Black Friday SSD deals 2022: the fastest PC storage at the lowest prices
If you thought you had to wait until the end of the week for the best Black Friday SDD deals, think again. As impressive as some of the deals on speedy SSDs have been so far, expect to see even more deep discounts as we get closer to Black Friday. An SSD is one of the easiest and most impactful upgrades you can make to your gaming PC. They make load times in games like Elden Ring and God of War breeze by, as well as improve your overall Windows experience.
NVMe SSDs are what you want as your primary storage inside your desktop (and even your modern gaming console). They are faster, more efficient, and more reliable than an old spinny hard drive (opens in new tab). With DirectStorage (opens in new tab) coming soon, expect to see load times reduced even more. You want to ensure that your motherboard has the requisite M.2 slots for an NVMe SSD—as soon as you find that out, you can take advantage of some of the really stellar deals out.
With prices where they are, there’s no reason why your gaming PC shouldn’t already have a solid-state drive. But I get it; it’s tough to let go of an old HDD you’ve had for years, but trust me, you’ll see what the big fuss is about once you see an SSD in action. You can now find 1TB drives for around $100 / £100 and 2TB of SSD storage for less than $200 / £200. Anything larger than that starts to get expensive and is not worth the click unless you spot a good deal on it, which is rare even on Black Friday.
As far as size is concerned, 1TB is the least amount of storage you want when shopping around for an SSD. It might be tempting to go with something smaller because the price is right, but you’d be surprised how fast a 256GB and 512GB can fill up after installing a handful of games. Below are the best deals for internal and external SSDs that’ll fit your favorite games and media.
Where are the best Black Friday SSD deals?
In the US:
In the UK:
BLACK FRIDAY INTERNAL SSD DEALS IN THE US
Our state-of-the-art price-searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day.
BLACK FRIDAY EXTERNAL SSD DEALS IN THE US
Our state-of-the-art price-searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day.
BLACK FRIDAY INTERNAL SSD DEALS IN THE UK
Our state-of-the-art price-searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day.
BLACK FRIDAY EXTERNAL SSD DEALS IN THE UK
Our state-of-the-art price-searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day.
What should I look for in a Black Friday SSD deal?
The main things to watch out for are the same for Black Friday SSD deals as with any other technology bargain hunting you do around this week. Go in there with an idea of what you want and, above all, what you need. It’s easy to get carried away at this time of year, but if you know how much you want to spend and what sort of SSD you’re after, you’ll be in good stead.
Capacity is a good starting point, and at the moment, we’re looking at some excellent 1TB offers, but a 512GB SSD will still afford you a lot of speed storage for a boot drive, with enough space for your most regularly played games. I mean, they’re not all Call of Duty, right?
Then think about the interface. Chances are, if you’ve been rocking a PC for the last five years, you’ll have an M.2 slot in your motherboard with NVMe support. However, it’s worth digging into the specifics of your motherboard to ensure it can support booting from such drives as not all can. Check out the manufacturer’s pages and maybe forums too.
It’s also worth thinking about which version of the PCIe interface your storage slots operate on. On the AMD side, from the Ryzen 3000-series and up you should expect to have PCIe 4.0 slots on your motherboard, and from Intel’s 11th Gen Rocket Lake chips the same should be true. PCIe 4.0 drives are the current fastest (until Gen 5 drives drop, that is), but they still demand something of a premium.
That said, PCIe 3.0 drives are still incredibly speedy compared to anything that has come before, so you’ll be in a great place with any high-performance NVMe SSD purchase.
There are some things to look out for, however. Some budget PCIe 3.0 drives only operate at x2 speed, which means they’re half as fast as the standard x4 NVMe SSDs. It’s also worth ensuring your M.2 SSD is an NVMe drive. There are some M.2 SSDs that still operate over the SATA interface and can only reach a maximum theoretical speed of 600MB/s, while the theoretical maximum of an x4 PCIe 3.0 interface is 4,000MB/s.
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