The Amazon Black Friday Sale has officially started, and currently there are a couple of 2TB PS5-compatible solid state drives that you can score for under $100: the Nextorage Japan 2TB SSD for $99.99 and the Silicon Power XS70 2TB SSD for $97.97. Both of these SSDs are fast enough to exceed the specs of the PS5's stock internal SSD and come with a preinstalled heatsink that does a fine job of keeping things cool.
Black Friday Deal: Nextorage 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $99.99
This SSD fulfills all the requisites that make it PS5 compatible. It boasts sequential read and write speeds of 7300MB/s and 6900MB/s, which is much higher than the minimum recommendation of 5,600MB/s. It also includes a robust double-sided aluminum heatsink that's preinstalled on the SSD. This is much better than some of the cheaper SSDs that only include thin graphite heatspreaders.
There's an interesting story behind Nextorage Japan. Nextorage describes itself as a company that was "created by a group of ex-Sony engineers and staff with over 20 years of experience in the development of memory and storage products". Nextorage was actually originally created by Sony in 2019 as an SSD sub-division about a year before the PS5 was released. Presumably this was to be the basis for an official SSD sold by Sony themselves. For whatever reason, Sony decided to ditch that idea and sold this business to another stakeholder in the company, Phison, in 2022. Phison is another large reputable company that specializes in solid state memory controllers. You'll find their controllers in name-brand SSDs like Seagate, Corsair, and Sabrent. Under Phison, Nextorage Japan eventually accomplished the goal of releasing an SSD catered specifically for the PS5 console in the form of this product right here.
Black Friday Deal: Silicon Power 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $97.97
The Silicon Power XS70 is currently the least expensive 2TB PS5 SSD on Amazon. This SSD also also comes with a beefy preinstalled aluminum heatsink that's designed to fit perfectly in your PS5 console. The XS70 boasts transfer speeds of up to 7300MB/s read and 6800MB/s write, comfortably faster than the 5500MB/s minimum recommended requirement. At this price, it would be difficult to pick any other SSD if your one and only purpose for this SSD was to use it for your PS5 console.
Black Friday Deal: WD Black SN850X 4TB PS5 SSD for $229.99
The SN850X is the latest generation of WD's flagship Black series M.2 SSDs. It's easily one of the fastest SSDs on the market. There are only a few SSDs out right now that can match its speed. Off the top of my head, the only SSDs I can think of are the new Samsung 990 Pro and the SK Hynix P41 Platinum. The SN850X also makes for an excellent PS5 SSD. It is identical to the SN850P, which is the only officially licensed PS5 SSD on the market. The only caveat is that this particular model doesn't include a built-in heatsink. That is easily remedied by picking up a PS5 heatsink off Amazon for $7.
Black Friday Deal: Samsung 990 Pro 4TB PS5 SSD for $249.99
The 990 Pro is Samsung's flagship SSD and it is the fastest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs on the market. Samsung claims a 50% improved performance per watt over its Samsung 980 Pro predecessor. It boasts blazing sequential speeds of 7,450MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write and random speeds of 1400K/1550K IOPS. Unlike most other SSDs, the components are manufactured in-house. The Samsung 990 Pro works superbly in your PS5, but from a purely performance perspective it's overkill. Pick up PS5 heatsink off Amazon for $7.
All the Black Friday SSD Deals for your PS5 Console
What is a PS5-compatible SSD?
An SSD that expands your PS5's storage is essentially the same SSD that goes into your gaming PC. However, because of the PS5 has certain requirements that must be met for full compatibility. These are:
- The SSD and its heatsink must fit in the PS5 drive bay (requirement)
- The SSD must have a PCIe 4.0 interface (requirement)
- The SSD should have a minimum read speed of 5600MB/s (recommended)
- The SSD should have a heatsink for proper cooling (recommended)
An SSD that is slower than 5,600MB/s should still work. In fact, if it's close to the rated speed, you may never notice any difference. The reason Sony gives this recommendation is that the internal SSD that comes with the PS5 is rated at 5,600MB/s. If you add a slower SSD, you have a chance of bottlenecking the bandwidth on the internal SSD as well.
Likewise, you may not need a heatsink. SSDs are rated for higher temps than what you'd normally expect to achieve even inside a PS5 that's runnig fult tilt. However, there's no real airflow around the SSD bay and SSDs do get pretty hot, so we'd recommend getting a preinstalled heatsink or installing one yourself for peace of mind and potentially to prevent thermal throttling and extending the lifespan of your SSD.
Looking for more Black Friday deals like this? Check out our guide to PS5 Black Friday deals for 2023.