink to an NVMe SSD card yourself if there isn't one already built on the unit you have, or it's too large. They're relatively inexpensive and the process is easy to do.

When will pcie 5.0 SSDs come out for PS5?

One thing to keep in mind when shopping for a PS5 SSD, is that a new generation is on the way. The PCIe Gen 5 NVMe m.2 SSDs have been announced and are in the pipeline for release in late 2023, or perhaps not until 2024. So far we've seen a few names come out with planned models, which you can see below. Speeds up to 14000 MB/s have been suggested, which would be a huge increase on the Gen 4 cards.

But will PCIe 5.0 cards work with the PS5? Sony hasn't indicated yet whether it will be able to update the firmware to make the most of these improved speeds and cards. But there's more to it than that. They are expected to run a lot hotter than the Gen 4 cards, and may need a bigger heatsink as a result. Will they even fit in the expansion bay? Only time will tell, but at this stage, it's not worth waiting out for one.

List of Gen 5 PCIe SSDs

• Samsung (PM1743).
• AT&T.
• Adata Project Nighthawk PCIe 5.0.
• Adata Project Blackbird PCIe 5.0.
• Apacer AS2280F5.
• Corsair MP700.
• Zadak TWSG5.
• Gigabyte AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD.

Tips on how to buy a PS5 SSD in 2023

There are a few things to consider when searching through the drives in the below list. There are often other versions of a card with very similar names, or even the same basic name, that are different generations. As a result, they have slower speeds or may be missing a heatsink. It's important to keep an eye on this – especially if you see a price that seems a lot lower than expected. The full specs you need to look out for are below the table.

I've linked out to the correct cards in the table, so that's a good place to start your comparison.

Also know that stock availability can come and go. I've saw this drive up prices beyond the RRP at times during COVID, but thankfully those days seem to be over. Also, it means you need to make sure that the price you're looking at isn't in an alternative currency. Or that it's not being shipped from an international location. This could incur more import and shipping costs, and a delay.

How to find a PS5 SSD deal

I've put together a table below that lists every PS5 compatible SSD in Australia as of the start of 2023. I've linked through to the best deals I could find on those drives. Be advised, however, that PS5 SSD deals come and go. And that we have seen a significant price drop through 2022 in the cost of almost all the PS5 SSDs that were available at launch

How to install a PS5 SSD hard drive

Once you've found the best PS5 SSD deal, you need to install it. Although it may sound technical at first, installing the PS5 SSD expansion drive is straightforward. I've previously detailed a step-by-step guide on how to install a PS5 SSD, which you can look through. However, I think you'll get everything you need to know from the below video.