PS5 SSD compatibility in August 2026: the best compatible M.2 drives, which need a heatsink, and Sony's height and speed rules

How much storage does a PS5 have, and how to get more

A launch PS5 has an 825 GB SSD with about 667 GB usable after the system reserve; the PS5 Slim ships with 1 TB (about 848 GB usable) and the PS5 Pro with 2 TB. At current install sizes that is six to nine big games on the launch model before the first patch. There are exactly three ways to get more storage on a PS5. An M.2 SSD in the expansion slot is the only one that runs PS5 games; a USB drive stores PS5 games and runs PS4 games directly; deleting and reinstalling is free and slow. The rest of this page is about the first option, because it is the one with rules to get wrong.

PS5 SSD compatibility: what Sony actually requires

The PS5's expansion slot takes a standard M.2 NVMe drive, and Sony publishes the requirements in full: PCIe 4.0 x4, 250 GB to 8 TB, a sequential read speed of 5,500 MB/s or faster, one of the five M.2 lengths from 2230 to 22110, and dimensions that include the heatsink: 22 mm wide (25 mm with heatsink), no more than 11.25 mm tall in total, with at most 8 mm above the board and 2.45 mm below. A heatsink is required, not optional. Everything else on this page follows from those numbers.

What Sony does not require is DRAM, a PlayStation licence or a specific brand. The verdict column applies only the published rules. "Compatible" means the drive meets every requirement out of the box, usually because it ships with a heatsink. "Compatible with a heatsink" means the bare drive meets the speed and interface rules and needs a low-profile heatsink added. "Not recommended" covers drives that fail a hard rule (PCIe 3.0, or a heatsink taller than the bay). "No PS5 statement from the maker" marks PCIe 5.0 drives: Sony's page names only Gen4, so a Gen5 drive is listed as usable only when its manufacturer says so, and otherwise left open.

The best PS5 SSD is a boring one

The best PS5 SSD is any PS5 compatible SSD at the top of the table: they read at 7,000 to 7,500 MB/s, carry DRAM and come with a heatsink sized for the bay. In PS5 loading tests they are indistinguishable from each other and from the internal drive, because the console's I/O pipeline, not the drive, sets the pace once the 5,500 MB/s recommendation is met. That makes price per gigabyte the deciding factor, and 2 TB is where it is lowest. Paying for a PCIe 5.0 drive buys heat and a heatsink problem, not shorter loads.

The licensed drives, the WD Black SN850P and Seagate's Game Drive PS5 NVMe, are the same silicon as the SN850X and FireCuda 530 with a PS5-shaped heatsink and a guarantee of fit. They are worth it when the price matches the unlicensed version and not otherwise.

Heatsink height is where drives fail

Most incompatibility reports come down to the heatsink. A 2280 drive is 2.38 mm thick bare; a heatsink adds anywhere from 5 mm to 15 mm, and PC-oriented heatsinks with fins or fans routinely exceed Sony's 8 mm above-board limit. The height column lists the manufacturer's figure for the heatsink version where it is published and stays empty where it is not, rather than guessing. When adding a heatsink to a bare drive, a flat aluminium plate of 3 to 5 mm keeps the total well inside the limit and is enough for the airflow the PS5 provides.

DRAM, speed below 5,500 MB/s and other soft rules

Sony's 5,500 MB/s figure is a recommendation, and drives below it install and run. Tests on drives rated at 4,000 to 5,000 MB/s show loads a few seconds longer in the worst case and identical in most. The table keeps them out of the "Compatible" group because Sony does not stand behind them, and because the price difference to a 7,000 MB/s drive has shrunk to a few dollars.

DRAM matters less than the spec sheets suggest. The PS5 cannot use the Host Memory Buffer that DRAM-less drives rely on in a PC, yet DRAM-less Gen4 drives such as the Lexar NM790 land within a few percent of DRAM drives in PS5 tests. Where DRAM shows is sustained writes, which on a PS5 means copying several 100 GB games to the new drive in one go. It finishes; it just takes longer.

PS5, PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro: the same slot, different starting points

All three models use the same M.2 expansion slot and the same requirements, so a PS5 SSD that fits the launch console fits the Slim and the Pro. What differs is how soon the slot matters. The launch model's 667 GB usable is gone after a handful of current releases; the Slim's 848 GB buys a few more; the Pro's 2 TB internal drive means many owners never open the panel. The panel itself is in a slightly different place on the Slim and Pro, but the procedure below is identical.

How to upgrade the PS5 SSD: installing the drive

The slot sits under the panel on the disc-drive side, covered by a single screw. Insert the drive at an angle, press it flat, fix it with the screw and spacer at the matching length marker, replace the cover, and power on. The PS5 asks to format the drive, reports the read speed it measured, and offers to make the expansion drive the default install location. Games can be moved between drives from storage settings at any time; saves remain on the internal drive.

Which capacity to buy

Price per gigabyte is lowest at 2 TB and has been for two years; 1 TB drives cost only a little less, and 4 TB drives cost more per gigabyte again. A 2 TB expansion drive holds roughly eighteen to twenty games of current average size and about ten of the largest. Since the PS5 uses the full expansion drive for games with no system reserve, 2 TB is the sensible default for anyone who keeps more than a few games installed at once.

Warranty, counterfeits and drives to avoid

The drives in the table come from manufacturers with published specifications and five-year warranties on their Gen4 flagships; a warranty claim needs the drive bought from an authorised seller, so marketplace listings with unusual prices are worth a second look. Counterfeit NVMe drives exist, typically relabelled low-end drives sold under a flagship name. The tell is the PS5's own measurement: after formatting, the console reports the read speed it measured, and a genuine 7,000 MB/s drive reports well above 5,500 MB/s. A drive that formats but reports 3,000 MB/s is either PCIe 3.0 or not what the label says. Drives with no manufacturer PS5 statement and no published dimensions for the heatsink version are listed as unverified rather than guessed at.

How the table is maintained

Every row is built from the manufacturer's product page and re-checked when a new revision or a heatsink version appears. Sony's requirements page is the source for the rules. Corrections and drives to add go through the contact page. For the storage question itself, the file-size database shows what a drive of a given size will hold.