SSD Compatability guide

Pretty much. It looks like the Firecuda and The WD SN850 (Mark Cerny approved) are the ones people are looking at. I have seen people state that the Samsung 980 Pro works too via the Beta testing phase.

I'm still waiting for an official post on what has been approved by Sony. Also, this article combines M.2 SSDs and external drive recommendations.

Remember the big caveat here: despite that recent support article which looks promising, Sony has not officially confirmed the SSDs that have received its stamp of approval yet in any kind of 'these are your best bets from us, the maker's of the console' kind of way.

IMO, depends on how limited you feel without one.

Personally I'm not in a position where I need immediate access to all my games. I play like 1-3 at a time. I don't mind re-downloading.

I think most people aren’t going to need storage expansion for their ps5 just yet, especially when you can store all of your PS4 games on an external drive and play them on ps5 for way cheaper. It all depends on your situation though

The hdd sellers are praying on those 'early adopters' that will want it for a premium price. Always been that way wirh everything.

The rest of us will pay reasonable prices in a year or so.

In my opinion, it’s best to wait after the beta because once the update is official, who knows if the storage expansion you plan to get works, even if it meets requirements.

In my opinion, it’s best to wait after the beta

normally I would 100% agree with this statement but if I've learned anything during this pandemic tech-wise, it's best to get whatever it is you're wanting while it's still in stock. I have a feeling these gen 4 m.2's will start seeing stock shortage very soon

Mark Cerny is well aware of that and wouldn't "promote" the WD model as that would look VERY bad on him and Sony if it wasn't compatible

He designed the fucking PS5, he knows his shit

Insomniac tweeted that they’ve been testing drives even before the beta came to us and even drives slightly under spec work. Beta testers are reporting smooth results with a variety of drives.

Cerny picked the SN850 for a reason. It’s compatible.

In a logical sense, yes, but I’m pretty sure there are companies that have stated that their product is compatible.

Considering Cerny recommended one of them, I think we'll be fine.

If you're not out of memory you should just chill and wait, and use the function to archive games on an external drive. When the SSD support launches for all users we'll be seeing a drop in prices after the first waves of shortages, when manufacturers start to release drives specifically meant for PS5.

Gaming is read speeds, IOPS, and latency. Write speeds are mostly irrelevant. That’s why SN850 is the gaming king. Best in class IOPS and latency, and top 3 in read speeds. All make for a beautiful partnership with the PS5’s custom I/O

Latency and I/O are the biggest things next to read speed. Write speed is not as important for PS5 games

Thanks for your responses

I don't think they ever layed out the requirement for write speeds. It probably won't be a big deal, for gaming the single most important factor is the read speed for data streaming, most or all write speeds from these top end Nvme SSDs should do the job.

Checking out that review of the MSI drive, it has tremendous IOPS and latency performance, this caught my eye though:

“Even with a fan blowing right onto it, the M480 thermally throttles—a first for our SSD reviews, even if it's just a bit. Without the fan, thermal throttling in our stress test happens very quickly.”

Seems to run very hot even with active cooling.

Lol, well that's gonna be real bad in a camped PS5 slot, I missed that part. Yikes

You should also do the tests with and without the little metal cover on over the expansion slot, at least for the temperature aspect.

I very much intend to test this as it very much intrigues me

Will you create a new post for your results or post them here? Looking forward to your results

That's my plan

The additional drive isn’t formatted in the same way the base internal drive is, so you lose almost none of the drives storage space I believe.

Also Sony hasn’t confirmed it will branding it’s own drives yet, or striking a licensing deal with a third party. It’s very likely it will but could be a few months off at least.

aren’t so tech inclined and just want to buy, plug and play.

That's all you'll do with any of them. Choose one off the approved list, pop it in, it'll prompt the format, done

Very unlikely as the market will be saturated with crap tons of NVME competition and with the covid still fucking over chip supplies to meet the insane demand for people working from home, not likely Sony is gonna bother

Well this is a beta for third party drives, maybe when the update is officially released, they will announce their own drive

Some people fill up 4TB HDD's worth a games on external drives, so.... is this reotorical question? A LOT of people are data/game horders

As more people are able to get their hands on pc components, which is increasing by the day as well, more of them will be snatching up m.2s as well

Shouldn't the supply increase as logical demand increases?

In normal times, yes. But this global chip shortage has hit every sector even tangentially related to tech really hard. I can't even buy a new camera lens because even those require chips to build.

Any way, I'm still planning on waiting a year or two for there to be a larger library of games I'd want installed at any given time. I'm hoping by then that this whole shortage will be over

I dont think theres going to be stock issues cause First, a lot of people is comfortable with the Storage right now. Second , theres abounch of options Samsung, Aorus, WD , seagate so it may be just one of them out of stock. third, if you really want one you should at least get 1TB and that aint cheap fam. Oh and not a lot of people got a PS5 yet most of the unit sold are scalpers.

Oh and not a lot of people got a PS5 yet most of the unit sold are scalpers.

You realize scalpers don't throw all the PS5s in a burn barrel, right? The small percentage of PS5 owners that did pay extra to scalpers probably are more likely to also pay a pretty significant amount for extra storage, too.

Ummm, you do realize that covid has fucked up chip supply chains for most electronics for the last 1.5 years right? With a sudden interest in PS5 expansion, M.2 NVME stock is gonna go to shit and so will pricing VERY fast

Adding a heatsink to a drive is pretty straightforward. You can search for installation guides for whatever heatsink you choose on YouTube.

Sony lists the dimensions a heatsink needs to fit. Make sure you find a heatsink that fits the dimensions

no, and yes as long as it meets sony size specs. This one will: