The best PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for gaming is 34% off in the UK
The WD Black SN850 delivers speeds of up to 7000MB/s, and works in PC or PS5.
The WD Black SN850 is our pick for the best PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for gaming, and today it's been heavily discounted at Amazon UK. Right now you can pick up the 500GB size of this incredibly speedy drive for £86, or the larger 1TB size for £160. The former is a 34% reduction from the drive's RRP of £130, and one of the cheapest prices we've ever seen for this model.
This is a PC gaming site, but it's also worth noting that this particular model has also been attracting attention lately as one of the few SSDs fast enough to be used inside the PS5, making it doubly useful for owners of that next-gen console.
Whichever platform you install it in, you'll likely be impressed by its speed - it tops out at 7000MB/s for sequential reads, with sequential writes not that much slower at up to 4100MB/s (for the 500GB model; the 1TB size can reach 5300MB/s). Random read and write performance is also good, as Katharine discovered in her SN850 review, leading to some super speedy game load times. With Microsoft's DirectStorage API set to be included in Windows 11, having super-fast storage in play now is a great future-proofing step - and you'll still reap reasonable benefits in the meantime!
To use this drive at full speed, you'll need a motherboard and CPU that supports PCIe 4.0. Right now, the best bet is a recent AMD or Intel processor with a 500-series motherboard (e.g. B550, X570 or Z590), but some older Z490 boards also support the standard when used with an 11th-gen Intel processor. It's a bit complicated, but you can do an internet search for the name of your board plus "PCIe 4.0" to get a pretty good idea of whether it's supported or not - motherboard manufacturers love to crow about all kinds of features, so odds are that any compatibility will be proclaimed proudly!
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In any case, the SN850 is an awesome drive and now it's even a good value choice too. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and stay tuned for more deals coming up this week!