SSDs have never been cheaper. Which one to choose? Do HDDs still make sense?

HDDs are thus becoming more and more pointless for home use. Even SATA SSD disks no longer have a price advantage over NVMe SSD disks, which can be bought for a few pennies more. NVMe SSDs used to be the domain of high-end PCs, but today the only real limitation is how many NVMe slots you have available on your motherboard, and whether you're willing to buy an expansion card to add more NVMe slots.

If you've downloaded any new AAA games lately, you may have been as stunned as we were by the drive requirements.

• Microsoft Flight Simulator requires more than 120 GB of space
• Red Dead Redemption also 120GB
• Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War 175GB

If you were to load just these three games, the 500GB SSD drive would already be fully occupied. You may be thinking at this moment, why not simply install the game on an HDD disk, where you can get a 2 TB disk for just over €50. Today's games need SSD speeds more than ever to load textures and instances faster.

If you played the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1, and if you downloaded it to your HDD, you started pulling your hair out after just a few seconds of playing. The game could pause right in the middle of a cinematic scene and display a notification that textures are being loaded. Extremely annoying. If you loaded it on an SSD, it was much more relaxing to play (aside from being chased by zombies at every turn).

Below we have collected some good SSD candidates, which offer solid capacities and write/read speeds for little money. The links will take you to the Amazon website, and with each disc you must add shipping to the price.

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber and live close to the Italian or Austrian border, you can avoid postage by sending packages to the nearest post office or Amazon packet machine.

SSD disks up to 500 GB

Although we have written up to 500 GB, in this category we will focus entirely on drives with 500 GB capacities. Smaller capacities simply do not make sense to us from the point of view of the relationship between price and capacities/capacity, if we take into account that the difference between 256 GB and 500 GB can be only a few euros.

Kingston NV2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD 500GB M.2 2280 - SNV2S/500G

• The price: 27,9 €
• Capacity: 500 GB
• Read/write speeds: 3,500/2,800 MB/s

Kingston NV2 is certainly not among the best SSD drives. Although it is a drive based on the fourth generation of PCIe 4.0, its write/read speeds are below average or more at the level of the third generation.

However, for this money, it can be a good secondary drive, and due to its compactness, you can also insert it into a laptop or computers with limited space.

WD BLUE SN570 500GB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3

The price: 29,9 €

Capacity: 500 GB

Read/write speeds: 3,500 MB/s

Additionally: You get 1 more month of Adobe Creative Cloud free in the CD set

If we compare the two SSDs, they have very similar speeds, although there is a generation gap between them. WD Blue is a representative of the third generation, but it can boast of a good ratio between price and performance. It has a smaller SLS cache and doesn't prove to be the most consistent in write speeds. But it has a 5-year warranty, a free one-month trial of Adobe Creative Cloud and much better speeds than any HDD or SATA SSD.

Sabrent M.2 NVMe SSD 500GB Gen 4

The price: 53,99 €

Capacity: 500 GB

Speeds: 7,000 MB/s (read), 3,500 MB/s (write)

Sabrent proved to be one of the most reliable brands in recent tests. The Sabrent M.2 NVMe SSD Gen 4 is a true representative of SSD drives that have made the transition to PCIe 4.0. This is the drive where you will experience the speed jump of the new data bus for the first time, provided of course you have a motherboard that supports the new technology. If you stick with PCIe 3.0 for now, then you can expect half the advertised speeds.

• You can also get the 1 TB version at a very reasonable price of €84.99.

SSD disks 1 TB

1 TB is already a relatively generous capacity, which will be enough to install quite a few games that like to swallow gigabytes.

Samsung MZ-V7S1T0BW SSD 970 EVO Plus

The price: €42.90 (currently reduced from €99.9)

Capacity: 1 TB

Speeds: 3,500 MB/s (read), 3,300 MB/s (write)

For many years, Samsung was considered one of the most reliable and popular SSD disk manufacturers. However, loneliness at the top and complacency have caught up with them in recent years. The competition has not rested and today has the same or even better range of SSD drives.

The Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus is currently a price of just over €40 for 1 TB still a very good buy. The speeds are suitable for the PCIe 3.0 bus, i.e. up to 3,500 MB/s. You can also choose a capacity of 2 TB, which for just over €90 is also a very good purchase.

• Samsung has quite a few good candidates in this segment:
  • Samsung 980 1TB PCIe 3.0: for a good 40 € you will get a good SSD disk with a capacity of 1 TB.
  • Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB PCIe 4.0: Upgrading the top drive, PCIe 4.0 data bus and speeds to match (up to 7,000 MB/s). The price is only €68.99 (currently reduced from €124.9).

WD_BLACK SN850 1TB

The price: 85,99 €

Capacity: 1 TB

Speeds: up to 7,000 MB/s (read), 5,300 MB/s (write)

Compatibility: PlayStation 5 and PC

The WD_Black SN850 solid state drive made the list mainly because of its dual compatibility with the PlayStation 5 console and PCs. Since it is an officially supported disc by Sony, you can insert it into your console without violating the terms of the warranty. It's faster than the default PS5 drive, and you can easily insert it into your computers as well. The price is slightly higher mainly due to the newer data bus and the fact that it is officially licensed for use in PS5 consoles.

• WD_BLACK 1TB SN770 is a much more sensible choice for exclusive computer use. The current price is only €49.99, and you will get 1 TB of space and speeds of up to 5,150 MB/s.
• WD_Black SN750 SE 1 TB: worse speeds than SN770, slightly more expensive (€53), the same capacity, and you also get the game Battlefield 2042.

SSD disks 2 TB

Sabrent M.2 NVMe SSD 2TB Gen 4

The price: 139,99 €

Capacity: 2 TB

Speeds: 7,100 MB/s (read) and 6,600 MB/s (write)

Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 is an all-in-one package. It's fast, efficient and durable, plus it looks great and is affordable.

Gigabyte Aorus M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe

The price: 134,44 €

Capacity: 2 TB

Speeds: 5,000 MB/s (read), 4,400 MB/s (write)

Gigabyte has been a candidate for quite some time, but it is still a good candidate for practically every user. It has good write and read speeds, comes with a thick copper cooling case, has 2GB of DRAM cache, and a 5-year warranty. All this with a capacity of 2 TB and a price of just over €140.

If you have another HDD in your computer, you can exchange it for a significantly faster SSD at this moment for very little money. You don't need to sell it or stop using it entirely. However, HDDs can be good for storing files where speeds are not that important. If you like to collect movies, music, photos, then use an HDD disk to store them. For everything else, SSD disks are the only sensible decision at these prices.