PS5 SSD Upgrades Ahead of GTA 6 Pre-Loads, Starting at $174

Digital pre-loads for Grand Theft Auto VI start November 10, and the download is 212GB. That gives PS5 owners nine days to make room. If you're on a base model with a few games already installed, that window is tight enough that a storage upgrade is worth considering now rather than on launch morning.

The PS5 handles this through its M.2 expansion slot, which accepts a standard NVMe SSD. Plug in a drive, format it through the console's settings, and the system treats it as usable storage. Before you buy, though, there are three things to know about how that slot behaves.

What the PS5 slot can and can't do

The expansion slot only runs at PCIe 4.0 speeds. Gen 5 drives are backward compatible, so they'll work, but they'll drop to Gen 4 performance. In some cases a Gen 5 drive is still the better buy on price per terabyte, but you won't see its headline numbers in the PS5. Paying extra for Gen 5 speed on this console mostly means paying for headroom you can't reach.

Heatsinks are the second constraint. Sony recommends installing a drive with a heatsink, because without one the console can throttle the SSD to protect it. Some drives ship with a heatsink built in and cost more for it. Others leave it out, and you can buy a third-party cooler separately. Pricing the drive and the cooler separately is usually the cheaper route, but it adds a step.

The third point is capacity planning. Games get patches, and patches tend to grow installs over time. A 212GB download today can be noticeably larger a few months from now. If you're buying a drive mainly for this one game, leave room for the update cycle, not just the initial install.

Why prices are harder to pin down

SSD prices have climbed over the past year, and the source material attributes much of that to AI-driven demand for storage. That makes the current discounts more useful than usual, but it also means prices can move quickly. The listings below reflect prices at the time they were collected, so check the live price before you commit.

The drives worth considering

The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB is the high-capacity option. It's a Gen 4 drive with reported sequential read and write speeds of 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, and it's listed at $799.90, down from $1,099.99. It ships without a heatsink. The version with one is $944, so a third-party cooler is the better value if you go this route.

If 4TB is more than you need, the 990 Pro 1TB is listed at $259.99, down from $319.99. It's the same drive at a smaller size, and it would roughly double the console's built-in storage.

The WD Black SN850X comes in a 1TB model at $289 with its own heatsink, or $259.99 without one. Reported sequential speeds are up to 7,300 MB/s for reads and 6,300 MB/s for writes. The 2TB version is listed at $384.53, and the heatsink variant is $439.99. The 4TB SN850X is $655.86, and the heatsink version is $765, so again a third-party cooler is the cheaper path.

Budget buyers have a few options. The Black Opal NV7400 1TB is listed at $174.99. It has no DRAM cache, but the source describes its performance and power efficiency as good, with a strong warranty and high TBW rating. Sequential speeds are listed at 7,450 MB/s for reads and 6,500 MB/s for writes, and you'll need your own heatsink. The SN7100 2TB, at $338.99, reports reads up to 7,250 MB/s and writes up to 6,900 MB/s. It's another cost-conscious pick, and it also needs a third-party cooler.

The Samsung 9100 Pro is a PCIe 5.0 drive built on Samsung's Presto controller and 236-layer NAND. The 1TB model is listed at $249.99, down from $339.99, and is rated up to 14,700 MB/s reads and 13,300 MB/s writes. On a PS5, those top speeds are out of reach because the slot caps out at Gen 4. The 2TB version is $399.99, down from $679.97. Both need a third-party heatsink to avoid throttling. If you're buying the 9100 Pro, you're paying for a drive that's faster than the console can use.

Heatsinks that fit the PS5

If your drive doesn't include a cooler, two third-party options are on the list. The Mc1 M.2 SSD Cooler Heatsink is $14.90 and is designed to fit the PS5's expansion slot. The Sabrent M.2 NVMe PS5 Heatsink is $13.99 and serves the same purpose. Both are inexpensive compared with the drives they cool, so budgeting for one is a small addition to the total.

If you're buying a console too

Holiday demand could tighten stock on major consoles, and this season also includes Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time re-release. If you don't have a PS5 yet, the digital edition, which has no disc drive, is listed at $599. The GTA box copy is $79.99 and includes a code that you redeem on the console. The game still has to be downloaded before it can be played.

My read: for most people on a base PS5, a Gen 4 drive in the 2TB range with a cheap heatsink hits the best balance of speed, space and cost. It leaves room for this download and the patches that follow, and it avoids paying for speeds the console can't reach. Start the pre-load with headroom to spare, because the download is only the first thing the game will ask of your storage.