To get the most out of an NVMe drive, you want to run your operating system on it, so you must have a system that recognizes the drive and can boot from it. The Samsung 960 Pro NVMe SSD in an M.2 slot. The MP600 Pro XT’s wider availability helps it earn our top recommendation.

That said, Seagate’s drive costs quite a bit more, while the KC3000 is only officially available through Kingston’s website. The 1TB version of the Corsair MP600 Pro XT will set you back $200, while 2TB and 4TB offerings go for $300 and $800, respectively.Īs far as alternatives go, the Kingston KC3000 and Seagate FireCuda 530 both deliver face-melting performance on par with Corsair’s drive. You’ll need a modern PC (from the last two or three years) with PCIe 4.0 support to unlock those face-melting speeds, however, and this sort of cutting-edge performance doesn’t come cheap. And if you want to get fancy, there’s even a version designed to plug into the liquid-cooling setup of exotic PCs, for a minimal markup. It comes with a five-year warranty that guarantees hundreds of written terabytes before failure.

“Highly recommended.” This “absolute barn-burner” of an SSD hangs with and sometimes bests the fastest drives we’ve ever tested, for a considerably lower price than its fellow hot-rod rivals.

“Considering the Corsair MP600 Pro XT’s tantalizing combination of price, performance, and features an Editor’s Choice award was no-brainer,” we said in our review. Picking the perfect SSD isn’t as simple as it used to be, though excellent new drives like the SK Hynix Platinum P41 are certainly trying to achieve no-brainer upgrade status. But tiny NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) “gumstick” SSDs that fit in an M.2 connection on a modern motherboard are becoming increasingly common, along with blazing-fast PCIe 4.0 solid-state drives for compatible PCs, and you’ll even find SSDs that sit on a PCIe adapter and slot into your motherboard like a graphics card or sound card. Many SSDs come in a 2.5-inch form factor and connect to your PC via the same SATA port used by a traditional hard drive.

You can spend big to achieve read and write speeds that reach a whole other level, or you can find top-notch SSDs that offer solid performance without breaking the bank. But not all solid-state drives are the same. These wondrous devices speed up boot times, improve the responsiveness of your programs and games, and generally make your computer feel fast. Switching to a solid-state drive is the best upgrade you can make for your PC.

Solid state hard drive mac