🛑STOP🛑 Making These SSD Mistakes! Best SSD for Gaming 2021

so you want to build a new gaming pc or upgrade an existing one but you're not sure what the best ssd for gaming in 2021 is what do you need in an ssd for gaming will spending more give you better gaming performance or just waste money that you could have spent on other components don't worry we're going to go through all this and give you specific product recommendations for every budget and it's coming right up [Music] hi welcome back to pc builder i'm jason now i'm super excited about this best ssd for gaming 2021 edition video the reason is simple every time we do a boost my build where i fix your part list the most common mistake is overspending on the gaming ssd while simultaneously undersizing the ssd given how much space modern games take up so in this video we're going to go over the basics of storage for your gaming pc build help you understand what the best gaming ssd is for you and make specific product recommendations for every budget for the best gaming ssd 2021. that's what we're all about here at pc builder getting you the best price to performance in your pc we just passed 50 000 subscribers so if you want to join us remember to subscribe and click that bell icon that way you get notified when we go live with new content with that let's jump into it when looking for the best storage for gaming you basically have three options today hard disk drives which are physical spinning discs that while the cheapest per terabyte of storage are dying out and should be avoided as boot drives for sure and generally avoided for gaming storage drives if possible now hard drives use an interface called sata 3 typically connected with a sata cable like this however while the sata 3 interface can run up to 600 megabytes per second the physical nature of hard drives typically limit them to no more than a fraction of that speed next we have solid state drives or ssds which come either using a sata connector like this or as an m.2 like this that plugs directly into the motherboard sata ssds use the same interface as hard drives but because they rely on flash memory rather than a physical spinning platter they can achieve speeds multiple times higher than that of a traditional hard drive with most drives nearing the saturation point for the full sata3 speed it's important to note that sata ssds come in two different form factors one is the traditional two and a half inch ssd that looks like this while the other is an m.2 form factor that plugs into an m.2 slot either on the motherboard itself or an add-in pcie card note that there's no speed difference between the two and a half inch set of ssds and an m.2 ssd so it typically doesn't make any sense to spend more on the m.2 form factor finally we've got an m.2 nvme ssd drives which plug into an m.2 slot on the motherboard or a pcie add-in card m.2 nvme drives currently come in two different speeds pcie 3.0 which can be up to five times as fast as the fastest sata ssd and pcie 4.0 ssds which can be up to 10 times faster than the fastest sata ssds a quick note on compatibility as pcie 3.0 drives will work in either a pcie 3.0 or 4.0 m.2 slot while pcie 4.0 drives will need a pcie 4.0 compatible m.2 motherboard and cpu combo in order to get the full pcie 4.0 speed currently amd ryzen 3000 and 5000 cpus using either a b550 or x570 chipset motherboard intel 11th gen cpus using a 500 series intel chipset motherboard or the upcoming intel 12th generation alder lake cpus using a 600 series intel chipset motherboard will support pcie 4.0 nvme drives at the full pcie 4.0 speed note that the new ryzen 5000 apus the ones that have a g at the end of their name like the ryzen 5700g and 5600g do not support pcie 4.0 also you may need to use a specific m.2 slot on the motherboard or make a change in the motherboard bios to enable the pcie 4.0 speed of course refer to your specific motherboard manual for more details and note that pcie 4.0 nvme ssds will work on a pcie 3.0 m.2 slot however they're only going to run at the slower speed now finally while many mid-range and high-end motherboards and pcie 3.0 drives come with metal heat sinks many of these drives do not really need one however i do recommend them for pcie 4.0 drives also pro tip on many cheaper drives the sticker itself serves as the heat spreader so i do not recommend removing it for aesthetic reasons and would instead recommend buying a nice looking third-party heatsink instead today two types of ssds are most common based on how much data they can store per unit of memory triple level cell or tlc drives can store three bits of data per cell while cheaper but somewhat slower quad level cell or qlc drives write four bits of data per cell now both of these drive types do slow down as the drives fill up with qlc drives slowing down more than tlc drives however as we'll discuss in the performance section there really shouldn't be any noticeable gaming impact now in terms of lifespan for primarily gaming applications both qlc and tlc drives should last long past their warranty periods and possibly up to 10 years or even longer under that use case scenario dram cash while cheaper ssds write directly to the memory itself more sophisticated ssds have something called a dram cache which allows the drive to do writes much faster as long as the size of the writes do not exceed the size of the dram cache still other ssds have something called a host memory buffer or hmb process which uses some of your system memory as a virtual dram cache now this won't impact gaming performance but if you end up writing a lot of data for other applications i'd recommend getting a drive with a dram cache or good hmb process though this is more important for sata drives than it is for the faster nvme drive so how much storage do you need well ssds come as small as 120 gigabytes or 240 gigabytes given that today's aaa games now regularly require up to 100 gigabytes or even more of storage space i strongly recommend a minimum of 500 gigabytes for your boot drive but you should also consider up to one terabyte of space especially if you're going to be copying over files from an older system drive drives up to two terabytes are very common in modern pc gaming builds and upgrades now one quick note on drive cloning if you're cloning a sata drive to an nvme or the other way around you might encounter some issues now while i would recommend a fresh windows install if upgrading to an nvme drive i'll link a guide on how to do a clone between a sata drive and nvme drives down in the description performance so with all that what's the best ssd for gaming in 2021 and beyond now currently the only performance differences between the different types of drives in gaming is loading times at current an m.2 nvme pcie 4.0 drive like the samsung 980 pro won't get you any more fps than a crusty old hard drive once the game is loaded now this has been tested multiple times by the number of outlets like tom's hardware hardware and box linus tech tips and more several which i'll link down below while this may change as we move into 8k gaming territory sometime in the next 5 to 10 years and even with the new consoles boasting pcie 4.0 ssd speeds what's clear is that currently the limiting factor of fps performance is not the storage but instead components like the graphics card cpu and system memory while future developments like nvidia's direct storage technology where the gpu loads game assets directly from the storage rather than having to go through the cpu to get them may change this calculation even sata ssds will likely be plenty to keep up and that technology is likely years away from becoming mainstream what testing has discovered is that there is a difference in game loading time between the various drive types sata ssds decreased the overall loading times from traditional hard drives by 50 or more and made a noticeable impact however going from even a sata ssd to an nvme pcie 4.0 ssd only netted a couple of seconds at best between loading times in blind testing done by linus tech tips the difference was so negligible that several of the participants mistakenly thought that the sata ssd pc felt faster than the pc with a pcie 4.0 nvme ssd now let's consider price to performance as prices stand right now cheaper m.2 nvme pcie 3.0 ssds are very close in price to sata ssds if your current system has an available m.2 slot if not you'll either need to buy a pcie add-in card for your m.2 drive or probably better simply stick with the sata ssd now at the time of this video a 500 gigabyte sata or nvme pcie 3.0 ssd can be purchased for about 50 dollars with a small discount when moving up to one terabyte for about ninety five dollars and two terabyte models coming in at a slight price disadvantage of two hundred to two hundred forty dollars now for those prices you can get a good drive with either an hmb process or a dram cache as well the bad news is that while pcie 4.0 nvme ssd prices have come down considerably since they launched at the time of this video they are going for about 70 percent more than their pcie 3.0 counterparts and remember that seventy percent more cost for zero percent more gaming performance so unless you have a very specific non-gaming need for a pcie 4.0 drive and i'll list some good ones if that is the case i strongly recommend either saving that money or using it to upgrade a component that actually matters for performance like buying faster speed memory a better gpu or more capable cpu now let's jump into some specific product recommendations now all these products are going to be linked down in the video description below i'll check them regularly and if something goes out of stock i'm going to replace it with a similar product now those links are affiliate links and the channel earns a small commission at no cost to you if you use them when making a purchase and as always we appreciate your support which makes producing this content possible before we jump directly into sata ssds i do want to let you know if you absolutely have to have an m.2 drive maybe you just have one laying around you can get a pcie adapter card for an older motherboard that doesn't have an m.2 slot as long as it has pcie 3.0 you should be fine with something like this you plug it in you plug the uh m.2 nvme drive in you put the heat spreader on it you should be good to go let's of course jump now to sata options so sata options are really again just for those who are either building an ultra cheap system although nvme drives are price competitive sometimes even cheaper than sata drives so check that out or you have an older motherboard you're not going to upgrade the motherboard you don't want to get the add-in card you just want something to upgrade from a hard drive or maybe a smaller ssd the first drive i'm going to recommend is the team group t-force vulcan g this is a it comes in various sizes all the way up to two terabytes tends to be one of the cheaper drives and it's got a dram cache that's the key thing here now if you don't care about dram cash just go out and buy the cheapest ssd you can find it doesn't matter but i'm showing you drives that i would pick for myself if i had to have a sata drive and i would pick a dram cache it's just going to make it a little snappier around big reads and excuse me big write so this amazon 50 box the other one i would take a look at is the crucial mx500 if you've been around pcs long enough you've seen these drives recommended they're all around good drives again sata drives are actually coming to a point where m.2 and vmes are cheaper than them and in order to get a sata drive you actually have to spend a little bit more money something to think about but again if you've got an older motherboard this is the kind of drive that you'll be looking for and finally if you've got another older motherboard and you want to add a little bit of bling to your system let me introduce you to the team group t-force delta max argb drive yes it's a little expensive for what it is it's 78 dollars not terrible but certainly it's not a budget option but you can either get it in a 500 gig or one terabyte version of it and it has rgb in fact it's got a rgb which is just a really cool feature if you're looking to kind of bling out an older system now let's jump into nvme pcie gen 3 drives these are all drives that i would recommend um i love them all i know that they're good performers i knew the good price to performance and above all else i know because at least half of my audience is outside the united states some of these are going to be available in a variety of markets including europe canada asia india and more so let's just jump into them frankly i think you'd be good with any of these the one that i particularly like is the team group t-force cardea zero z330 now comes in anything from 500 gigabytes all the way up to two terabytes it's pretty it's a cheap drive i think it looks fantastic i love that it actually comes with a a metal uh graph they call it graphene heatsink on it over the nand it comes 92 dollars for one terabyte about 50 something dollars for uh 500 gigs and about 200 for a 2 terabyte drive obviously pricing is going to vary from time to time this is one that i would strongly recommend really good performer another one is the silicon power a60 comes 512 or one terabyte two terabyte versions of it the one the 512 gigabyte version is only 55 another strong performer now this does not have dram it has a host memory buffer process but in testing by tom's hardware they found that it performed in line with all the same drives it had a dram cache in its price class so i'd strongly recommend it we've of course got the western digital sn550 this is just a really strong performer again this has much wider availability in various markets so it comes all the way up to a two terabyte version of it again recommend recommending 500 gigabytes one terabyte or two terabyte versions personally i wouldn't drop below that very good price to performance drive then of course we've got the kingston a2000 this is a drive that i know particularly in europe and i believe in india is priced much more competitively than it is in the united states i think it's one of the cheaper options in those markets unless something has changed comes all the way up to one terabyte here on amazon i am fairly certain it also comes in a two terabyte model but this is a great one if you're outside of the us often cheaper so than some of the ones i just showed you but what if you're a gamer that really wants to bling up their rig right let me give you two argb versions here both of them by xpg not a lot of people make rgb uh nvme drives i wish more did gigabytes got one it's just way too expensive and some of the other ones are just way too expensive for what they are the spectrix s40 and then the other one i'm going to show you is this matrix s20g these are both relatively affordable amazing little drives i believe they're both argb they've just got a lot of phenomenal i mean look if you want to bling up your rig and you want rgb these are basically your options unless you want to spend a stupid amount of money on a couple of other drives that are out there xpg just does a really good job making sure that they meet the market that just has to have the rainbow vomit going for them all right for those of you who are gamers but at the same time need a little bit more punching power on your ssds let me give you i'm going to give you two gen 3 prosumer level drives and we'll give you two gen 4 drives to get you started so my personal preference for a gen 3 drive is the adata xpg sx8200 pro comes all the way up to 2 terabytes i've got a version of it sitting in our video editing rig here sitting next to me i think it's a phenomenal drive yes i know they redesigned the drive without telling consumers kind of a dumb move on their part i don't encourage that however the performance only took a very small hit and the price went way down so overall benefit to consumer that was good this is a drive i would strongly recommend 110 right now at amazon i think i got mine for 99 often goes on sale the other one is the western digital black now this drive will go all the way up to four terabytes by the way you're going to pay a pretty penny for four terabytes the price to performance gets kind of wide at that uh at that at that size but overall phenomenal performer one terabyte for 120 dollars what's the problem once we get 120 over 120 is we start bumping into the budget oriented pcie gen 4 drives so yes while there are a number of other gen 3 drives the samsung 970 evo and others they tend to be more expensive than just jumping up to some budget pcie gen 4 drives the first of which is the team group t-force cardia zero z440 different than the 330 i just showed you this is a one terabyte for 135 dollars that is incredibly affordable also comes in a two terabyte version and it comes in a four terabyte version that has a full on stupidly big heat sink does look pretty cool though i will say of course that's for about six 600 not that bad and actually more affordable affordable than the western digital pcie gen 3 drive that we just looked at of course if you want a phenomenal performer and you're not afraid to spend the money let me introduce you to the samsung 980 pro one terabyte will set you back about 190 dollars that's down from its original introductory price of about 230 so it's pretty good and two terabytes of course will set you back a whopping 370 dollars so again this is you're not going to get any additional gaming performance with these drives this is if you need it for other professional workloads what are some other drives that i might recommend so here are some to check out so that's the best ssd for gaming 2021 edition i hope you got a lot of value out of this video if you did remember give it a like it really makes a difference to the channel and of course if you're new here subscribe join us click the bell icon that way you get notified when we go live and with that i'll catch you on the next one gotta be careful what are you doing silly butt

Channel: PC Builder

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Id: Yc85SpwmNyk

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021