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Recommended reading I've finally found a budget Gen 5 SSD I can recommend, a cool, calm, and collected drive available for a very reasonable sum At long last, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are finally worth buying Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review You might not have heard of Biwin but it's made the best value PCIe 4.0 SSD we've tested in some time Biwin Black Opal NV7400 SSD review SK Hynix Platinum P51 NVMe SSD review PCIe 5.0 SSDs can still be pricey—but I've found one with a $40 discount that may justify the upgrade for my rig Jess Kinghorn 15 August 2025 After years of degrading my attention span, I simply must have the fastest boot drive. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Crucial) Crucial T710 1 TB NVMe SSD | 14,900 MB/s read speed | 13,800 MB/s write speed | PCIe 5.0 | $194.07 $154.99 at Amazon (save $39.08) Though maybe still a bit too pricey to justify purchasing as the drive your Steam library calls home, that read speed might just make the discounted 1 TB version the perfect pad for your OS. I became a hardware writer because I love getting to grips with the latest, shiniest tech—covering all of the big business, inside baseball slap fighting is just a bonus. But the latest big tech palava aside, I've been pining after a PCIe 5.0 SSD since they first became available. As with any hot hardware, pricing is often what stands between me and the bleeding-edge rig of my dreams. The Crucial T710 is just such a PCIe 5.0 drive that's caught my eye. For a start, it's so new that our review of it is still in the works. So, that's a big tick in the 'shiny' box from me. For another, this otherwise pricey PCIe 5.0 drive with an MSRP of nearly $200 for 1 TB is currently enjoying a deep discount down to $155 at Amazon. Alright, I'll level with you—while that does make this offering from Crucial currently cheaper than the 1 TB version of the also PCIe 5.0 WD Black SN8100, that's still a lot of cash for the capacity. It really only makes sense if you, say, pick this up as your primary boot drive with a few games loaded up too, and then also have a budget that would allow for you to pick up a secondary, slower 4.0 SSD to run the rest of your Steam library. Perhaps that's asking a lot—though I feel like I would at least hear out the Crucial T710 if it were to make such demands of me. I've a few reasons for this, but let's start with the most obvious. Crucial is a sub-brand of Micron, so this drive's Micron 276-layer 3D TLC flash memory may enjoy something of a homefield advantage. Alongside this Micron flash memory, the Crucial T710 also uses the Silicon Motion SM2508 memory controller—that's the same one-two punch as the recently reviewed Acer Predator GM9000 and the Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro. However, the Crucial T710 enjoys a not-so-secret weapon that makes it a touch nippier. It's not every day I see an NVMe drive with 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, but it helps with sustained write speeds. That means the Crucial T710 will be able to hit its sequential limit of 13,800 MB/s for longer than Gen5 SSDs without a DRAM cache. Read speeds do not disappoint either, reaching up to 14,900 MB/s, hence why I initially pitched this as a boot drive primarily. Otherwise, you wouldn't be off-base for thinking the best PCIe 5.0 SSD prices have a way to drop before you can really justify the upgrade. Still, a $155 price tag is compelling evidence for a downward trend, meaning they might be worth buying if you're on a budget sooner than you think. Best SSD for gaming 2025All our current recommendations 👉Check out our full guide👈 1. Best overall: WD_Black SN7100 2. Best budget: Biwin Black Opal NV7400 3. Best PCIe 5.0: WD_Black SN8100 4. Best budget PCIe 5.0: Crucial P510 5. Best 4 TB: TeamGroup MP44 6. Best 8 TB: WD_Black SN850X 7. Best M.2 2230: Lexar Play 2230 8. Best for PS5: Silicon Power XS70 9. Best SATA: Crucial MX500 The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Jess Kinghorn Social Links Navigation Hardware Writer Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. I've finally found a budget Gen 5 SSD I can recommend, a cool, calm, and collected drive available for a very reasonable sum At long last, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are finally worth buying Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review You might not have heard of Biwin but it's made the best value PCIe 4.0 SSD we've tested in some time Biwin Black Opal NV7400 SSD review Latest in SSDs You might not have heard of Biwin but it's made the best value PCIe 4.0 SSD we've tested in some time Oh cool, we've got screens on SSD coolers now. For reals. I wonder what they'll slap one on next Acer Predator GM9000 2 TB NVMe SSD review Biwin Black Opal NV7400 SSD review Almost a full year after announcing it, Micron finally launches the world's first PCIe 6.0 SSD with up to 28 GB/s sequential read speeds The latest SSDs from Micron are focussed on improving AI Data Centre performance Latest in News I think I've found the actual best gun in the Battlefield 6 beta, and it's not the M87A1 Talks are reportedly underway for the US Gov. to take a stake in Intel, and its share price has already jumped 7% in response AMD made major gains on Intel in the desktop CPU market over the last year, but still lags significantly behind in mobile, according to a Mercury Research report Subscription services like Xbox Game Pass turn developers into 'wage slaves', says former PlayStation boss New report suggests that there are 3 million fewer PC gamers in Japan than 10 years ago, despite the market having at least tripled in size Steam store pages just got thicker than Emma Frost's thighs HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1 review Autonomous SmartDesk 5 review Mafia: The Old Country review—A failed experiment and a bitter disappointment Arctic Xtender PC case review Corsair Platform:4 gaming desk review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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