WD's super-fast SN850 PCIe 4.0 SSD hits a historic low on Amazon UK
And it's the heatsink-equipped model, ideal for PC and PS5.
The WD Black SN850 is one of the best-reviewed NVMe SSDs on the market, one of those 'second-gen' PCIe 4.0 drives that can hit blistering read speeds of up to 7000MB/s. Today, the heatsink-equipped model is down to a historic low price of £140 for a 1TB model, or £255 for a 2TB model. Either way, you're getting a top-spec drive at a very competitive price.
The SN850 is a drive that we've tested and recommended here at RPS, with RPS head honcho Katharine dubbing it 'the best PCIe 4.0 SSD we've tested yet' after it debuted early last year. I've double-checked the 'best SSD for gaming' archives, and it turns out that there haven't been any better PCIe 4.0 SSDs since then either. Go figure. The SN850 wins plaudits for its game load times, which are routinely among the best we've recorded, but also for its longevity with a five year warranty.
What makes this deal particularly good is that we normally see discounts on the heatsink-less model, but this is the version with a heatsink. The two flavours are pretty similar in performance - most reviews I've seen only notice a difference after a sustained load - but this is definitely the premium version and the one you want to get. This is particularly handy if you're putting this drive into a PC motherboard that doesn't have its own NVMe SSD heatspreaders, or into a PS5 where a heatsink is recommended. As DirectStorage becomes ever more of a thing and NVMe SSDs start to become fully utilised for PC gaming, that difference could become rather more important!
Hopefully that's enough prose to convince you that the SN850 is a genuinely good drive - it was certainly enough for me to order one myself the last time this model was discounted. However, I'd like to conclude this by saying that there's a lesson here - and maybe not one you expect. Specifically, these discounted prices are nearly 50% off RRP, which sounds incredible and you'd probably wonder why we didn't lead with that. However, those figures also flatter to deceive - this is the lowest price we've seen, but it's only £10 cheaper than the previous best on the 1TB model and £20 cheaper than the previous best on the 2TB model. So the lesson here: use a browser extension like CamelCamelCamel or Keepa to see price histories and really get the context of what you're buying.
With that, we'll leave you until another deal is spotted by our international teams of hunter-killer deals robots. Thanks for joining me, and we'll see you next time!