Everyone wants performance but not everyone has a lot of money to spend for said performance so we were asked “What is the best budget SSD for Gaming ?”, and we have tried our hardest to give you a proper answer.

Ever wondered why your system is running slow even after installing the latest CPU? That could be because of your hard drive. Typical hard drives are slow; SSD’s are fast, but SSD’s are pricey too. So after all of this talk, what’s the answer? In this article, we will try to find that out which would be some of the best SSD for the money.

So here is my list of The Best Budget SSDs for Gaming.

Enjoy!

Samsung 850 PRO SSD

After a revival in the mobile industry, Samsung has really come back in the SSD market. The Samsung 850 PRO is the bestselling SSD drive on amazon. It’s optimum for daily computer needs and is compatible with most of the CPUs out there. Samsung 850 PRO comes with the latest Samsung Mgx technology. It has high endurance with 3 bit per 3D NAND. Rapid mode inside Samsung 850 PRO provides great performance. Your data is secured with AES 256 bit technology and Microsoft eDrive encryption. It comes with a 5-year warranty from Samsung. The package does not include cable and screws which come at an extra cost.

With this pricing and the quality that Samsung provides we would rate it the #1 Gaming SSD Drive without a doubt, if you ever want quality for a low price then this is your best choice.

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SanDisk SSD PLUS

SanDisk SSD PLUS provides the best user experience on this list. It comes with SLC cache (Ncache 2.0) which is termed as the best in the market. However, the Samsung 850’s cache comes close to it. It is great for those who are concerned with saving their battery life. SanDisk SSD PLUS guarantees to enhance your battery life by 33%. It has long endurance for better results. This SanDisk drive provides 500+ Mb per second speed for both reading and writing purposes. It comes with a 10-year warranty from SanDisk.

SanDisk is also a great brand in this market; it’s known for quality although the prices aren’t the best. However fret not because if you buy an SSD of this brand you’ll be fine and impressed with its performance, however, it doesn’t fit the criteria to be chosen the best Gaming SSD Drive.

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ADATA SU655 480GB 3D NAND 2.5 inch SSD

ADATA SU655 is the cheapest option in this list. It comes with advanced LDPC ECC technology. The reading and writing speeds are 560 and 510 Mb per second respectively. It also has SLC caching like SanDisk Extreme Pro. For protection, ADATA has added RAID engine. ADATA SU655 has high TBW (total bytes written) for enhanced longevity of the drive. One more feature is the sleep device function that rests the drive while it’s in a non-function mode. It comes with a three-year warranty from ADATA.

Adata is the least well known & known for low quality when compared with brands like Crucial, Samsung, Sandisk and Intel, however if you don’t have the money then it’s totally fine to buy this SSD, it provides decent speeds and a 3 year warranty incase something goes wrong, however, it’s far from being our top pick.

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Intel SSD 545s Series SSD

Intel hardware is best known for its performance and credibility. However, for that, you have to pay more. It’s the priciest option in this list. It is power efficient and reduces battery usage by up to 90% in idle mode. The reading speed is 540 Mb per second, and the writing speed is 490 Mb per second. It’s best suited for Intel 4th generation processors. Intel 545s SSD uses 20nm NAND technology.

It’s not the most efficient choice due to the prices, however, we can guarantee that it will be just as good if not better than Samsung’s 850 PRO, it’s a great SSD and definitely one of the best available on market, however since it’s this expensive it can’t be our choice as the most efficient one.

Samsung and Intel are bigger companies than ADATA and SanDisk. However, hardware’s performance also depends on usage. Careless usage can damage any drive, and Efficient usage can make it live for ages. Make sure you choose a larger drive rather than a smaller one; it will serve you for a long time, as long as you buy any of the above SSD’s you’ve made an excellent choice by picking some of the best SSD for the money.

10 More SSD Reviews

For this post, I have put together a collection of the best ssd brands currently available.

After months of testing, we have reached a consensus on “what’s the best SSD Brand” and we will publish our results, all of this was done with proper testing methods & information/results archiving, which we will try to include here for you.

SSD’s are growing worldwide, it’s not just a futuristic and unnecessary component like many people thought when SSD’s were first released, in fact, it’s trending right now and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping its growth. According to some statistics, HDD’s will be entirely replaced by SDDs in a near future, they serve the exact same functions yet they are far, far more powerful and efficient, regarding gamers, there’s no such thing as the best SSD brand for gaming, the SSD has no particular function when it’s about gaming, it just does its usual job so getting any good SSD will help decrease your loading screen time.

While SSD’s don’t suffer from the same problems as HDDs with their average short life & easy to damage hardware parts, it is still important to know which brand to pick, while you do pay for the name, they are known for a reason, and that reason is QUALITY. Obviously though, not all of them are high quality, and we’re here to weed out all the “average” quality brands from the high-quality ones that are worth buying for a long-term & risk-free buy & as such find out which can be considered the best SSD brand on the market.

Things to keep in mind:

• Brand Reputation on all kinds of markets.
• Price
• Money Efficient

SSD Brand Reputation

Before purchasing you want to think to yourself:

“Is this a  well-known brand?”  as well as

“How are the reviews & Reputation of this brand?”

These are 2 crucial questions that separate a good from a bad brand, good brands usually are filled with great reviews and, therefore, a good reputation, and you’ll probably have heard about it before unless it’s a very specific brand (i.e.,: Only focuses on 1 market that may be on the rise or is not very well known yet to general society).

However, since you’re here, we will do the heavy lifting for you and tell you from our point of view the only a few reputable brands in the SSD market.

• Samsung
• Kingston
• Crucial

Speaking from experience and overall test results, we’ve acknowledged these 3 brands as the most reputable brands, they are all well-known brands especially Samsung, Kingston distinguishes itself as well in the RAM market while Crucial focuses on SSD’s and therefore may not be well known however we guarantee you they don’t fall behind, and you’ll see later on in this article.

Why these three brands?

Samsung

Samsung is well known throughout the world for many different markets, it’s not a surprise to find it here as well, Its reputation isn’t just a fluke, Samsung can back up its reputation with its products great quality in all kinds of markets.

Regarding SSDs, Samsung is continually producing new and improved SSDs every year, in fact, its latest product has received fantastic reviews and the speed is just as amazing, you may see our Samsung 850 SSD review, there is literally no reason to doubt Samsung, it’s always a remarkable brand regardless of whatever market you’re looking into, it’s always a reputable and excellent source.

Top 5 Samsung SSDs

Kingston

Kingston is another well known brand in the computer hardware world, especially in the RAM market, however it’s generally said that you pay for the brand when we’re talking about RAM, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for the SSDs that they produce & sell. From all the 3 brands, Kingston has the lowest average SSD price , although we also agree that the other two still excel in terms of quality, Kingston doesn’t provide as exciting speeds and overall life expectancy as the other 2 brands, but even so it doesn’t fall behind by a large margin, in fact, it’s also a safe brand if you aren’t willing to pay some extra money to buy a Samsung or Crucial SSD.

Top 5 Kingston SSDs

Crucial

Crucial is the least “well known” brand from the 3, however it’s far from being the worst either, Crucial has an excellent reputation in the SSD market, with almost no negative reviews, Crucial can and is compared to Samsung in terms of quality. Crucial provides the buyers with incredible speed and life expectancy, you can’t go wrong with Crucial SDDs, the price is also very similar to Samsung, there’s barely any distinction between the two besides an average of a slightly faster average speed on Crucial SSDs when compared to Samsung.

Top 5 Crucial SSDs

Conclusion

The answer is Crucial.

We have bought several products from many different brands but we have yet to point a single defect or adverse comment regarding Crucial, to be honest, we can’t do it either for Samsung but Crucial has the slight advantage over Samsung in terms of average speed which is why we have chosen it as the top brand, however by no mean are Kingston or Samsung bad, they’re also great brands which can easily keep up with Crucial, we would definitely recommend getting a Crucial or Samsung SSD for a safe long-term investment or a Kingston if you don’t want to invest that much into an SSD, it’s still a safe investment even though it still falls a slight bit behind, however you shouldn’t ever buy those very cheap SSD’s they’ll prove to be a bad investment as they tend to be low quality, remember to only purchase SSD’s from the best SSD Brand and/or Brands on the market if you want to make sure that you’re getting what you pay for.

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I hope this list of the best ssd brands was helpful.

If you think I left out one that is important or have a suggestion for a future article, let me know in the comments below.

Renato Costa, Senior Editor at InnoReviews