Black Friday is just over the horizon! Once you emerge from your carb coma, it’s a great time to start thinking about snagging a bit of extra storage for your PC in the form of a brand new SSD. If you’ve checked out the pros and cons of HDDs vs SSDs and are ready to make the jump to a solid-state storage solution, Black Friday is a great time to get a deal on a decent sized drive.
Whether you plan to get a smaller SSD just for booting up your operating system or a larger drive for storing your favorite games, you’ll notice an immediate drop in load times for either. Black Friday is a great time to secure big savings on larger storage devices—such as an SSD big enough to hold Red Dead Redemption 2 or Modern Warfare—or on more expensive SSD options like an NVMe M.2 drive. As noted in our guide to the best SSDs for gaming, NVMe drives are by far the fastest option when it comes to read/write speeds, but, outside of sales periods like Black Friday, aren’t as cost-efficient as SATA drives.
Bookmark this page and check back throughout the weekend to make sure you get the best price on all of the Black Friday deals and on whichever SSD will best suit your rig.
As Thanksgiving comes to a close, here are the best SSD deals available right now.
The best SSD deals in the US right now
The best SSD deals in the UK right now
Black Friday SSDs—when do they go on sale?
While Black Friday itself isn’t until November 29, you can expect the deals to arrive well before then. Previously we’ve seen sales start about two weeks in advance, so you should start checking any SSDs you want to buy in the sale from around November 15 onwards. As for when you should snap up that deal, that’s not quite as obvious. Most retailers will save their best deals for Black Friday itself, but there’s no guarantee that your chosen SSD will be included, or that it will still be in stock. If you’re looking for the absolute best deal, it pays to be flexible—waiting for November 29 and snagging one of the headline SSD deals. But if the drive you’re sure you want has a decent discount anytime in late-November, it’s worth getting it then and there.
Beyond Black Friday, the deals won’t stop. Cyber Monday will kick off on December 2, and the deals from that date will likely for until the week after, probably around December 9. From there, the deals could run into Christmas itself.
How to save money on SSDs during Black Friday
You can expect to see a lot of price cuts this November, so how can you be sure you’re actually getting a good Black Friday deal? While we’ll be searching out the best possible deals during the event itself, there are also a handful of common sense tips that will help make the process feel less overwhelming.
1. Check the price history
Every retailer will be touting its massive price cuts, but are those discounts as good as advertised? Sites like CamelCamelCamel can help you check. As well as letting you easily compare the price of a selected drive across many different sites, it also gives you access to its price history. A common trick is to display massive discounts based on the manufacturer recommended price—a price that drive may not have actually been sold at for years.
2. Do the research
Does your motherboard have an M.2 slot? Will your most played games all fit onto a 1TB SSD? How much are you willing to spend on extra storage? It’s worth taking some time to find out what you need or want, and what drives would help you achieve that. Some flexibility will help you get the best deal, but it’s also worth setting a budget to ensure that you’re not spending slightly more on a good deal for a drive you don’t actually need.