The gaming SSD shortlist

The best NVMe SSD for gaming in the UK is the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink, at £264.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026). The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB pairs a PCIe 4.0 Phison E18 controller and 2 GB of DDR4 cache with TLC NAND, 7,300 MB/s reads and 2,000 TBW of rated endurance, the highest of any drive in this guide.

The Lexar NM790 2TB at £259.99 is the value pick, the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB at £178.99 is the best 1TB drive, and the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TBat £309.99 is the PCIe 5.0 drive worth buying. PCIe 5.0 does not make games load noticeably faster: Tom's Hardware's August 2026 test of 11 games found "no observable differences between PCIe generations". This guide ranks each drive on price per terabyte, endurance and PS5 fit, then prices what the PCIe 5.0 upgrade actually buys.

What is the best NVMe SSD for gaming?

The best NVMe SSD for gaming is a 2TB PCIe 4.0 drive with TLC NAND and a 5-year warranty, and the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB is the strongest example at £264.99. Hardware Unboxed's load-time tests, published by TechSpot in August 2025, concluded: "buy a PCIe NVMe SSD. Beyond that, it generally does not matter whether it is PCIe 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0." The specifications that matter for a gaming drive:

• Capacity: 2TB. Five 2025 and 2026 PC releases need 150 GB or more each on Steam, led by Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at 161 GB.
• Interface:PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe. Every PCIe 4.0 drive in this guide reads at 6,000 MB/s or faster, above Sony's 5,500 MB/s PS5 recommendation.
• NAND: TLC. The QLC Crucial P310 is rated at 220 TBW per terabyte, against 600 to 1,000 TBW per terabyte for the four picks here.
• Warranty: 5 years. All four picks carry 5 years, limited by rated TBW.
• Cache: a DRAM cache speeds up installs and Steam file checks, not in-game loading.

Buyers pricing a whole new PC can see where storage fits in the budget in build vs buy a gaming PC in the UK.

1. Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink - best NVMe SSD for gaming overall

The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink costs £264.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), or £132.50 per terabyte. Kingston rates it at 7,300 MB/s reads, 7,000 MB/s writes and 1 million random IOPS each way, with a Phison E18 controller, 2 GB of DDR4 cache and Micron 176-layer TLC NAND.

Endurance sets the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB apart. Kingston rates it at 2,000 TBW, or 1,000 TBW per terabyte: 500 TBW more than the Lexar NM790 2TB, 800 TBW more than the WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB and more than four times the Crucial P310 2TB's 440 TBW. The fitted heatsink measures 80 x 23.67 x 10.5 mm, inside Sony's 11.25 mm PS5 limit, and Kingston lists this version as PS5 Ready. The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB suits buyers who want one drive that can move between a gaming PC and a PS5, and who install and delete large games often.

2. Lexar NM790 2TB - best value 2TB gaming SSD

The Lexar NM790 2TB costs £259.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), or £130.00 per terabyte, the lowest of any drive here with confirmed TLC NAND. Lexar rates it at 7,400 MB/s reads, 6,500 MB/s writes and 1,500 TBW, with a Maxio MAP1602 controller and 232-layer TLC NAND.

The Lexar NM790 2TB has no DRAM cache and uses a slice of system memory instead (host memory buffer, or HMB), which Hardware Unboxed found makes no difference to in-game loading. The catch is price: the Lexar NM790 2TB is only £5.00 cheaper than the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB, which adds DRAM, 500 TBW and a heatsink. This bare version needs a heatsink added for a PS5. The Lexar NM790 2TB suits PC-only builds where the drive sits under a motherboard M.2 heatsink.

3. WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB - best 1TB gaming SSD

The WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB costs £178.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), or £178.99 per terabyte. SanDisk's datasheet rates it at 7,300 MB/s reads, 6,300 MB/s writes, 800,000 random read IOPS and 1.1 million random write IOPS, with a DDR4 DRAM cache, TLC NAND, 600 TBW and a 5-year warranty. Tom's Hardware's review identified a Western Digital in-house controller and 112-layer BiCS5 TLC NAND at launch.

The WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB is the best 1TB drive because it keeps a DRAM cache and TLC NAND for £21.04 more than the DRAM-less, QLC Crucial P310 1TB (£157.95), and adds 380 TBW of rated endurance (600 TBW against 220 TBW). Samsung's 990 Pro 1TB matches its 600 TBW and is rated slightly faster at 7,450 MB/s, a gap that does not show in game loading. SanDisk retired the WD_BLACK name in January 2026 and now sells the same drive as the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850X; the rebranded version costs more on Amazon UK, at £259.99 for the 1TB with heatsink and £474.99 for the bare 2TB.

The WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB is the second most expensive drive here per terabyte, behind only the Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB, and a 1TB drive holds five 150 GB games after Windows 11. The WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB suits a second drive in an existing PC or a tight budget build. The bare drive needs a third-party heatsink fitted for a PS5.

4. Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB - best-value PCIe 5.0 SSD

The Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB costs £309.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), or £155.00 per terabyte. Lexar rates it at 14,000 MB/s reads, 13,000 MB/s writes and 2.1 million random read IOPS, with a 6 nm Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, LPDDR4x DRAM and Micron 232-layer TLC NAND.

The Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB is the PCIe 5.0 drive worth buying because it costs £9.40 less than the PCIe 4.0 WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB (£319.39) and £105.00 less than the Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB. The shortage pushed PCIe 4.0 prices up faster: in Tom's Hardware's US price index (10 September 2026), popular PCIe 4.0 2TB drives cost 3.2 to 4.0 times their lowest-ever price and PCIe 5.0 2TB drives 1.9 to 2.4 times. The speed still does not show in games, so the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB suits buyers who copy large video or project files. It is double-sided with no heatsink version, so it belongs under the motherboard's own M.2 heatsink.

Which other SSDs are worth considering for gaming?

Six more drives cover the fastest, cheapest and SATA options, each with a catch that kept it off the shortlist.

• Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB, £414.99 (fastest): 14,700 MB/s reads, 13,400 MB/s writes, 2 GB of LPDDR4X cache and 1,200 TBW. It is the fastest drive here and the most expensive per terabyte at £207.50. CDRLabs measured the bare 2TB drive throttling to about 11,000 MB/s at 83°C to 84°C.
• WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB, £319.39: a proven PCIe 4.0 drive with 2 GB of DDR4 cache, 7,300 MB/s reads and 1,200 TBW. It now costs £9.40 more than the PCIe 5.0 Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB, so the WD_BLACK SN850X makes more sense at 1TB.
• Crucial P310 2TB, £229.99 (cheapest 2TB NVMe): £115.00 per terabyte and 7,100 MB/s reads, with QLC NAND, no DRAM and 440 TBW. Micron has ended the Crucial consumer brand and has settled some warranty claims with refunds, so the Crucial P310 2TB suits buyers who accept that risk for the lowest price.
• Crucial P310 1TB, £157.95: the same QLC design with 220 TBW, £27.97 more than the Kingston NV3 1TB.
• Kingston NV3 1TB, £129.98 (cheapest): 6,000 MB/s reads, 320 TBW and no DRAM. Tom's Hardware notes the controller and NAND (TLC or QLC) vary by batch, so performance varies too.
• Crucial BX500 2TB, £229.99 (SATA): the same price as the Crucial P310 2TB NVMe drive, so SATA no longer saves money. SATA tops out near 560 MB/s (Samsung rates its 870 EVO at 560 MB/s), and the Crucial BX500 2TB suits only older PCs with no M.2 slot.

Which gaming SSD is the best value per terabyte?

The Lexar NM790 2TB is the best value per terabyte with confirmed TLC NAND, at £130.00, and the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB is £2.50 per terabyte behind at £132.50. The QLC Crucial P310 2TB and SATA Crucial BX500 2TB are cheaper at £115.00 per terabyte. Compare Electronic divided each Amazon UK price by capacity, then divided rated endurance by price:

Two results stand out. The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB costs £5.00 more than the Lexar NM790 2TB and buys a DRAM cache, 500 TBW of extra endurance and a heatsink; per £100 it buys 755 TBW, the most of any drive here. At the other end, the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB costs £48.99 more per terabyte than the Lexar NM790 2TB, the premium for a DRAM cache at the smaller capacity.

Is a PCIe 5.0 SSD worth it for gaming?

No. A PCIe 5.0 SSD does not load games noticeably faster than a PCIe 4.0 drive. Tom's Hardware tested 11 games in August 2026 on a Crucial T700 (PCIe 5.0), a PCIe 4.0, a PCIe 3.0 and a SATA drive, and found "no observable differences between PCIe generations". Games issue low-queue-depth random reads: Forspoken peaked at 2,956 MB/s on the PCIe 4.0 drive and 2,761 MB/s on the PCIe 5.0 drive at 1080p. Hardware Unboxed's August 2025 tests, published by TechSpot, put numbers on the gap:

• Starfield: PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 3.0 loaded under 1 second apart.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II: the fastest PCIe 5.0 drive loaded 15% faster than the slowest PCIe 3.0 drive, about 5 seconds.
• Stalker 2 Steam verification (150 GB): 4% between PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 3.0.
• Forspoken DirectStorage benchmark (Compusemble, 2023): 10.483 s across seven scenes on PCIe 5.0 against 10.872 s on a Samsung 990 Pro, 0.389 s apart.

That best case flatters PCIe 5.0, because the 5-second gap compared it with the slowest PCIe 3.0 drive, not with PCIe 4.0; in Tom's Hardware's in-game testing the PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 drives were indistinguishable. Both upgrades also lower rated endurance. The £150.00 between the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB and Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB buys more as a graphics card upgrade, which changes frame rates in every game; the best graphics card UK 2026 guide ranks the options.

DirectStorage does not change the answer yet. Microsoft announced DirectStorage 1.4, with Zstandard compression, at GDC in March 2026, but Tom's Hardware notes "only a handful of PC games have meaningfully adopted the technology". In The Last of Us Part II, a DirectStorage game, Hardware Unboxed found no meaningful difference between NVMe drives. DirectStorage runs on PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 drives; it does not need PCIe 5.0.

Does an SSD increase fps?

An SSD does not raise average fps in most games; it cuts loading times and, in a few streaming-heavy games, steadies 1% lows. Tom's Hardware's August 2026 test found in-game differences between SATA and PCIe drives in only 2 of 11 games:

• Forspoken: PCIe raised 1% lows by 22% at 1080p, 51% at 1440p and 39% at 4K against SATA.
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: PCIe gave about 38% better 1% lows at 4K in the portal sequence and cut portal transitions by 2 to 3 seconds.

In Starfield, Tom's Hardware found "a SATA SSD provided an indistinguishable gameplay experience" even though Bethesda lists an NVMe drive as a requirement. Loading is where drive type shows: Hardware Unboxed measured Ratchet & Clank loading in 1.3 seconds on PCIe drives and nearly five times slower on SATA, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II took more than four minutes to load from a hard drive. Moving an older PC from a hard drive to any NVMe SSD is the biggest storage upgrade; the how to upgrade an old gaming PC guide sets out the order of upgrades.

1TB or 2TB SSD for gaming?

2TB is the right size for a gaming PC in 2026, because large games now take 100 GB to 161 GB each. Windows reports a 1TB drive as 931 GB and a 2TB drive as 1,863 GB, and Microsoft's minimum for Windows 11 is 64 GB, which leaves 867 GB and 1,799 GB for games on a boot drive. Compare Electronic divided that space by Steam's published install sizes:

A real library fills a 1TB drive quickly. Six of the largest current games (Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at 161 GB, Stalker 2 at 160 GB, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at 155 GB, and Baldur's Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Crimson Desert at 150 GB each) total 926 GB, more than the 867 GB a 1TB boot drive has free. Per 150 GB game slot, the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB costs £35.80 (£178.99 ÷ 5) and the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB costs £24.09 (£264.99 ÷ 11). A 1TB drive suits a second drive, or players who stick to a few live-service games.

Does a DRAM-less or QLC SSD matter for gaming?

A DRAM-less drive loads games as quickly as one with DRAM; QLC NAND matters more, through endurance and long-write speed rather than loading. Hardware Unboxed found no DRAM effect on in-game loading, and DRAM drives were 8% to 11% faster only in a 36,000-file Steam verification of F1 25.

• DRAM-less (HMB): the Lexar NM790 2TB, Crucial P310 and Kingston NV3 map the drive in a slice of system memory. The Lexar NM790 2TB is the best of them because it pairs HMB with TLC NAND and 1,500 TBW.
• QLC: four bits per cell cuts cost and endurance. The Crucial P310 2TB is rated at 440 TBW, 220 TBW per terabyte, against 1,000 TBW per terabyte for the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB. For scale, 440 TBW is enough to install a 150 GB game about 2,900 times, so the warranty terms matter more than wear.
• Cache size: Hardware Unboxed found copying a 123 GB game took 38% less time on a drive with a 200 GB SLC cache than on one with a 48 GB cache.
• Samsung 990 (not Pro):launched on 14 July 2026, it is a different drive from the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB: DRAM-less, QLC according to Tom's Hardware's teardown (Samsung has not disclosed the NAND), 400 TBW per terabyte and a 3-year warranty.

Do NVMe SSDs need a heatsink?

Every PCIe 5.0 SSD should run under a heatsink, first-wave models most of all, and a PS5 requires one on any drive. Reviewers say first-wave Phison E26 drives (Crucial T705, Sabrent Rocket 5, Corsair MP700 Pro) need one; Tom's Hardware says the Rocket 5 "should not be run bare".

• Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB: CDRLabs measured the bare drive at 84°C reading and 83°C writing, with transfers cut to about 11,000 MB/s; under a motherboard M.2 heatsink it peaked at 53°C to 54°C.
• SM2508 drives, the controller in the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB: the WD_BLACK SN8100 peaked at 47°C (KitGuru) to 71°C (ThePCEnthusiast) under motherboard heatsinks without throttling. The Crucial T710 was the exception, reaching its throttle point in TechteamGB's 100 GB torture test.

Throttling in these tests came from sustained reads and writes, the load a large install or file copy creates, not from game loading. The motherboard decides how many M.2 slots run at PCIe 5.0 and which carry heatsinks; the best motherboard for gaming UK 2026 guide covers the options.

Which SSD works in both a gaming PC and a PS5?

The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink is the drive to buy for both, because its heatsink already meets Sony's size limit. Sony's PS5 rules, from PlayStation's UK support page:

• PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, 250 GB to 8 TB; M.2 SATA drives are not supported.
• Sequential read of 5,500 MB/s or faster recommended.
• A heatsink or heat-transfer sheet is required, built in or fitted by the owner.
• Up to 25 mm wide and 11.25 mm thick including cooling: 8.0 mm above the board, 2.45 mm below.

The Kingston heatsink measures 10.5 mm high, and Kingston lists the Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink as PS5 Ready. The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB costs £45.00 less than the WD_BLACK SN850P 2TB (£309.99 on Amazon UK), an officially licensed PS5 drive from the same WD_BLACK range. The bare WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB and Lexar NM790 2TBmeet Sony's interface and speed rules but need a third-party heatsink fitted, with the total kept within 11.25 mm; Tom's Hardware's PS5 SSD tests include the WD_BLACK SN850X. PCIe 5.0 drives such as the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB run at PCIe 4.0 speed in a PS5, and Tom's Hardware's September 2026 PS5 SSD guide says they bring no benefit there. More console add-ons are in the best PS5 accessories UK 2026 guide.

Why are SSDs so expensive in 2026?

SSDs cost two to five times their 2025 lows because NAND flash makers moved supply to data-centre drives and contract prices surged. TrendForce's quarterly forecasts for NAND contract prices:

• First quarter 2026: up 55% to 60% quarter on quarter.
• Second quarter: up 70% to 75%.
• Third quarter:up 10% to 15%, slowing because consumer "price tolerance ... has reached its limit".

OC3D tracked the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB at £86.99 in 2025 and £209.99 in April 2026, a rise of £123.00, or 141%. Tom's Hardware's US price index (10 September 2026) put the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB at $248 against a lowest-ever $54, 4.6 times higher, and the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB costs £178.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing. Relief is not close: SK hynix chief executive Kwak Noh-jung said in July 2026 that "next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective". The RAM shortage 2026 explainer covers the same squeeze on memory, and Tom's Hardware's July 2026 advice is to put 32 GB of RAM ahead of storage, because a second SSD can be added later.

What happened to Crucial and WD_BLACK SSDs?

Crucial has left the consumer market and WD_BLACK has become SanDisk Optimus; drives under both names are still sold, with caveats.

• Crucial:Micron announced on 3 December 2025 that it would exit the Crucial consumer business, and shipments ended in February 2026. Micron promises "continued warranty service and support", but Tom's Hardware reported in August 2026 that Micron offered refunds of the original price instead of replacements, including $199.99 for a failed Crucial X9 4TB because "replacement inventory was exhausted", and approved replacements only after public complaints. The Crucial P310 and Crucial BX500 in this guide carry that risk.
• WD_BLACK:SanDisk retired the WD_BLACK and WD Blue names on 5 January 2026. The WD_BLACK SN850X became the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850X, the SN8100 became the Optimus GX PRO 8100 and the SN7100 became the Optimus GX 7100, and Tom's Hardware reports warranty continues on WD-branded drives. On Amazon UK the Optimus GX PRO 850X 2TB costs £474.99, £155.60 more than the WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB at £319.39, so the old name is the better buy.

Who should skip these SSDs, and what should UK buyers check?

Owners of a PC that already has an NVMe drive with free space should skip a storage upgrade: a faster drive will not raise fps, and the money goes further on a graphics card or RAM.

• Skip PCIe 5.0 without a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. In a PCIe 4.0 slot the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB runs at PCIe 4.0 speed and costs £50.00 more than the Lexar NM790 2TB for nothing.
• Older PCs: a PCIe 4.0 drive works in a PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot at PCIe 3.0 speed, which Hardware Unboxed found makes little difference to loading. PCs with no M.2 slot need a 2.5-inch SATA drive such as the Crucial BX500 2TB.
• Warranty and rights: the four picks carry 5-year warranties limited by TBW. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 also gives a 30-day right to reject a faulty drive for a full refund from the retailer, separate from the manufacturer warranty.

Verdict

The Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with heatsink at £264.99 is the best NVMe SSD for gaming in the UK: PCIe 4.0 speed, a DRAM cache, 2,000 TBW and a heatsink that fits a PS5. The Lexar NM790 2TB at £259.99 is the value pick for a PC-only build, the WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB at £178.99 is the best 1TB drive, and the Lexar NM1090 Pro 2TB at £309.99 is the PCIe 5.0 drive to buy for large file work. For games, capacity matters more than PCIe generation: a 2TB boot drive holds 11 games of 150 GB, and a 1TB drive holds five.