The 7 Best PS5 SSD Upgrades for GTA 6 (2026)

The short answer: the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB (A$279, provisional 9.6) is the pick, fastest rated drive with the most consistent sustained behaviour, while the Crucial T500 2TB (A$215) is the value pick at near-identical specs. Full rankings and the bench plan below.

GTA 6 preorders are live, the launch is locked for Thursday November 19, 2026, and Rockstar has said nothing about install size. History says it will not be small. GTA 5 on PS5 already sits near 90GB, and current AAA open-world installs cross 100GB without blinking.

Meanwhile the launch PS5 shipped with an 825GB drive that leaves roughly 667GB usable, and most of those consoles have been full since 2023. Even the 1TB Slim does not leave much runway once a couple of live-service installs move in. If you are planning to be on the map at 00:01 on launch day, the M.2 slot in your console is the cheapest performance upgrade you will make this year.

We lined up seven Gen4 drives, all 2TB, all heatsink-equipped, all PS5-slot ready. The short version: the Samsung 990 Pro is the pick, the WD_Black SN850X is the backup, and the Crucial T500 is where the value is. One drive at the bottom of the table has an architectural quirk the PS5 does not play nicely with. Details below.

The field at a glance

Why the stock drive fills up

The math is unforgiving. The launch PS5's 825GB drive gives you roughly 667GB after the OS takes its cut. Subtract one Call of Duty class install, one live-service game you refuse to delete, and your existing GTA Online character's home, and you are deleting things you still play to make room for things you have not played yet.

We ran the full numbers, install by install, in Will GTA 6 fit on a stock PS5? The storage math. The summary: if GTA 6 lands anywhere near the 150GB planning figure we use, most stock consoles cannot take it without a purge. And launch week is the wrong time to discover that, because the preload will want that space days before November 19.

A 2TB M.2 drive roughly triples a launch console's usable space for between A$199 and A$289. That is the entire argument. Everything below is about which drive.

What actually matters in a PS5 SSD

The spec sheets in this category are written for PC buyers. The PS5 cares about exactly four things.

Gen4, and the 5,500MB/s line

The M.2 slot is PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe, and Sony recommends a sequential read of 5,500MB/s or faster. Every drive in this guide is rated between 7,100 and 7,450MB/s, so all seven clear the line with 25 to 35 percent headroom. Do not pay extra for the last 150MB/s of rated read speed: past the recommended line, the console's I/O pipeline is the bottleneck, not the drive.

A heatsink is not optional

Sony requires effective heat dissipation, and a bare M.2 drive streaming an open world for four hours is a throttling candidate. You can fit your own heatsink within the slot's size limits, but at current prices there is no reason to. All seven drives here ship with one fitted. The only nuance is clearance: the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX runs a deliberately low-profile heatsink, which is the no-measuring-required option if you are nervous about the slot cover.

DRAM vs HMB, the PS5 wrinkle

Six of the seven drives carry onboard DRAM for their mapping tables. The seventh, the Lexar NM790, is DRAM-less and relies on Host Memory Buffer, a technique that borrows host system RAM for caching. The PS5 does not provide HMB support. The drive still functions, and its rated 7,400MB/s read clears Sony's line on paper, but it runs without the cache architecture it was designed around. On a PC this is a clever cost saving. In a PS5 it is an open question we would rather not own for the sake of A$16. More in its writeup below.

Capacity

2TB is the answer at 2026 prices. The gap between 1TB and 2TB models has compressed to the point where 1TB is a false economy: one GTA-sized install plus a normal rotation and you are managing storage again by autumn. Every drive in this ranking is the 2TB model.

The pick: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB

The boring, correct answer. The 990 Pro is the fastest rated drive in the field and the one we would put in our own consoles before November 19. 7,450MB/s rated sequential read, 6,900MB/s write, TLC NAND, 2GB of onboard DRAM, a fitted heatsink, and a five year warranty. There is no axis on the spec sheet where it loses.

Manufacturer-rated sequential reads, top three picks:

At A$279 it carries a A$24 premium over the SN850X and A$64 over the T500. What you are paying for is Samsung's vertical integration: controller, NAND, and DRAM are all in-house, which historically translates to consistent firmware and consistent sustained behaviour. For a drive that will spend launch week streaming one enormous city off the same chips for hours at a stretch, consistency is the spec we care about most.

If the price gap bothers you, read the next two entries. If it does not, stop reading and order this one.

The backup: WD_Black SN850X 2TB

The drive we recommend when the 990 Pro is out of stock or on the wrong side of a sale. 7,300MB/s rated read, 6,600MB/s write, TLC, onboard DRAM, heatsink fitted, five year warranty. On a PS5 the 150MB/s rated-read gap to the 990 Pro is academic: both clear Sony's recommended line by a wide margin and the console will not show you the difference.

At A$255 it splits the difference between the pick and the value pick. The SN850X has been the default "other" PS5 drive for long enough that its track record in consoles is effectively the field's largest install base. There is no scenario where buying one is a mistake; there are just two adjacent drives that are slightly faster or slightly cheaper.

The value pick: Crucial T500 2TB

The spreadsheet winner. A$215 buys a 7,400MB/s rated read, 7,000MB/s rated write, TLC NAND, onboard DRAM, a fitted heatsink, and a five year warranty. On paper that is 99 percent of the 990 Pro's read rating for 77 percent of its price, and a write rating that actually beats it.

Crucial is Micron's house brand, so like Samsung the NAND comes from the company on the label. The T500 is the drive we point at anyone whose budget is real and whose console is full. The only reason it is not the outright pick is the 990 Pro's longer record at the top of this category. That is a conservative call, and we are comfortable with it at a A$64 spread.

The rest of the field

Four more drives, all PS5-legal, ranked.

Seagate FireCuda 530R 2TB

Spec-for-spec the closest thing to a second 990 Pro: 7,400MB/s read, 6,900MB/s write, TLC, DRAM, fitted heatsink. The problem is the price. At A$289 it is the most expensive drive in the field, A$10 above the pick, without a performance argument for the premium. Its one genuine differentiator is the warranty: five years plus three years of Seagate's Rescue data recovery service. If recovery coverage matters to you, this is the only drive here that offers it. For everyone else, the 990 Pro at A$279 is the better buy.

Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB

The quiet overachiever. 7,300MB/s read and a field-leading 7,000MB/s rated write, tied with the T500. TLC, DRAM, heatsink, five years. At A$249 it undercuts the SN850X by A$6 with a near-identical sheet. If you find it on sale below the T500, buy it without hesitation. At list price it sits in an awkward A$34 window above the value pick, which is the only reason it is ranked here and not two spots higher.

Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB

The MP600 PRO LPX was designed specifically around the PS5 bay: the LPX stands for low profile, and the included heatsink is the slimmest in the field. 7,100MB/s read and 6,800MB/s write are the lowest rated figures among the DRAM drives here, but both still clear Sony's line by a comfortable margin. A$239, TLC, DRAM, five years. The fit-and-forget option if slot clearance is your anxiety. It loses to the T500 on every number including price, which caps how high we can rank it.

Lexar NM790 2TB

The one to think twice about. The headline numbers look strong: 7,400MB/s rated read, 6,500MB/s write, fitted heatsink, five year warranty, and at A$199 it is the cheapest drive in the field by A$16.

The catch is architecture. The NM790 is DRAM-less and was designed around Host Memory Buffer, which borrows host RAM for its mapping tables. The PS5 does not support HMB. The drive still initialises, formats, and meets Sony's recommended read spec on paper, and plenty of owners run one without complaint. But it is operating without the caching design it was built around, and how that behaves under a sustained open-world streaming load is exactly the kind of question we want measured, not assumed. We will publish our own numbers once the bench run is complete.

Our position: at a A$16 saving over the T500, which has onboard DRAM and a higher rated write, the discount does not cover the uncertainty. If the NM790 drops to A$170 or below, the calculus changes. At A$199, buy the T500.

From the bench

Rated numbers tell you what a drive can do in the manufacturer's lab. The PS5 is its own environment, and GTA-class open worlds are the heaviest sustained streaming load a console drive sees. Here is what we measure for every storage review, per our methodology:

• PS5 internal format and the console's own read benchmark on first mount
• Cold-boot to main menu load times in a current open-world title, five runs, averaged
• Fast-travel load times mid-session after 60 minutes of continuous play, to surface thermal behaviour
• Drive surface temperature at the heatsink after the 60 minute soak

Until those numbers are in, every figure in this article is a manufacturer rating and is labelled as such. We will rerun the full suite on GTA 6 itself in launch week and update this page. The rankings above are based on rated specs, architecture, pricing, and track record; we do not expect the bench data to reshuffle the podium, but if it does, the page changes.

How to choose by budget

• A$280 or more: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB. The fastest rated drive in the field and the one with the least to prove. Fit it, format it, forget it.
• Around A$250: WD_Black SN850X 2TB, or the Kingston Fury Renegade if it is the one on sale. Either way you give up nothing the console can show you.
• Near A$215: Crucial T500 2TB. The best price-to-spec ratio in the field. This is the default answer for most people.
• Under A$200: stretch to the T500. The only drive below A$200 is the NM790, and the A$16 saving buys you the field's one open architectural question. If your budget truly stops at A$199, it will work, but read its section first.
• Slot clearance anxiety at any budget: Corsair MP600 PRO LPX. Lowest profile heatsink in the field, no measuring required.

Whatever you fit, do it before launch week, not during it. Preloads land days early, drive prices drift upward when demand spikes, and November 19 is a Thursday: nobody wants to be formatting storage on a Wednesday night.

And once the install is sorted, the next bottleneck is sharing the chaos: our best capture cards for PS5 in 2026 covers the cards that can keep up with launch night.