Early examples of the latest generation of M.2 drives, using the PCI Express 5.0 bus, also come in the Type-2280 format, but it's expected that some PCIe 5.0 slots on new motherboards will be built to support the larger Type-25110 format (25mm by 110mm), so we may well see PCIe 5.0 SSDs with these dimensions as well. PCIe 5 drives are capable of tremendous throughput speeds (in excess of 10,000MBps) that should generate abundant heat, and the SSDs we have seen so far come with substantial built-in heatsinks.

At the core, an SSD is just a thin circuit board studded with flash-memory and controller chips. Why not design around that? Thus the M.2 form factor was born. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. In many other regards, this X model is a dead ringer for the SN850. We’re talking four lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity in the now ubiquitous M.2 2280 form factor. But the 1TB model reviewed here is now the entry-level option. There’s no longer a 512GB model. What’s more, WD’s in-house controller chip, provided by compatriot SanDisk, has been revised, though detailed specifics aren't provided.It's a highly competitive SSD with great performance and an attractive design and offers good value for money. That's not a bad thing. Especially in the case of laptops, an older machine might supportonlyM.2 SATA-bus SSDs, and that will be the boundary of your upgrade path...end of story. As a result, the only reasons you'd upgrade the drive, in that situation, would be to get more capacity, or if the old one failed. In our tests, the Intel 670p loaded Final Fantasy at the same speed or faster than competitors. It also finished just two places below the vaunted PCIe 4.0 Samsung 980 Pro in PCMark 10. Those are very respectable marks for a budget drive. WD improved performance in sequential read workloads, with a maximum of 7.3GBps from 7.0GBps, and sequential writes improved from up to 5.3GBps to 6.6GBps. Performance in random workloads has also improved significantly, up from a maximum of 1M / 720,000 read and write, respectively, to 1.2M / 1.1M. The point is, there's not much this Lexar drive can't do, and for a good price. If you have a spare Gen4 slot in your machine, and you are desperate for more game storage space, I highly recommend you look to the Lexar NM790 to fill that slot.

If you're copying a game from one drive to another or validating game files in Steam, faster NVMe drives make a difference. They can also shave off a second or two when it comes time to load a game level, but the more significant difference is against hard drives, where even a slower SATA SSD is much faster. Go beyond a certain point, and all SSDs start to feel similar. In other words, while the speed freak in me loves what NVMe brings to the table, I recognize that in practice, it's usually not that noticeable. If you're looking to get the most from your money when it comes time to build a gaming PC, good SATA SSDs remain an excellent option, with prices now falling below 10 cents per GB.If you don't have any NVMe slots, you can buy expansion add-in cards that will offer one or more NVMe slots in exchange for one of your PCIe slots on your motherboard, just be aware that these are at an added cost and take up precious room. Can you put a PCIe 4.0 SSD in a 3.0 slot?

The Crucial MX500 is the only SATA drive left on our list of the best SSDs for gaming. When the price delta between PCIe and SATA is so small, if occasionally non-existent, it's difficult to make an argument for the far slower technology. But, as there is a hard limit on the number of M.2 slots on your motherboard, there is still a place for SATA SSDs as secondary storage.Where SATA's theoretical performance limit is 600MB/s, and PCIe 3.0's is 4,000MB/s, PCIe 4.0 SSDs can double that figure to a maximum of 8,000MB/s. The current top speed of available Gen4 drives is around 7,000MB/s, which is double that of the previous generation. PCIe 5.0 SSDs should exceed 10,000MB/s and onwards up to their theoretical limit around 16,000MB/s. But this only matters if you can fit an NVMe SSD in your machine. Can I fit an NVMe SSD on my motherboard?