We’re big fans of the WD Black SN850X, and this current Amazon SSD deal enables you to pick up a 2TB version of this high-speed drive for a very generous price of just $139.99, saving you a massive 26% on the usual $189.99 price. If you’ve been holding out for the right moment to expand your PC’s storage to 2TB, then now is a great time to do so.
The WD Black SN850X is currently listed as the best overall option on our guide to the best SSD for gaming, thanks to its combination of fast sequential read and write speeds, as well as its solid gaming performance. This Western Digital drive might not be as fast as the very latest PCIe 5.0 SSDs, such as the Crucial T705, but it’s much cheaper (especially right now), and it’s a great SSD for gaming.
The WD Black SN850X uses the 4x PCIe 4.0 interface, but you can also run it in a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, or indeed a PCIe 3.0 M.2 connector, but it will only run at around half its top speed in the latter. In our tests, we found that the 2TB WD Black SN850X hit a top read speed of 6,973MB/s, which gets close to breaking the 7,000MB/s barrier and is also a little bit quicker than the Samsung 980 Pro.
More importantly for gamers, though, we also found that the WD Black SN850X’s Game Mode really worked when it came to reducing game loading times, hitting a 965MB/s load speed in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, compared with just 739MB/s from the ostensibly faster Samsung 990 Pro.
The version of the SN850X in this deal doesn’t come with a heatsink, though, and we found this drive gets pretty hot in our tests, so you’ll need to make sure you fit one of your motherboard’s M.2 heatsinks to it if it has them. If you’ve never fitted an SSD before, then make sure you also read our full guide on how to install an M.2 SSD, where we take you through the whole process, including fitting a heatsink.
If you’re looking for an even faster drive than the WD Black SN850X, make sure you also read our Corsair MP700 Pro review, as this is our current favorite PCIe 5.0 SSD, and it comes with a really effective active cooling option too.