Finding the best SSD for the PS5 might seem like a daunting task due to the wide range of choices, but the reality is there are plenty of SSDs for the PS5 that will provide a simple and hassle-free capacity upgrade for your game library. To narrow down the options, we put a wide range of the speediest drives through a battery of tests to find the best SSDs for the PS5, as measured by both performance and pricing. Given that nearly any new drive you buy for the PC can also be used in the PS5, you can also find many of these same picks on our list of Best SSDs for desktop PCs.
There’s never been a better time for buying an SSD than now, as a recent industry oversupply has landed numerous excellent deals on SSDs. We’ve seen the lowest SSD pricing in history right now, making it easier to pull the trigger. For instance, the spacious 4TB Teamgroup MP34 starts at $199(opens in new tab), and the Crucial P3 for a mere $199(opens in new tab), a savings of $40 over the already-reduced pricing.
The PS5’s internal SSD is a restrictive 825GB, with formatting, updates, and bloatware typically leaving you with about 670GB free for games. That’s bad news, because today’s games are becoming larger with each new release, and you’ll also need to store all the screenshots and video clips you gather while you play. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War all by itself uses more than 200GB! The good news: Sony has an M.2 expansion slot where you can put a second PS5 SSD with up to 4TB of capacity. That amount of capacious storage should satiate even the most demanding of gamers, but there are also more affordable options, like 1TB and 2TB models.
Luckily, finding a spacious PS5 SSD to complement your console’s internal drive isn’t too difficult — any PCIe 4.0 SSD that provides a minimum of 5,500 MBps of throughput over the NVMe interface makes the cut for use as a PS5 SSD, provided it comes with a heatsink that doesn’t take the overall height above 11.25mm. You can even add your own heatsink to SSDs that aren’t marketed specifically for the PS5. You can also use one of the best external drives with the PS5 to store games, but these are only for game storage — you’ll need an internal expansion drive to actually play the games.
Ultimately, the best drive for your PS is one that provides enough capacity to hold your games and data at a price you can afford. To help you choose, we’ve tested a number of the top SSDs in our labs — see the results further down the page — and pulled out the top performers for a list of the Best PS5 SSDs.