The short answer
If your PC has an M.2 NVMe slot, buy an NVMe drive. It's several times faster than SATA, and the price difference is often small. At some sizes NVMe is even cheaper (see today's prices below).
- NVMeNew builds and most PCs from the last several years. A PCIe 4.0 drive is the value sweet spot. It plugs straight into the motherboard, with no cables.
- SATAOlder PCs without an M.2 slot, or a cheap extra drive for bulk storage (game libraries, photos, backups). It connects with a data cable and a power cable.
- Gen 5Only if you move huge files all day (video editing, large datasets). Games load about the same as on PCIe 4.0, and these drives run hot and cost more.
Today a 1TB NVMe drive costs … than a 1TB SATA drive. Lowest prices right now: NVMe from …, SATA from ….
Today's prices by type
Lowest in-stock internal drive at any store we track, updated daily| Size | SATA | NVMe (PCIe 3.0/4.0) | NVMe PCIe 5.0 | NVMe vs SATA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading today's prices… | ||||
Some listings don't state the PCIe generation; those count as PCIe 3.0/4.0 here. The 500GB row includes 512GB drives.
What's actually different
| SATA SSD | NVMe SSD | |
|---|---|---|
| Top read speed | About 550 MB/s, the limit of the SATA connection | About 3,500 MB/s (PCIe 3.0), 5,000–7,400 MB/s (PCIe 4.0), 10,000–14,800 MB/s (PCIe 5.0) |
| Connection | SATA port on the motherboard, using the older AHCI protocol built for hard drives | PCIe lanes, using the NVMe protocol built for flash, with lower latency and many parallel queues |
| Shape | Usually a 2.5" box, plus a data cable and a power cable | Usually an M.2 2280 stick (22 mm × 80 mm) that screws onto the board |
| Heat | Runs cool | PCIe 4.0 runs warm; PCIe 5.0 usually needs a heatsink |
| Works in | Almost any desktop, and older laptops with a 2.5" bay | Any M.2 slot that supports NVMe. A newer drive works in an older slot, at the slower slot's speed. |
| Best for | Upgrading old PCs, bulk storage | The boot drive and games in any modern PC |
M.2 is a shape, not a speed. A few M.2 drives are actually SATA inside. Check the Interface column on our SSD page to tell them apart.
How much faster does it feel?
Going from a hard drive to any SSD is the big jump: boot times, app launches and game loads drop dramatically. Going from SATA to NVMe is a smaller but noticeable step, most clearly when copying large files, installing games and loading big projects.
Between NVMe generations, the gain in everyday use and gaming is small. A PCIe 5.0 drive copies huge files much faster than a PCIe 4.0 drive, but most games load within a second or two of each other. That's why PCIe 4.0 is the sweet spot for most people.
Upgrading a PlayStation 5? Sony asks for a PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe drive with read speeds of 5,500 MB/s or faster and a heatsink, so a SATA drive or a PCIe 3.0 drive won't work.
What matters more than SATA vs NVMe
- Capacity. Modern games take 100GB or more each. 1TB is the practical minimum for a gaming PC, 2TB is the comfortable sweet spot, and keeping 10–20% of the drive free keeps it fast.
- DRAM cache. Drives with their own DRAM cache stay quicker under heavy use. Budget "DRAM-less" drives borrow a little system memory (HMB) instead, which is fine for gaming but slower for big sustained jobs.
- TLC vs QLC flash. QLC drives are cheaper per terabyte, but they slow down sharply during long writes and are rated for fewer total writes. TLC is the safer pick for a main drive.
- Endurance and warranty. Look at the TBW rating (terabytes written) and the warranty. Five years is standard on good drives.
Buying tips
- Count your M.2 slots in the motherboard manual. On some boards, using a particular M.2 slot turns off one or two SATA ports or slows the graphics card slot.
- Use the motherboard's heatsink if it has one for the M.2 slot. You usually don't need a drive with its own heatsink, except for PCIe 5.0 drives and the PS5.
- Handhelds use a smaller size. Devices like the Steam Deck take short M.2 2230 drives, not the standard 2280.
- Moving to a new drive? Most brands offer free cloning software. A cheap USB-to-M.2 enclosure lets you clone without opening the PC twice.
- Mix and match. A fast NVMe drive for Windows and current games, plus a big SATA drive for everything else, is a cheap and sensible setup.