Get a 500GB NVMe SSD and Battlefield 2042 for £44.64 after a big discount at Amazon
The WD Black SN750 SE, capable of 3600MB/s reads, is going cheap.
Right now on Amazon UK, you can pick up a high performance WD Black SN750 SE 500GB SSD for £44.64 - and get a free game in the shape of Battlefield 2042 for your troubles. That's a great price for a PCIe 4.0 drive that also works well in PCIe 3.0 systems, with a maximum read speed of 3600MB/s and maximum write speed of 2900MB/s. The drive normally costs £58, making this a nice 22% discount from RRP.
For the sake of comparison, the cheapest other PCIe 4.0 drive I can spot on Amazon is the Crucial P5 Plus, which retails for £63 right now - considerably more expensive. That drive is a bit faster, and can support the PS5 in addition to the PC, but will offer a very similar experience when it comes to PC game load times. DirectStorage might offer more of an advantage to picking up a faster drive, but the rapid-loading technology will support both the SN750 SE and the SN850 when it finally appears in a game at some point in the future.
The SN750 SE outperforms most budget NVMe SSDs that we'd expect to see in this category, like the WD SN550 and Crucial P2, by about 50% - 3600MB/s versus 2400MB/s. The P2 was also released as a TLC drive, with the performance and longevity benefits that offers, but Crucial did announce that the P2 could use QLC in the future. So that's another small point in favour of the SN750 SE.
It's worth discussing Battlefield 2042 too. The game didn't have the greatest launch, with players a bit confused about how the title was released without features that the series was known for, but steady updates have left it in a better place. In fact, update 4.0 arrived just hours ago, adding voice chat within squads and parties, alongside a raft of balance tweaks and technical fixes. That might make it a good time to check it out if you didn't pick it up on launch, and getting the game for free with your SSD purchase means you won't mind if it doesn't click for you.
The eagle-eyed among you might spot a curiosity: how come this PCIe 4.0 drive operates at speeds close to the boundary of a PCIe 3.0 drive? Or in other words, what's the point of having a PCIe 4.0 drive if it doesn't outperform a PCIe 3.0 one? The answer is to do with efficiency - using the more modern PCIe 4.0 connector allows the drive to use fewer lanes to achieve the same levels of speed, cutting power usage in the process. That's not a massive deal on a desktop, though you'd presume that there'd be some thermal benefit that could help sustained performance... but on a laptop where NVMe drives can make up a more significant chunk of total system power draw, using a PCIe 4.0 SSD if your laptop supports it could boost your battery life a little bit.
In summary, this is a good 500GB drive for the money, with loads more performance than you'd expect from a cheap-o PCIe 3.0 drive like the Crucial P2 or WD SN550, so it's well worth picking up at this discounted price - especially as you get a free game that's actually worth playing in the process. Let me know what you think in the comments, and stay tuned for the next deal!