Several Reddit users have posted the first impressions for the PS5 SSD Expansion drive based on the beta firmware that’s available in the US and it’s really positive so far. We’ll go through each of the drives and what users have found as well as the price that you can currently get them for.
Unfortunately, we still don’t have the beta software here in Australia, but we’ll keep you posted once we do. For now, here are the impressions of the various drives.
WD_BLACK SN850 WITH HEATSINK
- WD Black SN850 W/ Heatsink – 500GB – $215 (Mwave) / $238 (Amazon)
- WD Black SN850 W/ Heatsink – 1TB – $366 (Mwave) / $528 (Amazon)
- WD Black SN850 W/ Heatsink – 2TB – $766 (Mwave) / $807 (Amazon)
Twitter user @ealexhudson confirmed to be using this drive ahead of Mark Cerny confirming it’s also what he’s going with and hasn’t had any issues with his PS5 so far. He said that the speed is registering at 6.5GB/s.
Nice to see I'm in the company of @cerny! I think these are fantastic drives, PS5 has been faultless with it so far but still early days. https://t.co/gQFgOJI0Q3
— Alex Hudson (@ealexhudson) August 1, 2021
When asked about the speeds, he said:
“Absolutely identical for me so far – haven’t noticed any differences. However I don’t have the latest Ratchet game, running that off the second disc works be a good test. I copied most games onto the drive to see what happens – 500gb of games copied over in a minute or so :D”
GIGABYTE AORUS 7000S SSD
- Gigabyte AORUS Gen 4 7000s – 1TB – $299 (Mwave) / $299 (Amazon)
- Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 7000s – 2TB – $599 (Mwave) / $569 (Amazon)
This is probably the cheapest M.2 SSD available. Reddit user FuzzyToasters confirmed it was working all good:
“Can confirm the Gigabyte AORUS 7000s 2 TB drive (came with heat sink) is working without issue so far. I believe it said the drive speed was around 6500 MB/s after formatting.”
“I moved all my ps5 games onto the drive and started downloading more ps5 games onto it while simultaneously playing Returnal. No issues so far, actually just beat the first boss on my fifth run or so a couple minutes ago. I checked the downloads and saw it was going strong at around 100MB/s even while the game was running.”
Another reddit user chimed in: “Also just fitted an AORUS 7000s 1TB. the height with heatsink is slightly over Sony’s spec (11.4mm vs 11.25mm) but fits no problem. PS5 reported the read speed as 6556MB/s. Shifted everything from my external ssd onto the AORUS. No problems so far.”
SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD
- Samsung 980 Pro (heatsink required) – 500GB – $189 (Mwave) / $161 (Amazon)
- Samsung 980 Pro (heatsink required) – 1TB – $299 (Mwave) / $289 (Amazon)
- Samsung 980 Pro (heatsink required) – 2TB – $695 (Mwave) / $660 (Amazon)
This is the SSD that a lot of people were banking on working, and the good news is that even without a heatsink it does seem to work, although results were better with one. Reddit user DanCTapirson used this heatsink, (we also recommend this one) but also tested without it and didn’t run into any issues (it’s still highly recommended you use one).
“Confirmed that the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB drive works without issue. PS5 recognized it instantly, formatted it and was good to go. Moved MK11 from the system storage to the M2, start to finish it took 78 seconds for 86gb”
The speeds that they got are below:
Returnal
Ps5 main SSD:
- Time to game 13.45s
- Time to move 4min 4s
Samsung 980 Pro:
- Time to game 13.37s
- Time to move 2m 3s
Ratchet and Clank
Ps5 Main SSD:
- Time to menu 7.51s
- Time to game 1.79s
- Time to move 2m33s
Samsung 980 Pro:
- Time to menu 7.55s
- Time to game 1.86s
- Time to move 1m4s
