SSDs offer significantly faster speeds than traditional HDDs and now come at reasonable prices.
Youll have to go for a relatively low capacity to keep the budget low.
Still, a 500GB SSD is an excellent choice, with strong performers coming in significantly under $100.
Technically, you might save some money by going for smaller SSDs.
Still, below 500GB, its a little hard to recommend bothering.
As the price difference just isnt that much.
The main thing to consider is compatibility.
Theres essentially no price difference between SATA SSDs and NVMe ones, at least with PCIe 3.0.
If youve got a newer motherboard that supports PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs.
You should grab one of those if you could afford it.
Look for the uncommon SATA SSDs using the M.2 format.
It can be easy to confuse these with the much faster NVMe SSDs.
In contrast, NVMe drives exclusively have one essential cutout.
These do offer a significant performance boost over HDDs.
The Samsung 870 Evo
Key Features
Specifications
The Samsung 870 Evois generally one of the best SATA SSDs.
It covers you for five years or up to 300 TB written to the 500GB model.
That would fill the entire drive 600 times or 164GB daily for five years.
The DRAM cache helps to ensure optimum latency, something which some cheaper drives may drop.
Being a SATA drive, its limited in speed to around 560MBs.
If youre limited to SATA, then this is a perfect choice.
The Samsung 980
The Samsung 980is a strong but slightly cheaper M.2 SSD.
Like any good M.2 SSD, it is NVMe, not SATA.
The part where it saves money is the DRAM.
Traditionally, DRAMless SSDs suffer from increased latency and decreased longevity.
It offers standard longevity and a more minor increase in latency.
HMB is applicable where its supported.
However, its a very new feature and needs operating system support.
That means performance will be lower in older computers, assuming they support M.2 SSDs.
HMB also takes a relatively small chunk of system memory.
This could be an issue on budget computers with limited Ram.
The warranty is solid.
It is, in fact, identical to the warranty on the 870 EVO.
The SK Hynix Gold P31
The SK Hynix Gold P31 is the best PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDon the market.
It offers class-leading speeds while blowing away all competition in power efficiency.
Technically the 500GB only gives 3100MBs write speeds while the 1TB and 2TB models offer 3200MBs write speeds.
The SSD features DRAM for optimum latency.
While you may never have heard of SK Hynix, youve almost certainly used their hardware.
Its also the second largest DRAM manufacturer.
Historically it has sold to other companies to rebrand.
However, it has started to market its products directly, with all components designed and manufactured in-house.
It is slightly more than the 980, but the difference is less than $10.
The WD_BLACK SN850
The WD_BLACK SN850is one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
Its also very well priced, fitting in under $80.
It features class-leading read speeds of 7000MBs.
PCIe 4.0 compatibility is somewhat limited as the protocol is relatively new.
While it is backward compatible, this would limit the speed.
So ensure you double-check that your motherboard supports PCIe 4.0 before purchasing.
In conclusion, that was our roundup of the best budget SSDs in 2022.
Have you recently bought a budget SSD?
What sold you on it, and what has your experience been with it so far?
Let us know down below.
