PS5 SSD recommendations

[irishbeast]

For some reason my ps5 wont support my external SSD. It detects it ok but whether connected by USB 3.2 or USB C it won't format.

 

The price of them is seriously expensive online so really want to use what I already have. 

 

I know it cant run ps5 games which is a shame as the 1TB drive has filled up in a week. I presume you cannot upgrade to a better internal drive? Or maybe you can. Would be tempted by a 4-8tb drive it it would work internally but would probably need to sell my house to buy one

 

Any suggestions?

[GuiltySpark_]

So, one of the most touted features of the PS5 is the internal user-upgradeable M.2 SSD slot. Were you maybe not aware that existed? Most NVMe Gen 4 drives will work. 

 

Maybe give this article a read as a primer on the topic. 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/best-ssds-for-ps5

[irishbeast]

Thanks. 

 

Hope it doesn't void the warranty but the 1TB drive is just not big enough. Downloaded Gran Turismo earlier and it was 100 gigs . Don't understand why Sony didn't offer higher capacity models.

 

Thanks for the link. Will have a read

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, irishbeast said:

Thanks. 

 

Hope it doesn't void the warranty but the 1TB drive is just not big enough. Downloaded Gran Turismo earlier and it was 100 gigs . Don't understand why Sony didn't offer higher capacity models.

 

Thanks for the link. Will have a read

Several reasons:
1) When the PS5 was designed, NAND that large and fast was likely not available in the density they need

2) It really wouldn't look good to have a PS5 costing twice the price for only twice the storage
3) The last thing they want is a ton of 2TB consoles unsold on shelves while everyone is moaning the lack of 1TB models in stock. (just an example, I realise the PS5 is neither of these sizes)

Sony were hoping by the time most people needed the space NVMe drives fast enough would have dropped in price.  I haven't had to upgrade mine yet, though might need to as I suddenly am having issues accessing my USB SSD.

I mean look at Xbox Series expansion, that's now grossly overpriced in comparison and the Series S stock storage is even more pathetic, doubly so given its a download only console.

[porina]

It always comes back to cost. And at the same time they probably don't want too many models to fragment the offerings. Expandable storage means users can choose what they want that way.

 

Finally managed to order a PS5 myself today, so I was looking up SSD options too. WD SN850 seems to be locally my best option for price and having a built in heatsink that will fit.

[JR1911]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Finally managed to order a PS5 myself today, so I was looking up SSD options too. WD SN850 seems to be locally my best option for price and having a built in heatsink that will fit.

 

The SN850 was the option I went with, mostly because it was the only PS5 compatible drive that I found a decent Black Friday deal on, got a 2TB one for 319€ + 15€ for a be Quiet MC1 cooler. So far it's worked flawlessly. Also using a 1TB external Samsung T7 SSD for PS4 games.

[Colty]

Like most others on this thread, I ended up getting the SN850 (2TB), no issues, works great. It was cheaper than a 980 Pro at the time and didn't have random issues months later like some other drives were experiencing. 

I probably took too much time deciding which one to get, there's really no wrong answer as long as you're able to verify it meets all requirements and keep expectations reasonable.

There is a chance that some games (mainly later in this console generation) might utilize the PS5 SSD more, but at the moment, I don't believe there are any games that require the PS5 SSD to be used over an add-on drive. Even games like Ratchet and Clank which heavily utilize the SSD aren't seeing major issues on drives slower than the internal SSD. Sony did a good job of setting the bar high enough to keep things consistent regardless of which drive you end up with. 
 

 

[irishbeast]

On 3/8/2022 at 6:53 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

Several reasons:
1) When the PS5 was designed, NAND that large and fast was likely not available in the density they need

2) It really wouldn't look good to have a PS5 costing twice the price for only twice the storage
3) The last thing they want is a ton of 2TB consoles unsold on shelves while everyone is moaning the lack of 1TB models in stock. (just an example, I realise the PS5 is neither of these sizes)

Sony were hoping by the time most people needed the space NVMe drives fast enough would have dropped in price.  I haven't had to upgrade mine yet, though might need to as I suddenly am having issues accessing my USB SSD.

I mean look at Xbox Series expansion, that's now grossly overpriced in comparison and the Series S stock storage is even more pathetic, doubly so given its a download only console.

 

Yes I did think that the price would seem colossal and would be for a console so a tough one. Shame you cant use an additional SSD as "proper" storage. I wouldn't mind if the loading times were a little slower if I added my own SSD. They aren't going to be terrible by any means!

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, irishbeast said:

 

Yes I did think that the price would seem colossal and would be for a console so a tough one. Shame you cant use an additional SSD as "proper" storage. I wouldn't mind if the loading times were a little slower if I added my own SSD. They aren't going to be terrible by any means!

I actually had to upgrade my PS5 right after making the post as my USB SSD keeps dropping out for some reason.

The point is that games written for PS5 exclusively don't HAVE loading times, because its constantly loading things in as you go.  Games written to do that simply wont work over USB, you'd be walking along with huge blank polygons on screen, chunks of the world missing, the game stalling.

Its designed for how games will be written tomorrow to use HUGE assets that need to load into RAM in real-time, that using current methods would need a lot more memory than the PS5 has. Games currently have a load a LOT of data before its needed, just in case its needed (as the game doesn't know what direction you will be facing next), the idea is with the SSD they can entirely fill the RAM in a few seconds so the data doesn't need to loaded in advance, so all those graphics and animations can be far more advanced as you only ever need active data in RAM not 3/4 of it being stuff that never gets used.

Its a huge generational shift but its going to take years to get there as cross-gen titles can't do it and most PCs today can't either.  It should (in theory) allow the Xbox Series X and PS5 to age much more gracefully than the Xbox One X / PS4 Pro did, games should look a ton better over the years.  Were really at the tip of the iceberg.

[irishbeast]

32 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I actually had to upgrade my PS5 right after making the post as my USB SSD keeps dropping out for some reason.

The point is that games written for PS5 exclusively don't HAVE loading times, because its constantly loading things in as you go.  Games written to do that simply wont work over USB, you'd be walking along with huge blank polygons on screen, chunks of the world missing, the game stalling.

Its designed for how games will be written tomorrow to use HUGE assets that need to load into RAM in real-time, that using current methods would need a lot more memory than the PS5 has. Games currently have a load a LOT of data before its needed, just in case its needed (as the game doesn't know what direction you will be facing next), the idea is with the SSD they can entirely fill the RAM in a few seconds so the data doesn't need to loaded in advance, so all those graphics and animations can be far more advanced as you only ever need active data in RAM not 3/4 of it being stuff that never gets used.

Its a huge generational shift but its going to take years to get there as cross-gen titles can't do it and most PCs today can't either.  It should (in theory) allow the Xbox Series X and PS5 to age much more gracefully than the Xbox One X / PS4 Pro did, games should look a ton better over the years.  Were really at the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks - Very informative post and makes a lot of sense.

 

Its a pretty fine piece of kit for sure. I reckon though in due course they will release higher capacity versions. Once people can actually get their hands on one without being fleeced on price. Maybe in a few years time. ps4 done the same. When the price comes down in a few years like every console does then the price increase wouldnt be such a bitter pill to swallow.

[Ultra_Kaiju]

I installed this one in my ps5 with the heatsink. It's been a fantastic upgrade. Not a cheap one but it was worth it. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09G2MZ4VR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

it seems faster than the stock internal storage as well. 

[irishbeast]

10 hours ago, Ultra_Kaiju said:

I installed this one in my ps5 with the heatsink. It's been a fantastic upgrade. Not a cheap one but it was worth it. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09G2MZ4VR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

it seems faster than the stock internal storage as well. 

Thanks! I presume theres only slot inside the device? Would be great if there was an extra one.  3TB would be a nice amount

 

[JR1911]

3 hours ago, irishbeast said:

Thanks! I presume theres only slot inside the device? Would be great if there was an extra one.  3TB would be a nice amount

 

There is an extra slot for an additional SSD, adding one doesn't replace the internal SSD so adding a 2TB drive would give you almost 3TB of total storage.

[irishbeast]

12 minutes ago, JR1911 said:

There is an extra slot for an additional SSD, adding one doesn't replace the internal SSD so adding a 2TB drive would give you almost 3TB of total storage.

Awesome! Will be doing that before long. 

 

Would be nice if the price of the top end SSDs came down but could be waiting a while. 2 TB would prob be enough but I'd end up kicking myself in about 6 months. Only had the thing 2 weeks and the 1TB (830ish gig in reality) is almost full

[Ultra_Kaiju]

it's really easy to do too. Took just a couple minutes. 

 

I use the internal (stock) ssd, then I installed the extra one, then I use an external USB drive for storage (and ps4 games). 

 

But sometimes I'll move the ps4 game I'm currently playing to internal drives because it runs/loads faster. 

 

PS5 is a very nice system. Little weird looking; but nice. 

[irishbeast]

59 minutes ago, Ultra_Kaiju said:

it's really easy to do too. Took just a couple minutes. 

 

I use the internal (stock) ssd, then I installed the extra one, then I use an external USB drive for storage (and ps4 games). 

 

But sometimes I'll move the ps4 game I'm currently playing to internal drives because it runs/loads faster. 

 

PS5 is a very nice system. Little weird looking; but nice. 

Yeah its a bit ugly in my opinion but hey ho. 

 

I've already got some external SSDs and even internals but presumably even if they did work they would be slow and defeat the point of the super speeds, as someone kindly articulated above. 

 

Still not many PS5 AAA titles that I don't already have on my PC but a few. Wish I could also try Fifa 22, far cry 6 etc on ps5 but I ain't paying for them again! Games are not cheap but when you consider the work that must go in to making them its actually quite reasonable.

 

Wish there were a few more demos though. Was nice to see a Cyberpunk demo on the ps5. The PC one was visually stunning but got fed up with the bugs so just ditched it. No PCcould run it in 4k at high res and I believe thats still the case but looked decent in upscaled 4k or whatever on ps5

 

We really are spoilt as gamers these days apart from the GPU shortage which has pissed on a lot of people's chips. I'm trying to offload my second gaming PC and am stunned at how little interest I am having given that rtx 3000 series are still hard enough to get

 

 

 

 

[Ultra_Kaiju]

1 hour ago, irishbeast said:

Yeah its a bit ugly in my opinion but hey ho. 

 

I've already got some external SSDs and even internals but presumably even if they did work they would be slow and defeat the point of the super speeds, as someone kindly articulated above. 

 

Still not many PS5 AAA titles that I don't already have on my PC but a few. Wish I could also try Fifa 22, far cry 6 etc on ps5 but I ain't paying for them again! Games are not cheap but when you consider the work that must go in to making them its actually quite reasonable.

 

Wish there were a few more demos though. Was nice to see a Cyberpunk demo on the ps5. The PC one was visually stunning but got fed up with the bugs so just ditched it. No PCcould run it in 4k at high res and I believe thats still the case but looked decent in upscaled 4k or whatever on ps5

 

We really are spoilt as gamers these days apart from the GPU shortage which has pissed on a lot of people's chips. I'm trying to offload my second gaming PC and am stunned at how little interest I am having given that rtx 3000 series are still hard enough to get

 

 

 

 

 

GPU prices are really weird now, for sure. 

[SydneyBrokeIt]

I have the Samsung 980 Pro in my PS5, and games are indistinguishable between the two SSDs.

[irishbeast]

7 hours ago, SydneyBrokeIt said:

I have the Samsung 980 Pro in my PS5, and games are indistinguishable between the two SSDs.

 

Thats interesting. So can you put any m2 SSD in the additional slot? This is where I am a bit confused. 

I understand the performance may suffer but I'm not gonna put a complete piece of crap in to it but want to consider options. Have a 1TB M2 drive spare that I could use and not have to worry about added cost. Have a gaming PC that I figured I would flog the GPU (the 3060ti mentioned) and put in a basic card. Then I would just brand it as a high performance desktop PC but literally cut the price in half, or less. 

[SydneyBrokeIt]

Officially, there are speed requirements that Sony has put out, but I'm unsure if Sony has actually done anything to enforce those requirements.

 

But, yes, the M.2 slot is one of those basic five-screw SSD holders with the 2230-22110 pillars, and any m.2 SSD will physically fit (within certain guidelines presented at https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/).

[irishbeast]

I suspect you are right @SydneyBrokeIt

I wouldn't be bothered if the games took a bit longer to load, not in the slightest. Only a matter of seconds. 

Think I will have a go with one of my M2s and hope it doesn't go bang!

 

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has tried this

[JR1911]

3 hours ago, irishbeast said:

I wouldn't be bothered if the games took a bit longer to load, not in the slightest. Only a matter of seconds. 

Think I will have a go with one of my M2s and hope it doesn't go bang!

 

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has tried this

 

AFAIK a drive that doesn't meet the speed requirement of 5.5GB/s should still work but some games may have problems if they expect a faster drive but in such cases I presume you could just transfer the game to the internal drive and play it from there. It's not just loading times that are the issue but some games may require a drive that hits the required speeds for loading assets fast enough.

[irishbeast]

15 hours ago, JR1911 said:

 

AFAIK a drive that doesn't meet the speed requirement of 5.5GB/s should still work but some games may have problems if they expect a faster drive but in such cases I presume you could just transfer the game to the internal drive and play it from there. It's not just loading times that are the issue but some games may require a drive that hits the required speeds for loading assets fast enough.

Ah right. That makes things different then. 

 

Tempted to try though!