Get Intel's legendary Optane 905P 1.5TB SSD at a discount in the US
Not the fastest drive, but perhaps the most fascinating PCIe 3.0 option.
Intel's Optane drives are legendary in PC tech circles, offering random performance and low latency that remains unmatched amongst PCIe 3.0 drives. This Intel Optane 905P drive is the biggest they ever made at 1.5TB, and now it's reduced to $380 when you use code SYADP2Z384 at Newegg.
For systems that accept PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 drives, I'd recommend sticking with our usual gaming SSD recommendations, but for PCIe 3.0 systems this is a fascinating option that emphasises random performance against sequential speeds. I recorded some of the very fastest game load times with this drive when I tested it against other PCIe 3.0 options, and its random write speeds are competitive even with later generation PCIe 4.0 alternatives.
So what are those speeds? In terms of sequential reads/writes, we're looking at a modest 2600MB/s and 2200MB/s respectively, which put this drive behind many of its PCIe 3.0 competitors. In terms of random speeds though, we're looking at 575K IOPS and 550K IOPS for reads and writes respectively, much more competitive, and combined with some of the best latency figures ever recorded. That has a strong effect on real-world performance, and makes this drive worth considering even when it costs more than other PCIe 3.0 options for low-latency applications like programming.