The best cost effective SSD in 2023 when you upgrade PC

Upgrade a computer to make it faster, the most cost-effective way is to change your old hard disk drive with solid state storage. The fastest flash drives will make your desktop or laptop feel snappier. Whether you want to replace an old hard drive or upgrade the capacity of your existing SSD, this guide will help you choose a best modern flash drive. 

If you upgrade your computer from old hard disk drive, the most affordable way to add fast storage space to a computer is with a 2.5-inch SATA drive. It’s also one of the easiest since almost every computer made in the last two decades will include a motherboard with Serial ATA connections. For that reason, 2.5-inch SSDs are the best choice for an older PC. Installation is straightforward, too. All you need to do is to connect it to your PC's motherboard after you’ve secured the SSD in a drive cage.

SATA drives is slower than their high-performance NVMe counterparts, because SATA III 's data transfers speed only can up to 600MB/s. But it has a significantly faster transfer speed than the mechanical drives.

Most newer computer comes with  one or more M.2 SSDs, which has the  different standards and specs. M.2 drives can feature either a SATA or PCIe connection. SSDs with PCIe connection are known as Non-Volatile Memory or NVMe drivers and are substantially faster than SATA connections. The Nvme Gen3 models have sequential write speeds of up to 3,000MB/s. 

Comparing to 2.5-inch SSD, installing an M.2 drive is noticeably easier. You just need put it directly onto the motherboard by tightening a single screw. You can install a SATA M.2 SSD into an M.2 slot with a PCIe connection, but you can’t insert an NVMe M.2 SSD into a M.2 slot with a SATA connection. For backward compatibility, it’s possible to use a Gen4 drive through a PCIe 3 connection, but you won’t get same speed of it.

M.2 drives come in different physical sizes. The common options are 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110. The first two numbers represent width in millimeters, the latter denote the length. Since 2280 is the default for many motherboards, so that you don’t have to worry about that.  Some boards with multiple standoffs can accommodate more than one size of NVMe SSD.

Crucial MX500 with sequential read speeds of 560MB/s and about $50 for the 1TB , is the best cost-effective choice for upgrading older PC with SATA connection only. I found some come with 5 years warranty with this link.

Crucial P2 with sequential read speeds of up to 2,400MB/s and about $60 for the 1TB,  is the best choice if your PC has M.2 slot with PCIe 3 connection. There are some with best warranty with this link.

Crucial P5 Plus with sequential read speeds of 6600MB/s is about $70 for the 1TB model. Notice that it’s Gen4 NVMe. When you buy it, make sure your PC is compatible with it.