SSD
SSD — the upgrade you feel more than any other
653 drives from WD, Adata, Micron, Silicon Power, Samsung, Kingston, GoodRam, Patriot, Solidigm, Kioxia and Lexar — with 455 carrying a five-year warranty.
- WD 100 · Adata 70 · Micron 59 · Silicon Power 58 · Samsung, Kingston, GoodRam, Patriot, Solidigm, Kioxia, Lexar
- 455 drives with a 60-month and 171 with a 36-month warranty
- M.2 NVMe and 2.5-inch SATA
- For desktops, laptops and consoles
M.2 NVMe or SATA?
M.2 NVMe — a thin board that plugs straight into the motherboard, with no cables at all. It is many times faster than a SATA connection and the obvious choice for a system drive in any current machine.
2.5-inch SATA — the classic size with two cables. Slower on paper, but still dramatically faster than a mechanical drive and the only option in older systems and laptops without an M.2 slot.
In practice: if your board or laptop has an M.2 slot, choose NVMe. If you are upgrading an older machine, a SATA SSD is the cheapest upgrade with the biggest noticeable difference you can make.
PCIe generation and cooling
NVMe drives come in successive PCIe generations, each doubling the theoretical bandwidth. A newer-generation drive works fine in an older slot, simply limited to that slot’s speed.
On the fastest generations temperature becomes a factor: without a heatsink the drive may throttle under sustained load. Many motherboards include an M.2 heatsink — if not, there are drives with one built in.
Capacity and endurance
For system and applications, 500GB is the practical minimum today. 1TB is the balance point for most people, while 2TB and above makes sense for game libraries, video editing and working archives.
Every drive states a write endurance — how much data it can write over its lifetime. For normal use these figures are so large you never approach them; they matter only under sustained heavy writing, such as servers or professional editing.
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Frequently asked questions about SSDs
- Will an M.2 drive fit my machine?
- You need an M.2 slot on the motherboard or in the laptop. Also check the supported length — 80 mm is the most common.
- Will a newer-generation drive work in an older board?
- Yes, it is backward compatible. It will run at the speed the slot supports rather than its own maximum.
- Does it need a heatsink?
- On the fastest generations, yes, to avoid throttling under sustained load. Many boards already have an M.2 heatsink, and some drives include one.
- Is an SSD worth it in an old computer?
- It is the upgrade with the biggest noticeable difference. Even a SATA SSD transforms a machine that used to take minutes to start.
- What warranty do they carry?
- 455 of the 653 drives carry a five-year warranty and another 171 carry three years. It is stated on each product.
If you have only one upgrade question, the answer is almost always an SSD. And for bulk storage, pair it with a mechanical drive.