Solid state storage has never been cheaper, sure, but it’s still going to set you back a pretty sum if you hoped to totally replace your NAS drive with terabytes of the solid stuff. That’s why we recommend running your PC on solid state and keeping your cold storage on some chunky spinning platters for the best bang to your buck. You’ve picked the right time to buy in too, what with Amazon Prime Day deals offering some sweet storage discounts.
While us PC gamers love our super-fast SSDs for Steam, Origin, the Epic Games Store, and Battle.net, we also love a good NAS drive. Am I right? Well, if you’re a content creator with a ton of footage from gameplays or Twitch VoDs, you’ll want one, and that’s why the WD Red Plus 10TB drive has piqued our interest at 40% off. It’s only rated to 5400RPM but that shouldn’t be too much trouble for storage not in constant demand. Also the plus model should mean it’s the better CMR variant, not the SMR model, but make sure to check whatever turns up.
Beyond HDDs and spinning platters, we’ve got the fantastic Crucial MX500 1TB SATA SSD at 20% off—perfect for game library storage where the snappy performance of an NVMe is not always utilised to its fullest, or if you’re already occupying all your available NVMe M.2 slots. There’s also Samsung’s 860 Pro 1TB at 33% off for those that won’t settle for less than top performance, even from a SATA drive. You could even bump that to a 4TB drive if you have $729.99 burning a hole in your pocket.
Bear in mind you’ll need to be a Prime member to use many of the deals listed below. If you aren’t a member, or don’t fancy signing up, Newegg is also offering many deals on similar products, so check them out.
There are plenty of options for cheap storage this Amazon Prime Day 2020, and we’re sure to see more come Black Friday at the end of the month.
If you’re still wondering which drive to go for, let’s run through the basics. HDDs, or spinning platters, are your slowest drives around today, at least commercially, and are best for cold storage (stuff you won’t touch all that much). SSDs come in two main flavours: SATA and NVMe. The latter is the fastest, and thus what we would recommend for a boot drive. Just be sure to check that you have an available M.2 slot on your motherboard, or spare PCIe slot and adapter, and that it’s rated to PCIe speeds.
You can read more and see our recommendations over in our best SSD for gaming guide.