We’ve said it for years: Switching from a hard drive to an SSD is the single best upgrade you can give an aging PC. For those with newer PCs, however, there’s a next-level option: upgrading from a standard SATA III SSD to a newer and much faster NVMe M.2 “gumstick” SSD. And today, Amazon’s offering an amazing deal with the 500GB WD Black SN750 SSD for $108.
This drive was on sale for just $104 a couple days ago, but at $108 it’s still an incredible value. We absolutely loved the WD Black SN750 when we reviewed it in February, calling it “just about the best combination of price and performance in an SSD”—and that was at its full cost. But it’s key to check that your motherboard is compatible with NVMe drives, as not all are, especially if you purchased a budget motherboard or your system is several years old.
Ready for some technical terms? The WD Black SN750 is an M.2. 2280 3D TLC NAND SSD stick aimed at gamers. In our tests, it delivered solid performance during long write jobs, which is often a weak point with TLC drives. It didn’t quite beat the Samsung 970 EVO Plus in overall performance, but they were very close so as to be nearly indistinguishable—and WD’s SSD costs a decent chunk less.
Those results were for the 1TB version, however, which offers better performance than the 500GB drive thanks to its increased amount of NAND chips and data pathways. Still, the performance on this 500GB model should be pretty great, and if you’re currently rocking a 2.5-inch SATA III SSD, it’ll provide noticeable upgrade when you’re shifting around big bunches of files.