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Indeed, it’s only worth spending money to upgrade your PS4 or PS4 Pro if you’ve got a big library of games that you’re still going to play, and if you’re not going to be buying a new console close to launch.įiddling around with electronics can be daunting, especially if you’ve not done it before – even though Sony officially supports upgrading your console’s storage. With new consoles on the horizon, it makes upgrading the PS4 look like a trickier proposition – it’s arguably better value to save money for a new console.
#Ssd drive ps4 series#
The PS5 and Xbox Series X are coming soon, and both will include SSDs.
#Ssd drive ps4 Pc#
While adding an SSD will improve your console by a solid amount, it’s not going to make your PS4 like a PS5 or a high-end gaming PC in terms of responsiveness or loading times. Slotting an SSD inside your PS4 or PS4 Pro will deliver a performance boost, but it’s worth tempering your expectations. It’s just that the difference will be more obvious on the PS4 Pro, and only that console will properly utilize the speed provided by a new SSD. Make no mistake – you’ll get a decent performance boost by using an SSD inside both the PS4 and the PS4 Pro. The PS4 Pro’s peak speed matches the pace on offer by the best 2.5in SSDs, so they’re a good match – while the original PS4’s connection will bottleneck most of the SSDs you can buy these days. The original PS4 has a slower processor and its SATA II connection tops out at 300MB/s. The PS4 Pro has a better processor and a newer, faster SATA III storage interface that has a theoretical peak bandwidth of 600MB/s.
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If you’ve got a spare SSD lying around, that’s obviously a huge money saver – but this won’t apply to most people.īoth the PS4 and PS4 Pro will benefit from an SSD upgrade, but internal differences mean that the PS4 Pro has the most to gain. Hard disks and SSDs both have the space to handle a solid library of games, but hard disks offer better value when it comes to pure size. These prices don’t compare favorably to traditional 2.5in hard disks: if you want a 1TB or 2TB drive, expect to pay under $50 and $100. If you want a mammoth 4TB or 8TB drive you’ll be paying at least $500. SSDs have improved in price and capacity, and the PS4 and PS4 Pro’s ageing storage infrastructure means you don’t have to buy a newer, pricier drive to give your console a boost – but there’s no doubt that they can still be expensive.Ī decent, mainstream 1TB SATA SSD costs between $100 and $140 and doubling the capacity increases those prices to $200 and $300. An SSD may be initially expensive, but there’s more headroom for future use. Once you’ve retired your PS4, your SSD will be fast enough for use inside a desktop PC or a laptop, or you could buy a cheap caddy and use it as external storage with your computer or your PS5. The PS4 and PS4 Pro use SATA II and SATA III storage connections, which are not particularly modern – but using an SSD will give you more future options than the console’s ageing hard disks. And, as a bonus, SSDs are silent, while hard disks make occasional clicking and spinning noises. It’s unlikely that either an SSD or a hard disk will fail, but an SSD will have better reliability for a longer period. Even if you choose an SSD that’s the same size as your console’s hard disk, you’re still going to get a solid speed boost.īecause SSDs use flash storage, they have no moving parts – and so there’s less to go wrong when compared to hard disks, which have rotating platters and moving arms. Realistically, most consoles will still be using a 500GB or 1TB hard disk, so fitting a decent SSD will deliver a speed boost and a capacity improvement in most machines. The original console is sold with a 500GB drive and the Pro has a 1TB hard disk – its 2TB variant was only a special edition. With games getting bigger, having more space is important, and larger capacities compare well to the PS4 and PS4 Pro’s default storage. Those capacities match many of the 2.5in hard disk options currently available. Years ago you’d have to pay through the nose just to get a 256GB SSD, but now it’s easy to find SSDs with 1TB and 2TB capacities or higher. It used to be the case that SSDs were fast but tiny – happily, times have changed. You’ll get improvements in-game, with less pop-up and faster texture loading – and you may even see framerate improvements because games aren’t stalling due to sluggish loading.
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An SSD will improve your system’s boot and game loading times, and the console’s menus will be smoother.
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