If you've read through this whole buying guide and have a particular port or slot not covered yet, that's because you probably have one of the two outlier ports installed in your system: U.2 or mSATA. The Intel 670p is an older driver, but it is also a proven budget option that is often on steep sale. It’s best to grab it at 1TB or 2TB, as the 512GB model is slower with a smaller pSLC cache. The drive has DRAM, which is nice, and it has the fastest QLC on the market, even now. Performance outside of the cache does not suffer as much as a consequence. Even PCIe 3.0 is significantly faster than SATA in straight-up sequential tests, though. But that's just sequential speeds, and how fast a drive can copy a folder from one part of itself to another isn't all that matters these days. There's also the issue of capacity, We've introduced you to M.2 drives and 2.5-inch drives above, but let's get into them in a bit more detail. 2.5-Inch SSDs: The Basic Drive The PCIe 3 tests utilized Windows 10 64-bit running on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99 Deluxe system with four 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (Nvidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 card. It also contains a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card, and Softperfect Ramdisk 3.4.6 for the 48GB read and write tests.

An SSD metric called terabytes written (TBW) refers to the point where, after a certain amount of data being written to the drive, its cells will begin to fail, meaning the available space on the drive will shrink as the drive electronics compensate and take the failing cells offline. The TBW rating of a drive is usually anywhere between 100TBW and 3,500TBW, depending on the manufacturer, the capacity, and the use case, but for the most part this isn't a figure that will affect daily users. Before you open your wallet, be sure to prepare for this drive: it requires a heatsink to reach its highest levels of performance. Unlike with the T700, Team does not offer a heatsink version of the Z540. The heatsink requirement mostly precludes it from use in a laptop, and you can choose from less expensive options for the PlayStation 5. In fact, there are many solid Gen 4 alternatives that are much more budget-friendly without some of the Z540’s downsides, like its poor power efficiency. But if you want the very best performance right now, look no further. SATA is slowest: SATA isn't as fast as an M.2 PCIe or a PCIe add-in card, but the majority of desktops and many laptops support 2.5-inch SATA drives, and many doing typical mainstream tasks users won't notice the difference between a good recent SATA drive and a faster PCIe model.Solid-state drives come in all shapes and sizes and are built for almost every purpose. Whether you need a drive whose first priority is dollar-savings, or one that will load up a 4K movie in less than half a second, there's an SSD made for the job. U.2 is rare in consumer PCs; it's mostly made with enterprise customers in mind. A U.2 drive like the now-vintage Intel SSD 750 Series connects to a U.2 port on the motherboard via a special cable, or to a PCI Express M.2 slot using a special adapter. These drives almost always come in the 2.5-inch form factor. Unless you have a U.2 port on your desktop motherboard you want to use, you can ignore them. (And even if you do, you can still probably hook up an M.2 drive.) We have tested both the original version of this drive, which had a heatsink and 96-layer flash, as well as the updated Gaming version which has a heatsink and 176-layer flash. Inland also has updated this model with that flash and now offers a 4TB capacity option, sans heatsink for all capacities. We do recommend a heatsink for heavier workloads, which can be added yourself if you don’t fancy the Gaming model of Inland’s line or need a 4TB option. That said, those buying an SSD for professional applications such as filmmaking, server hosting, or anything else that involves large file transfers of the magnitude of hundreds of gigabytes daily will want to choose a drive that can withstand that kind of punishment for months, even years on end. (Credit: Zlata Ivleva) Random Read (4 KB, QD32) Up to 98,000 IOPS Random Read * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration ** Measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated

M.2 slots are now common in new desktop motherboards and practically universal in late-model laptops. M.2 solid-state drives are the 2.5-inch drive distilled to its essence, extremely minimal in their design and implementation. But they're also the most complicated to understand before you buy. (Credit: Joseph Maldonado) If an M.2 drive you're looking at has one of these special, big heatsinks on it, make sure your desktop's motherboard has the clearance above and around it to accommodate its bulk. Some desktop motherboards situate an M.2 slot right alongside the ideal expansion slot you'd use for your graphics card, for example, and the hardware can collide. Laptop designs typically can't stomach a special, tall heat sink at all.The SK hynix Gold P31 is still the gold standard for laptop SSDs, especially as it has DRAM, but it’s limited to PCIe 3.0 bandwidth, isn’t always available, and is limited to 2TB of capacity. The MP44 can get twice the bandwidth, but even in a 3.0 slot, it is inexpensive for 4TB and even has an 8TB option. Other alternatives, like the Crucial P3 Plus or Corsair MP600 Core XT, are slower and use QLC. The heatsink found on the Addlink A93 and other SSDs preclude them from laptop use and can add a little cost. Otherwise, the MP44 will have some competition at lower capacities, but it is worth a look if you can find it at the right price. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have come a long way in recent years: a long way up in speed and capacity, and a long way down in price. Details about the extent of our regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority are available from us on request.