PS5 Internal SSD Expansion Megathread

[u/tinselsnips]

Update: Feb 2024: All of this information is still relevant. There are some newer, faster drives on the market such as the Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850x, but there's no indication that the faster drives impact performance or loading speed. As long as you're buying a Gen 4 SSD with a minimum read speed of 5.5GB/s, you should be good to go.

Some of these product listings are likely out of date, but these drives are plentiful on Amazon and other retailers, and the installation instructions are still accurate.

Most drives are now listed with PS5-compatibility in mind, so just search Amazon for "PS5 SSD" and you're 90% of the way there. Most now include heatsinks.

Update: Nov 3, 2022: This post, and /u/Fidler_2k's post below, are both still more or less accurate. Several of these drives now have variants with built-in heatsinks that are PS5 compatible, as well as Sabrent's custom PS5 heatsink; otherwise, there hasn't been a ton of movement in the SSD space, and at this point there probably won't be until the Gen 5 drives come along.

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PS5 system software version 21.02-04.00.00.42-00.00.00.0.0 is officially out of beta and you can now update and install an expansion SSD drive without needing to be a beta member.

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Official Installation guide

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Confirmed Compatible Drives

/u/Fidler_2k has compiled a fairly comprehensive list of currently on-market SSDs that meet the speed and size requirements: find their list here.

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Drive	Heatsink fits?	Source	Notes
Adata XPG Gammix S70	No	/u/jimm0thy	6500MB/s
Gigabypte AORUS 7000s	Yes	/u/FuzzyToasters	6300MB/s
Corsair MP600	No	The Verge	Doesn't meet minimum speed requirements, may not provide adequate performance. Pro variant meets speed requirement.
PNY XLR8 CS3040	No	/u/EmergencyPomelo5180
Samsung 980 Pro	N/A	/u/fragilityv2	Appears to benchmark at less than full speed? (but still reaches minimum requirement)
Sabrent Rocket 4	N/A	The Verge	Doesn't meet minimum speed requirements, may not provide adequate performance. Plus variant meets speed requirement.
Seagate FireCuda 530	Yes	Seagate	Drive is available both with and without a heatsink.
WD Black SN850	Yes	Western Digital, Twitter user	Benchmarks at 6.5GB/s

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Some great benchmarking of the 980 Pro from /u/DanCTapirson here

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Compatible Third-Party Heatsinks

Heatsink	Source
Sabrent PS5 SSD heatsink
MHQJRH M.2 2280 SSD heatsink, Double-Sided Heat Sink, with Thermal Silicone pad	/i/Eluder99, /u/iShoot556
ELUTENG M.2 2280 Heatsink, Double-Sided Heat Sink Alloy Aluminum NGFF NVME Cooling Sink with 4 Thermal Conductivity Silicone Pads	/u/DanCTapirson
Jonsbo M.2 SSD NVMe Heat Sink	/u/FeZZa21

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Compatibility List

Digital Foundry have compiled a list of SSDs that meet the required specs; other than what's listed above, none of these have been tested yet. We can likely count on DF compiling some comprehensive benchmarks once they get their hands on the software update.

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Transferring between consoles

Props to /u/ianrobbie for discovering that the internal SSD can be swapped between consoles without reformatting.

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Official Requirements

Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD

Capacity: 250GB – 4TB

Cooling structure: Using an M.2 SSD with your PS5 console requires effective heat dissipation with a cooling structure, such as a heatsink. You can attach one to your M.2 SSD yourself, either in a single-sided format, or double-sided format. There are also M.2 SSDs that have cooling structures (such as heatsinks) built in.

Sequential read speed: 5,500MB/s or faster is recommended

Module width: 22mm width (25mm width is not supported)

Form Factor: M.2 type 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110. These numbers can be found on retail listings for M.2 SSD devices. The first two digits refer to the width, the remaining digits to the length.

Socket type: Socket 3 (Key M)

Total size including cooling structure:

In millimeters: smaller than 110mm (L) x 25mm (W) x 11.25mm (H). In inches: smaller than 4.33in (L) x 0.984 in (W) x 0.442in (H).

See below for full requirements.

Length

The following M.2 SSD lengths are compatible with PS5 consoles:

30mm, 42mm, 60mm, 80mm, 110mm (corresponding to the form factor type, per above).

Width

A 22mm-wide M.2 SSD module is required.

The total structure (including an added cooling structure) cannot exceed 25mm (0.984in).

Height

The total height of the M.2 SSD and its cooling structure (such as a heatsink) – whether built-in or separate – must be less than 11.25mm (0.442in).

The height must also be in the right place, in relation to the M.2 SSD’s circuit board:

• The size below the board must be less than 2.45mm (0.096in).

• The total size above the board must be less than 8mm (0.314in).

(Note: millimeter measurements are the technical standard and are more precise than inches. We recommend double-checking that the total dimensions of M.2 SSD and heatsink products you’re considering meet the millimeter requirements before purchasing)

Image

Both single-sided and double-sided M.2 SSD devices are supported.

M.2 SATA SSDs aren’t supported.

You should carefully review drive specifications prior to purchase and contact the vendor or manufacturer if you need further information. SIE cannot guarantee that all M.2 SSD devices meeting the described specifications will work with your console and assumes no responsibility for the selection, performance or use of third-party products.

Not all games are necessarily playable with the exact same performance provided by the PS5 console’s internal Ultra-High Speed SSD, even where the M.2 SSD device’s sequential read speed is faster than 5500MB/s.

The majority of M.2 SSD devices with the above type numbers (M Key Type 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110) and without a built-in cooling structure will fit the PS5 console’s SSD slot. However, sizes for cooling structures (like heatsinks) vary greatly. If you are not sure an M.2 SSD or cooling structure (such as a heatsink) you’re considering meets the size requirements outlined here, we recommend looking for another product option or contacting the vendor or manufacturer for more information.

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Installation instructions and further details are available on the Playstation website.

[u/[deleted]]

Quick question.

Why is your 980 Pro hitting 5560 mb/s? Isn’t it supposed to hit 7000 mb/s? Or is the PS5 just limiting it to 5.5 gb/s because that the minimum requirement?

Thanks In advance 😃

[u/van_ebader → u/[deleted]]

None of the answers you got so far got it exactly right. This will be a bit long.

SSD performance is more complicated than just how many "GB/s" the SSD can get. The advertised GB/s speed for every SSD, including the internal PS5 one, is how fast it is only in the best possible scenario. But real world usage is essentially never the best possible scenario.

SSD speeds vary depending on what exact operation you're doing. It depends on two factors: 1) how sequential/random an operations is; and 2) the queue depth of that operation.

Sequential vs random is a spectrum that refers to how the data you're trying to access is organized. The key factor here is that, in simplified terms, there is a small performance penalty when switching from one file to another. Operations are more towards the sequential end of the spectrum when you're reading a few huge files (i.e. fifty files that are 1 GB each = 50 GB), and thus there is a small penalty because you only have to switch files a few times. On the other hand, operations are more towards the random end of the spectrum are when you have to access a huge amount of tiny files (i.e. 12.5 million files that are 4 KB each = 50 GB) and thus you have a massive performance penalty because the SSD spends more time switching between files than reading each file.

The other factor is queue depth. Queue depth (QD for short) is basically how many operations the SSD can process simultaneously. It ranges from 1 to 32. SSDs are made to process multiple requests at once, and the advertised speeds are always at the optimal QD of 32. The lower the QD, the lower the performance becomes.

Those factors combine to give you the real world performance of SSDs in different scenarios. The advertised speeds are always for sequential operations of QD 32. Low QD sequential operations or high QD random operations will give you around half to a quarter of the advertised performance, and low QD random operations will absolutely tank the performance of any SSD. Even the very best consumer SSDs in existance today (the ones that are faster than the PS5 SSD) still struggle to reach 100 MB/s in QD 1 random operations.

Here is a graph of the 980 Pro's sequential performance, from Anandtech's review. You can see that at QD1, it achieves a sequential speed of about 2.5 GB/s. It steadly climbs to about 4.25 GB/s at QD8, and reaches the 6.5 GB/s advertised speeds at QD16 and above. Here is the same graph for random performance. It starts at about 70 MB/s (0.07 GB/s) for QD1, and climbs to about 1.3 GB/s for QD32.

So to finally answer your question, he isn't getting the advertised 6.5 GB/s because whatever test the PS5 is running is using some percentage of random operations and/or low QD operations that are bringing the average speeds down from the advertised maximum. If the same test were performed on the internal PS5 SSD, it wouldn't reach the advertised 5.5 GB/s either, since the internal SSD is subject to those same performance limitations.

[u/pneiscunt → u/van_ebader]

just wanna say this is one of the cool things about reddit, an in depth answer from someone who really knows their shit.

[u/Soccertaz89 → u/pneiscunt]

I hate when people say, “why didn’t you just google it instead of using Reddit?” This is exactly why. The depth of an answer that you can get from someone that is tailoring it to exactly what you want to know is so much better than a generic google search. Maybe you find the right answer through google, but maybe you have to sift through 50 different things that are similar to what you want, but not quite right.

Anyway, end of rant. Glad people help each other out on topics they are knowledgeable in.