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Two of the best SSDs for gaming are heavily discounted in Amazon's PEAS

The WD SN850 500GB and Crucial P5 Plus 1TB star in the Prime Early Access Sale.

Image of a WD_BLACK SN850 SSD on an orange to yellow gradient background
Reece Bithrey avatar
Deals by Reece Bithrey Contributor
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Amazon’s second Prime Day sale of 2022, memorably named the Prime Early Access Sale or PEAS, has thrown up some great reductions on a wide range of tech, but the best deals we've spotted so far have been on a pair of super-fast SSDs, the WD Black SN850 500GB and Crucial P5 Plus 1TB. Both are PCIe 4.0 models that offer incredible gaming performance on both PC and PS5, making this a great time to pick up extra game storage at a discount.

For reference, the SN850 provides sequential read and writes speeds of 7000 MB/s and 5300 MB/s respectively, making it one of the fastest drives for PS5 or PC. While those peak sequential speeds are undoubtedly impressive, it’s the up to 1000K IOPS that really sets the SN850 apart- this stellar random performance cuts down game load times significantly, making this one of the best SSDs for gaming.

Meanwhile, the Crucial P5 Plus is nearly as good, offering similar sequential read speeds of 6600MB/s and random read/write speeds of 630K/700K IOPS. That means game load times are a bit slower than the SN850, but still way faster than PCIe 3.0 SSDs that tend to be in the 500K IOPS range even on the fastets models. And as it costs only £23 more for double the space, I'd go Crucial this time.

Both SSDs meet Sony's strict requirements for PS5 drives, and installing them is as simple as popping off the drive cover, inserting the drive into the M.2 slot and screwing it in place - look at our article for more details. It's much the same on PC, although you'll need to ensure your laptop or PC motherboard supports PCIe 4.0 to ensure you get the most from these drives - they will work on older motherboards, but you'll be limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds. Thankfully, Google is very helpful in gauging compatibility here!

So: two fast drives and the best prices we're likely to see until Black Friday. If you're intrigued, hit up the links above!

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