SOLID STATE DRIVES

Storage may not get the blood racing in the same way that a CPU or graphics card does, but it is an increasingly important component of any gaming system. With the next-gen consoles both looking to make the most of their PCIe SSDs, it seems only reasonable that tomorrow’s games will put a greater emphasis on storage than they currently do. And as it is, there’s a lot to be gained from moving up to speedy SSDs, from games loading quicker to day-to-day operations just not taking as long and Windows booting almost instantly.

When we’ve looked at SSDs before, you’d find this list stuffed with SATA-based drives from top-to-bottom, with potentially only one or two PCIe SSDs lurking at the high-priced extreme end. It’s now becoming increasingly hard to recommend the old school 2.5-inch SSDs, simply because there isn’t much of a pricing delta between the best NVMe SSDs and their SATAbased equivalents. When