Get this 2TB WD SN770M SFF SSD for its best price in months on Amazon for Black Friday Week
A speedy SSD for a lot less.
Adding a small form factor SSD to your gaming handheld can be a reasonably fuss-free and easy way of getting more storage onto your device without much fuss. We've long recommended this WD SN770M as an option for doing just that as one of the best Steam Deck SSDs out there, and it just so happens this option is down to £132 from Amazon for Black Friday Week. That takes 28 percent off its £184 retail price and marks this drive's best price in months.
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WD Black SN770M 2TB SSD (Up to 5150MB/s, M2 2230)Now £119.99 (was £183.99) |
In terms of speed, the SN770M provides some of the best numbers on that list, with up to 5150MB/s reads and 4000MB/s writes. Even if the actual speeds will be limited by the PCIe 3.0 interface, the SN770M is still capable of offering speedy storage compared to what's inside the Steam Deck already, while also yielding even more storage space. It's at least doubling the storage over the top-end 1TB OLED model. Otherwise, it's a four-fold increase over the 512GB model. If you've got an older 64GB or 128GB model, you'll see the biggest gains from capacity. Those with a base 64GB LCD model will also see larger gains in terms of speed, too, given it uses slower eMMC storage that maxes out at 300MB/s. Whichever model you're moving from though, you're going to see excellent gains in both speed and capacity.
Of course, this is a drive that can be fitted to other handheld consoles such as the Asus ROG Ally (and its Xbox brothers), and that's given its smaller M.2 2230 size, which means it fits perfectly into the 22mm x 30mm drive bay size allowed in these smaller consoles. You can try and use this in a more conventional sized PC if your motherboard supports an M.2 2230 drive, although at this moment, the more standard sized M.2 2280 drives in PCIe 4.0 form are much more powerful for much the same money, and arguably are easier to fit.
The tricky bit here is installing the drive into your Steam Deck. Unlike with a standard PC, it's a bit more involved than opening your PC up and slotting a drive into the M.2 slot and booting from there. It's also a bit more involved than slotting in a MicroSD card into a dedicated slot in the side of the console. You'll need to carefully take the Steam Deck apart following this handy iFixit guide, which walks you through accessing the internals, carefully removing a heatsink, disconnecting the battery and swapping the drive. From here, you can use a USB flash drive to reinstall SteamOS. It is a little more fiddly largely due to the smaller sizes, but if you've got patience (unlike me) and a few tools you should be perfectly capable of the procedure.
If you're after a speedy and capacious SSD for use in a handheld games console for less, this Amazon Black Friday Week deal on the 2TB WD Black SN770M is not to be missed.
