Prime Day SSD Deals Rock As Steam Survey Shows Gamers Need More Storage

Fellow gamers and content creators, it probably comes as no big surprise that the latest Steam hardware survey shows that pretty much everyone is running low on available storage space. The ballooning size of games has been the source of much discussion for many years now, as some releases can go well over 200 GB, sometimes closer to 300 GB -- and that's before you even start thinking about high-res texture packs, DLC or mods. Having to play storage-Tetris when a new game comes out is never fun.

Thankfully, large capacity SSDs could be described as dirt cheap these days, and the offers are only getting better with Amazon's Prime Day. Here are our top choices for slick, super-speedy storage. The pricing sweet spot is 2 TB PCIe 4 drives these days, so that's what we're starting with our deals list here...

Our clear winner in this category is the Western Digital Black SN7100 2TB (née WD_Black). This PCIe 4.0 drive has extremely speedy, and most importantly, consistent performance across its entire capacity range. It can hit around 7,000 MB/s on reads, and most importantly, maintains its performance heavy loads. It can be yours for a mere $119.98 (25% off), a silly price for one of the top drives in its category.

If the above deal runs out, our runner-ups are the Acer Predator GM7000 2 TB that's currently going for $112.99 (20% off), or if even that is not available to you, the Lexar NM790 2 TB at $122.99, or 25% off the regular price.

If your motherboard has PCIe 5.0 connectivity, you can take advantage of that and slot in a corresponding drive for sky-high storage performance, These drives can hit sequential speeds as high as 14,000 MB/s (yes, really) and even the consumer drives wouldn't be out of their depth in server workloads.


Our choice for this sub-category is the mighty Samsung 9100 Pro 2 TB. It can deliver sequential read/write speeds of 14,800/13,400 MB/s, and raw IOPS are 2,200K and 2,600K, respectively. It's one heck of a speedy drive, and you can nab one for just $189.99 (37% off), an absolute steal for this class of gear. If that deal doesn't pan out for you, you can instead go for the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 2 TB at $219.99, or 33% off.

If you can afford the outlay, though, we would actually recommend you bite on a 4 TB drive instead, for a few reasons. First and foremost, motherboards have few M.2 slots, so filling only one with as much capacity is ideal. Second, it's a literal timesaver to not have to manage data across various drives. Lastly, 4 TB drives tend to be a bit faster than their 2 TB counterparts. As for pricing, fret not; whereas a 4 TB drive used to command a hefty premium over two 2 TB drives, that's really not the case anymore, as the price per TB is almost exactly the same across the board.


Look who's back! Western Digital and Amazon are being quite aggressive with the storage maker's sales. Once again, our pick for the 4 TB PCIe 4.0 class is the Western Digital Black SN7100 4 TB drive that's going for a mere $229.49, or 15% off the standard price. It's actually cheaper than per terabyte than its 2 TB brother, too. If you're not a fan of the brand or that deal runs out, you can instead grab the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4 TB drive for $234.98, or 28% off the standard price. As a final resort, we can recommend the Western Digital Blue SN5000 4TB at $209.98, or 30% off.

If you want big and fast, that's fine by us, too. Take a good look at the Samsung 9100 Pro 4 TB, the most capacious and speediest drive of today's deals, at a surprisingly low $384.99 (30% off).


Last by no means least, if your use case is an affordable drive for an older machine, or perhaps a laptop in need of an upgrade, we'd like to point you towards the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1 TB. While it could be said that it's too much for just an upgrade, it also happens that right now it's only going for a mere $66.49, or a whopping 37% off its regular pricing.