This Crucial P510 is one of the last bastions of reasonably priced gaming SSDs, but it won't be around for long

You won't find a discount on the Crucial P510 SSD at the moment, but if you have a PC build that can accommodate a Gen 5 drive, I'd jump on the chance to add it to your rig while you still can.

The prices of the best SSDs for gaming are continuing to rise, and this could be your last chance to grab 1TB of speedy extra storage before stock runs out and Crucial packs up its travelling wares to go and make data centres. So far, it's staying put at $139.99 at Amazon, but there's a lot of cause for concern that that reasonable price won't be around for much longer.

Besides the increasingly worrying SSD prices across the board, Micron (Crucial's parent company) has chosen to put an end to its RAM and SSD consumer brand, so stock for it and the rest of the brand's low-cost drives won't be around forever. If you're in the market for a Gen 5 drive for your rig, you don't have long before you'll need to sell your soul to afford one. Crucial has always priced its SSDs pretty fairly for how well they perform, so you don't have long to make use of this brand's value for money.

Crucial P510 1TB Gen 5 SSD with Heatsink | $139.99 at Amazon
According to its on-the-box speeds, this Crucial P510 SSD can reach 11,000MB/s read and 9,500MB/s write speeds to help boost the loading times and performance of your favorite games. With a heatsink in tow, you don't need to worry about sourcing your own either, but I recommend ensuring you have a rig that's set up for a newer Gen 5 drive.

UK: £150 at Currys

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As a word of warning, those after the best SSD for PS5 will want to make use of something else. While you can physically install a Gen 5 SSD in a PS5 if its dimensions fit in the M.2 slot, the interface won't work with your console, and you'll run the risk of damaging something. You'd be much better off grabbing the 1TB Crucial P310 SSD while it's available for $149.99 at Best Buy if you're looking to see Crucial's 30 years of service off with a bang.

The inflated SSD prices are mainly impacting top-performing drives due to their use of Nand cache tech - a result of AI production sapping the world's supply of computing memory. That much is true of the Samsung 990 Pros and the WD Black SN850X. For example, according to CamelCamelCamel's price-history data, the 4TB 990 Pro had been sitting just below the $350 price mark throughout October, November, and December of last year. The price of the 4TB drive then shot up to $450 and continued to climb until it reached $549.99 at Amazon, where it sits today.

It's a similar story with the 2TB WD_Black SN8100 SSD. The Gen 5 drive sat around $240 until its price began to rise as of December 2024. Right now, the drive is $510.60 at Amazon, which is an increase of over $270 in as little as a couple of months. IT's been similiar storry with the heatsink model, which rose from $299.99 late last year to its current $659.99 (Amazon) price point.

The rise in storage prices is a knock-on effect from the ongoing RAM-pocalypse, where the prices of memory has reached extortionate highs due to AI data centers hoarding all the stock that's out there. These data centers also rely on storage, and so SSDs are also being swallowed up too alongside their Nand components, leaving little stock for those of us who are just after some extra space to store and run our favorite games.

1TB models haven't been gobbled up and spat out at exorbitant prices as much as their 2TB and above counterparts, but it's only a matter of time before they follow suit. It's this reality that makes this Crucial P510 worth grabbing if your motherboard can facilitate a Gen 5 drive, and if 1TB is enough to get you by.

Micron Crucial is continuing to ship its consumer RAM and storage products until the end of February 2026, so I don't want to make you worry too much. Yet, with Crucial's decision to exit the consumer market and the rising costs of SSDs, it doesn't look good for ensuring that the Crucial P510 SSD and drives like it will stick at its current $139.99 price.

Before you head my words and eagerly add it to your basket, do remember that this is a Gen 5 drive. Its blistering read and write speeds of 11,000MB/s and 9,500MB/s may seem alluring, but you will need a rig that's set up to handle this next-gen storage. However, it's entirely valid to grab this right now if you're planning a new build just to keep your costs as low as you can, since prices are set to stay high until at least 2028. I can't promise your future build will be an affordable one, but gathering what you can (including an SSD) is a wise plan.

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Check out our guides to the best Xbox Series X hard drives, the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express Cards, and the best SSDs for gaming if you're after some new storage for your platform of choice.