In brief: If you’ve been looking for an easy way to expand the internal storage of your PlayStation 5, Samsung made a unique model of the 980 Pro SSD for Sony’s console. It comes in 1-terabyte and 2-terabyte versions, has a heatsink to help during prolonged gaming sessions, and can easily exceed Sony’s recommended sequential speed for a PlayStation 5 expansion drive.
The PlayStation 5’s internal SSD is so fast that it forced Epic to rewrite parts of the Unreal Engine 5 to account for the speedier storage architecture in the new console. That said, the advertised storage capacity is 825 gigabytes, of which users can use only a maximum of 667 gigabytes to hold their game library. Depending on the size of your games, you’re likely to run into space issues even if you use Sony’s compression technology to reduce installation sizes.
Also read: The most exciting games coming to the PlayStation 5
Modern AAA titles are ballooning in size every year, with some like Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War approaching 300 gigabytes. Other notable offenders are Spider-Man Miles Morales (170.5 gigabytes), Hitman 3 (105 gigabytes), Destiny 2 (101 gigabytes), NBA 2K22 (93 gigabytes), The Last of Us 2 (93 gigabytes), Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut (91 gigabytes), Mortal Kombat 11 (84 gigabytes), Rainbow Six Siege Ultimate Edition (68 gigabytes), Cyberpunk 2077 (64 gigabytes), FIFA 21 (56 gigabytes), Demon’s Souls (53 gigabytes), and Dirt 5 (53 gigabytes).
Enter the M.2 expansion port on the PlayStation 5 to the rescue. Sony officially added M.2 software support last month, which means you can now add up to 4 terabytes of fast storage to your console. Samsung today announced it redesigned its excellent 980 Pro SSD specifically for Sony’s console and coupled it with a heatsink that will easily fit in the available space of the PlayStation 5’s expansion slot.
The company says a heatsink is necessary to deliver sustained speeds of up to 7,000 megabytes per second for sequential reads and up to 5,100 megabytes per second for sequential writes. The dimensions are 24mm (W), 80mm (L), and 8.6mm (H), which are a perfect fit for the PlayStation 5 SSD slot, but you’ll be able to install this in a desktop PC just as well if you have enough clearance from other components.
As for when you’ll be able to buy one, it will become available at retailers and on Samsung’s online store on October 29. The 1-terabyte model will set you back $249.99, and the 2-terabyte model will be priced at $449.99. Both come with a 5-year warranty.