Solid-state drives have become essential in every modern PC and laptop, and the compact M.2 NVMe format — a small stick that clips straight onto the motherboard — is now the standard. One important caveat for 2026: with the ongoing memory shortage pushing prices up, NVMe drives have grown noticeably more expensive, and that trend may continue for a while, so if you need one it is worth buying sooner rather than later and checking the current price before you commit. These are the best M.2 NVMe SSDs to buy in 2026, followed by a full guide to choosing the right one for your PC or PlayStation 5.
The Short Version
- Best overall — Samsung 990 Pro. The dependable high-end PCIe 4.0 drive, ideal for gaming PCs and the PS5.
- Fastest — Samsung 9100 Pro. The quickest PCIe 5.0 drive money can buy, aimed at professionals.
- Best value — Crucial P310. Excellent everyday performance for less, and often on offer.
- Best affordable PCIe 5.0 — Crucial P510. Gen 5 speeds without the flagship price.
Best Overall: Samsung 990 Pro
Samsung has been the name to beat at the high end for years, and the 990 Pro remains the safe choice for most people building or upgrading a PC. Built around TLC memory and available from 250GB up to 4TB, it is rated at up to 7,450 MB/s read and around 6,900 MB/s write over PCIe 4.0 — comfortably fast enough for gaming, everyday computing and a PS5. The one thing to watch is heat: the 990 Pro runs warm and can throttle under sustained load, so fit it under a heatsink, whether that is one built into your motherboard or bought separately. In the UK it costs around £161.99 for 1TB and £289.29 for 2TB. Check the price on Amazon
Fastest: Samsung 9100 Pro
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If you want the outright quickest drive available in 2026, the 9100 Pro is the 990 Pro's PCIe 5.0 successor. It takes full advantage of the Gen 5 interface to hit headline speeds of up to 14,800 MB/s read and 13,400 MB/s write, with advanced thermal control and capacities from 1TB up to a huge 8TB. It is aimed squarely at professionals handling heavy workloads — 8K video editing, virtualisation, AI — rather than everyday users, so it commands a premium (from around £190 for 1TB) and needs a recent PCIe 5.0 motherboard. For most people it is more than they need, but for the fastest possible storage nothing else compares. Check the price on Amazon
Best Value: Crucial P310
The Crucial P310 is our pick for anyone who wants strong performance without paying flagship money. It sticks to PCIe 4.0 with TLC memory and is rated at up to 7,100 MB/s read and 6,000 MB/s write — a touch behind the very best, but perfectly honest figures that suit the vast majority of PCs and consoles. Crucially, it stays cheap and is frequently discounted, which is rare in the current market. Available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB, it starts at around £140 for 1TB. For most gamers and everyday users, it is the most sensible buy. Check the price on Amazon
Best Affordable PCIe 5.0: Crucial P510
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If you want Gen 5 speed but not a Gen 5 price, the Crucial P510 is the answer. It is PCIe 5.0 (and backwards-compatible with PCIe 4.0) and rated at up to 11,000 MB/s read and 9,500 MB/s write — well short of the 9100 Pro's peak, but a lot of drive for the money, from around £170 for 1TB. It is a smart middle ground for anyone with a newer motherboard who wants headroom without stretching to the flagship. Check the price on Amazon
How to Choose an M.2 NVMe SSD
SATA or NVMe?
There are two main types of M.2 SSD: SATA drives (using the older AHCI protocol) and NVMe drives (using PCI Express). It matters, because SATA was designed for mechanical hard drives and tops out at about 600 MB/s in its third generation — so even the fastest SATA SSD is capped there. NVMe was built for flash storage and uses the far quicker PCI Express bus, unlocking speeds of several gigabytes per second. Almost every M.2 drive sold today, and almost every recent motherboard, is NVMe, which is what you want.
PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 5.0
This is the most common question, and the honest answer is that PCIe 4.0 is enough for nearly everyone. Drives like the 990 Pro and the P310 deliver 5–7 GB/s, which is plenty for gaming, everyday use and content on a PS5. PCIe 5.0 drives such as the 9100 Pro reach up to 14.8 GB/s, but that only benefits professionals moving very large files, and they cost significantly more and need a recent PCIe 5.0 board (an Intel Z790/X870 or AMD X670-class motherboard). For the vast majority of buyers, a good PCIe 4.0 drive in 1TB or 2TB remains the rational choice in 2026.
Memory type: SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC
Every SSD lists the type of flash memory it uses, and it directly affects performance and endurance. From best (and most expensive) to cheapest: SLC stores one bit per cell and is the fastest and most durable, but is reserved for professional use; MLC stores two bits with lower endurance; TLC stores three bits and is the sweet spot in most good consumer drives; and QLC stores four bits, which is the cheapest and allows bigger capacities but trades away some performance and durability. To offset slower memory, manufacturers add a faster cache, which keeps speeds high for light, everyday use but can run out during very large transfers.
Cooling and real-world speeds
Take the headline speeds on the box with a pinch of salt, because those figures are quoted in ideal conditions and several things can bring them down. QLC drives slow once their cache fills, and heat is the other factor: like a processor, an M.2 SSD needs to stay cool, and if it overheats during a very large transfer its performance will drop to protect itself — which is exactly why many motherboards now include heatsinks over their M.2 slots. So do not worry if copying a big game library does not hit the rated speed; that is entirely normal.
SSDs, gaming and the PS5
An SSD will not raise your frame rate — your processor and graphics card decide that. What it transforms is loading: games start and load levels far faster, and demanding open-world titles feel smoother. The fast drives in the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles have taken this further, all but eliminating loading screens. For the PS5 specifically, any PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive of at least 1TB will do the job — both the Samsung 990 Pro and the Crucial P310 are suitable.
How many drives can you fit?
Most PCs have two M.2 slots. If you need more, a PCI Express expansion card is an inexpensive way to add them — a basic one costs very little, and four-slot PCIe 4.0 models are available for around £100 — so you can add fast storage without replacing your motherboard.
Which SSD Should You Buy?
For most gamers and everyday PCs, the Crucial P310 offers the best balance of price and speed, while the Samsung 990 Pro is the dependable step up and the safe pick for a PS5. Choose the Samsung 9100 Pro only if you have a PCIe 5.0 motherboard and genuinely move huge files, and the Crucial P510 if you want Gen 5 speeds on a tighter budget. Whichever you pick, buy at least 1TB, add a heatsink for the high-end drives, and — given how fast prices are moving — check the current listing before you buy. If you also want fast storage you can carry between devices, see our best portable SSDs guide; and if you are building a machine, our best gaming PCs guide and best desktop processors guide will help.
How Much Capacity Do You Need?
Capacity is the single biggest factor in what you will pay, and the right amount depends on how you use your machine. 500GB is really the practical minimum today, and only suits a secondary drive or a very light system, since Windows plus a couple of large games will fill it quickly. 1TB is the sweet spot for most people and the size to choose by default: enough for your operating system, your everyday apps and a healthy library of games, at a price that still makes sense. 2TB is the pick for serious gamers, creators and anyone tired of uninstalling games to make room, and the cost per gigabyte is often better than 1TB. 4TB and above is for large media or professional libraries, though prices climb steeply and, in the current market, so does the premium. Bear in mind that console storage disappears fast — modern PS5 titles routinely run to 100GB or more — so 1TB or 2TB is the sensible minimum if you are expanding a PlayStation 5.
How to Fit an M.2 SSD
Installing an M.2 NVMe SSD is one of the easiest PC upgrades there is. Find the M.2 slot on your motherboard — every recent board has at least one, and its manual will confirm the location and which slots support NVMe — then remove the retaining screw and, if fitted, the heatsink. Slide the drive into the slot at a slight angle, press it flat and secure it with the screw (or under the heatsink). If your board has a heatsink for that slot, remember to peel the protective plastic film off the thermal pad underneath before fitting it. That is genuinely all there is to it: the drive appears in the BIOS, and once you have initialised and formatted it in Windows it is ready to use. If your motherboard has run out of M.2 slots — most have only two — a PCI Express expansion card is a cheap way to add more without upgrading the board.
Endurance, Warranty and Reliability
SSDs are rated for a certain amount of writing over their lifetime, quoted as terabytes written (TBW), and backed by a warranty that is typically five years on quality drives like the Samsung Pro and Crucial models here. In normal use — gaming, browsing, office work — you are extremely unlikely to reach those write limits within the warranty period, so endurance is rarely a practical concern for a home user. It matters more if you constantly move very large files, in which case a TLC drive with a higher TBW rating is a safer bet than a cheaper QLC one. Sticking to a reputable brand also buys you better firmware, more consistent performance and a warranty you can actually rely on, which is exactly why the drives above come from Samsung and Crucial rather than the cheapest no-name options.
What About External and Portable SSDs?
Everything here refers to internal M.2 drives that live inside your PC or console. If instead you want fast storage you can carry between machines — for backups, working on the move or expanding a laptop without opening it — you want an external portable SSD in a USB-C enclosure rather than a bare M.2 stick. Those are a different category with their own trade-offs around speed and ruggedness, and we cover them separately in our best portable SSDs guide. For upgrading the storage inside a desktop, gaming PC or PS5, though, an internal M.2 NVMe drive from the picks above is what you are after.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a PCIe 5.0 SSD worth it?
For most people, no. PCIe 4.0 drives already deliver 5–7 GB/s, which is more than enough for gaming, everyday computing and the PS5, and you will not feel the difference in normal use. PCIe 5.0 only pays off if you routinely move very large files — 8K video, big datasets — and have a compatible, recent motherboard. It also costs more and runs hotter.
Do I need a heatsink?
For high-end drives such as the Samsung 990 Pro and any PCIe 5.0 model, yes — they run warm and can throttle under sustained load without one. Many motherboards now include M.2 heatsinks, which is ideal; if yours does not, an inexpensive add-on heatsink is worth fitting. Value PCIe 4.0 drives are less demanding, but a heatsink never hurts.
Will an SSD make my games run faster?
It will not raise your frame rate — that is down to your processor and graphics card — but it dramatically cuts loading times, so games start faster, levels load quicker and big open-world titles feel smoother. On the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, a fast NVMe drive all but removes loading screens.
What is the best SSD for a PS5?
Any PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive of at least 1TB works. Sony recommends a drive with a heatsink, or you can fit one yourself, and both the Samsung 990 Pro and the Crucial P310 are suitable, reliable choices.
SATA or NVMe for an older PC?
If your motherboard only has an M.2 slot that supports SATA, or you are reusing a 2.5-inch bay, a SATA SSD is still a huge upgrade over a mechanical hard drive — but it caps at around 600 MB/s. If your board supports NVMe, and most from the last several years do, choose NVMe for several times the speed at a similar price.
Can I put an M.2 SSD in a laptop?
Many modern laptops have a spare or upgradeable M.2 slot, which makes fitting a faster or larger NVMe drive one of the few worthwhile upgrades still open to laptop owners. Check your model's service manual or specifications first, though: some thin-and-light machines solder the storage in place and cannot be upgraded, and laptops have less room for cooling, so a lower-power PCIe 4.0 drive is often a wiser choice than the hottest-running flagship.
How long do SSDs last?
For typical home use, well beyond the five-year warranty most quality drives carry. The rated write endurance is far higher than an everyday user will reach, so long-term reliability comes down mostly to choosing a reputable brand with good firmware.
How This Guide Was Made
This is an editorial buying guide that curates the strongest M.2 NVMe SSDs for gaming, everyday computing and the PS5, weighing speed, capacity, memory type, cooling and value. Recommendations are based on published specifications and current UK pricing rather than testing by Truthful Reviews. Prices are unusually volatile in 2026, so check the current listing before buying.
This is an editorial buying guide based on published specifications and current UK pricing, not on testing by Truthful Reviews. Prices were checked on 14 July 2026 and are changing quickly.
