Our list has picks for best PCIe 4.0 SSD overall, best on a budget, best for a game consoles, and more. Plus what you need to know about ultra-fast PCIe 4.0 drives in general.

The first PCIe 5.0 SSDs are finally almost here! Apacer and Zadak announced their upcoming SSDs that will reach up to 13,000MBps read speeds.

An NVMe SSD won’t perform any faster than the PCIe generation of the CPU/motherboard it’s installed in. Because of that, using a PCIe 5.0 SSD on a PCIe 3.0/4.0 system offers almost no benefit.

Your typical run-of-the-mill PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD costs around the same as an HDD, and that makes the SSD an obvious choice. However, there’s a lot of variety between different form factors and speeds.

The Lexar NM790 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is a great all-around drive that performs considerably faster in benchmarks and game loading times than older PCIe 3.0 drives and even most PCIe 4.0 drives we tested.

For example, PCIe 4.0 SSDs typically max out at the 7,000MB/s mark, while PCIe 5.0 SSDs can achieve up to 14,000MB/s or even higher - take the Crucial T705 SSD my colleague John Loeffler reviewed ...

You may like Next-gen PCIe 6.0 SSD to reach 512GB in capacity and 28GBps in performance, almost 2X faster than PCIe 5.0, but I can't see it reaching my desktop PC before 2030 AMD will launch PCIe ...

Micron has shown off the capabilities of its next-generation PCIexpress 6.0 SSD, hitting over 27GBps during a DesignCon 2025 showcase. In a partnership with Astera Labs, Micron paired two PCIe 6.0 ...

Meanwhile in the UK, you can take 28% (£75) off WD's Black SN850 PCIe 4.0 SSD, also in a 1TB capacity, bringing the price down from £267.99 to £192.48. You get the same mighty 7000MB/s write ...

Microchip introduced its 4016 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD controller for products to meet a PCIe ramp in 2024-2025. Micron introduced its 7450 multi-form factor NVMe PCIe Gen 4, 176-layer SSD line for ...