WD_BLACK 1TB SN850 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 7,000 MB/s - WDS100T1X0E

Been a couple years since I bought and installed, and works exactly as expected. No complaints, no hassle, no problems. Fits fine, was seen immediately, installed without complication. Not much else to say! Aesthetically looks nice too.

You should and will need a compatible heatsink for this drive, regardless of what youtubers or others say. If you wish to extend the life of this device it is paramount to get one. I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KDDKDNN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 for $17.99 and it is an EXCELLENT fit and I mean PERFECT. Super easy to apply and install and takes less than 5 mins. Even comes with a screwdriver that can be used to also unscrew the ssd compartment on the console, one tool for the job!As far as this drive goes, once installed it registered at 6532.91 MB/s which is significantly faster than the internal SSD. I transferred 5 games totaling about 200gb in under 5 mins to this ssd from the internal storage. Afterwards, I proceeded to download some games from the PS Plus collection and several others from previous free PSN games. That obviously took some time but after finishing I now have about 13 games at 900GB and still have 1.3 TB of space available. Unlike with traditional or hybrid HDDs you get the FULL ADVERTISED SPACE. Not 1.97 TB or 1.8 TB, 2 TB which can be used immediately upon rebooting your console.Booting up Farcry 6 with the disk from the home screen to the saved game position took about 25 secs give or take a couple for me to move the cursor to Continue Game. I have had no game crashes as of yet and no issues with pop in or textures or assets missing other than what the game shipped with. No slow downs and load times from death screen are about the same as internal storage which is approx 6 secs. Don't expect to load large open world games like that any faster than internal storage unless made by first party studios. Primarily, this drive is to allow you more space for your current collection. I have 37 games, 9 of which are PS5 games and in theory I could install my entire library between the internal and M.2 storage.Tips: Make sure you either take a picture of your drive before you install the heatsink or write down the serial number as it is not on the box so you can register it at Wester Digital for your warranty. I did not do it and would have to remove the card, remove the heatsink and get the product serial number then reassemble and reinstall (dammit bobby!). Warranty is 5 years which is better than spinning drives which tends to be about 3.The Samsung 980 is the comparable drive releasing end of this month for $449.99 and the only main difference is the price and convenience of plug and play, no additional heatsink purchase necessary. However, if you want to save $110.99 buy this drive and the heatsink I linked and you save bigtime, using the extra money for your next game!Should you later decide to get a larger 3 or 4 TB SSD you can take this one and add it to your PC. Or if we get a PS5 with a 2TB SSD built in then add this drive to that console and double your storage capacity which would be more than enough until the next console cycle. I really hope this review helps others specifically buying for their consoles. I cannot speak to the performance on PC at this time. Game on Comrades!

Now from my perspective I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty about write and read speeds and maximizing them because I installed the storage for real world usage, not its maximum benchmarks.I did get the slightly hampered 2GB model, because it’s worth noting at the one gigabyte model seems to put out better numbers, however either way you go you will get a very performance storage drive that is rather easy to install, depending on your motherboard.My motherboard had a built in heat sink for the NVMe slots left on the board, so I did not need to buy one separately for this stick, nor buy the one with the heat sink on it. But I emphasize that you will need the Heat dissipation. Using the drive you can certainly tell that it is getting rather hot while in use.So I do primarily gaming and loading up virtual instruments for music production on this particular drive and I have seen no particular issues or hiccups that I would expect. Adding and mounting the drive was very easy, and my particular OS, which I am using windows 11 preview, picked up the drive just fine. Write speeds are incredibly fast, maximizing any both times, transfers, and gigabit downloads. All incredibly fast.The price is a bit steep but you know what you’re getting into when you’re paying for this at this particular time. It is cutting edge speeds so there’s an expected premium on that. In terms of comparing it to GEN3, I don’t think you’re going to see or notice the difference enough during regular use or even gaming for that matter if you were to make the upgrade. Probably a few seconds here and there. However I went from a standard SATA SSD do this thing. It is a substantial difference.So this product is best for people who are just entering into the M2 space. There are a few competitively priced alternatives to this drive such as Sabrent Rocket Plus, however the warranty that comes with this drive is a notable difference.

I'll admit to some trepidation when ordering this, because extended storage in the PS4 and Xbox One generation (and also switching your main HDD) was a mixed bag. I remember many nights wondering why various operations were taking so long.I had nothing to worry about. Installation was easy, which I expected, but holy cow, I didn't expect to move Final Fantasy Remake (PS5, 90GB) from the main drive to this in less than 10 seconds. I didn't know how much of a performance difference I should expect between the two drives, so the night I got the system I was experimenting a lot with launching the same game from both. Not much difference. Honestly, this integrates so well into the PS5 that it's easy to forget it's not standard-issue.I wish I could speak more to the technical aspects, but I gotta Todd Howard this one. It just works. If you get this (I have the 2TB version), you'll have plenty of room for everything that has a permanent place on your system, recent purchases and the PS+ games you're looking to try out, and still have space remaining.