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 price advantages over NVMe SSD disks, which can be bought for a few pennies more. In the past, NVMe SSDs were the domain of high-end computers, 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 with which you can you can add additional NVMe slots.

If you've downloaded a new AAA game in the last hour, you may have been as stunned as we were by the drive requirements.

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

If we were to load only these three games, the 500 GB SSD disk would still be fully occupied. You might be thinking at this point, why not just 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.

When you played the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1, and when 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 disk, the gameplay was much more relaxed and enjoyable (if we ignore the fact that zombies are chasing us at every turn).

In the following, 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 you have to add postage to the price of each disc.

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber and live near the Italian or Austrian border, you can avoid postage by sending packages to the nearest post office or Amazon package 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 from the point of view of the relationship between price and capacities/performance, considering 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. Čalthough it is a disk that works on the basis of čthe fourth generation of PCIe 4.0, its write/read speeds are below average or more at the level of the third generation.

Still, it can be a good secondary drive for the money, 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: In the set with the disk, you get 1 more month of free use of Adobe Creative Cloud

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 is not 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 disc where you will be the firstč Notice the speed jump of the new data bus, provided of course you have a motherboard that supports the new technology. If you stay on PCIe 3.0 for now, then you can expect half the advertised speeds.

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

SSD disks 1 TB

1 TB is still 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 did not rest and today has the same or even better range of SSD disks.

The Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus is currently the price of a good 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 is also a very good purchase for just over €90.

• 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 SSD disk WD_Black SN850 made the list mainly because of its dual compatibility with the PlayStation 5 console and personal computers. As it is a disc that is officially supported by Sony, you can insert it into your console without violating the terms of the warranty. It's faster than the default PS5 drive, but you can also insert it into your computers without any problems. 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 49.9 €, 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's candidates have been on the market 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 still have some kind of HDD disk in your computer, you can exchange it for a significantly faster SSD disk 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, at these prices, the only sensible decision is SSD disks.