Best SSD for GTA 6 on PS5 — How Much Storage You Actually Need and What to Buy

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GTA 6 is expected to be one of the largest game installs PS5 has ever seen. Based on Rockstar's own history and signals from the leaks circulating this month, industry estimates put the file size somewhere between 150GB and 200GB. Nothing here is confirmed by Rockstar — treat every number in this article as an estimate until Rockstar publishes an official figure.

Here's the problem that creates. A base PS5 has 825GB of usable storage after the OS takes its cut. GTA 6 alone could take up 20–25% of that. If you've already got Call of Duty, EA Sports FC, a couple of Assassin's Creed games, and whatever else installed, you're not going to have room on 19 November without deleting something first.

That's the deadline this article is built around: upgrade your storage before launch, or spend launch night deleting games instead of playing the one you bought a new console generation to play.

Quick answer, if you're short on time: get a 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with a heatsink. The Samsung 990 Pro 2TB is our top pick, the WD Black SN850X 2TB is the closest alternative, and the Seagate FireCuda 530 is the budget option if price is the deciding factor. Full breakdown of all four picks below.

How Much Storage Does GTA 6 Actually Need?

GTA V, at launch in 2013, was a fraction of the size games ship at today — but even its later PS4/PS5 re-releases grew past 100GB with updated textures and assets. GTA 6 is a bigger game on every axis Rockstar has hinted at: two protagonists, a denser map, and a generation-later asset quality bar. A 150–200GB estimate isn't a guess pulled from nowhere — it's roughly in line with how other open-world flagship titles have scaled this console generation.

To put it plainly: nobody outside Rockstar knows the exact number yet. What we do know is the shape of the problem. Even at the low end of that estimate, 150GB is more than a base PS5's entire game library budget once you count anything else installed.

The practical recommendation, and the one we're building this whole guide around: 2TB minimum if you want to install GTA 6 alongside your existing library without constant shuffling. 1TB works if GTA 6 is going to be the only thing on your drive for a while — more on that trade-off later in this guide.

Internal M.2 SSD vs External Drive — Which Is Right for PS5?

This trips people up every console generation, so it's worth being direct about it: an external USB drive cannot run PS5 games. It can store them. Sony's system software only lets you play PS4 games directly off an external drive — PS5 titles have to be copied back to internal storage before you can launch them, which defeats the entire point of freeing up space for GTA 6.

An internal M.2 NVMe SSD is different. Once it's installed and formatted by the PS5, it runs PS5 games natively, at full speed, with no copying step. The console treats it exactly like its built-in drive.

That's why every product in this guide is an internal M.2 SSD, not an external drive. If you already own a large external drive, it's still useful — for storing PS4 games, backups, or media — but it's not a GTA 6 storage solution on its own.

One more requirement before you buy anything: PS5 needs a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with a heatsink (built-in or added separately) to meet Sony's official speed and cooling spec. Every drive below meets that bar.

Why the heatsink actually matters

This isn't a nice-to-have. PS5's system software actively monitors drive temperature and will throttle — or refuse to use — an SSD that's running too hot, which defeats the purpose of buying a fast drive in the first place. Some drives, like the Samsung 990 Pro's PS5-specific variant, ship with a heatsink pre-installed. Others require buying one separately if the version you're looking at doesn't include one.

Check the listing carefully before buying: a bare M.2 drive without cooling is not, on its own, a PS5-ready purchase.

Does PS5 Pro change any of this?

No. PS5 Pro uses the same M.2 expansion slot and the same PCIe Gen4 minimum spec as the standard PS5. Every drive in this guide works identically on either console — the storage maths around GTA 6's file size doesn't change based on which PS5 you own.

Our Top Pick — Samsung 990 Pro 2TB

The Samsung 990 Pro is the SSD most major tech outlets settle on when asked to name one PS5 upgrade, and it's our pick for the same reason: it's fast, it's reliable, and Samsung ships a heatsink version built specifically for PS5 compatibility straight out of the box.

Read speeds: 7,450MB/s — comfortably clears Sony's 5,500MB/s minimum requirement with room to spare. Capacity: 2TB, which lines up exactly with the minimum this guide recommends for a GTA 6-plus-your-library setup. Samsung backs it with a 5-year warranty, and it's been in the PS5 upgrade conversation since the drive launched — this isn't a new, unproven part.

Price: starting at approximately $140–$170 for the 2TB heatsink model (ASIN B0BHJDY57J), depending on ongoing sales. A no-heatsink version also exists (B0BHJJ9Y77) but isn't the one to buy here — PS5 requires a heatsink, and the integrated version is cleaner than sourcing one separately. That puts it mid-pack on price for a drive that consistently benchmarks at the top of its class.

Who it's for: anyone who wants the safest, most-recommended option and isn't trying to save the last $20–30 by going with a lesser-known brand.

Check the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB price on Amazon →

Best Alternative — WD Black SN850X 2TB

The WD Black SN850X is the drive most commonly cited as the 990 Pro's closest competitor, and for most buyers the two are close enough that either is a safe purchase. Read speeds: 7,300MB/s — a hair behind the Samsung, and not a difference you'll feel in load times.

Where the SN850X pulls ahead: it's available in a 4TB capacity, which the 990 Pro's PS5-specific heatsink version doesn't offer at the same price tier. If you're the sort of player who owns 15+ games and never uninstalls anything, that headroom matters more than a few hundred MB/s.

Price: starting at approximately $130–$160 for 2TB (ASIN B0B7CKZGN6, heatsink version — the same reasoning as the 990 Pro above applies here), generally a touch below the Samsung at equivalent capacity.

Who it's for: buyers who want near-identical performance to the top pick, want the 4TB option on the table, or catch it on sale below the 990 Pro's price.

Check the WD Black SN850X 2TB price on Amazon →

Best Budget Pick — Seagate FireCuda 530

If the goal is clearing Sony's speed requirement without paying a premium for the fastest benchmark numbers, the Seagate FireCuda 530 is the pick. It's still a genuine PCIe Gen4 drive — not a cut-down budget part that risks falling short of PS5's spec — just priced lower than the two picks above.

Price: starting at approximately $110–$140 for 2TB, typically the least expensive of the three Gen4 options covered here at the same capacity.

Who it's for: anyone who wants the storage problem solved at the lowest reasonable cost, without gambling on an off-brand drive that might not actually meet Sony's minimum speed requirement.

Check the Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB price on Amazon →

Future-Proof Pick — Crucial T700

Every drive above is PCIe Gen4. The Crucial T700 is Gen5 — meaningfully faster on paper, though PS5 itself can't take advantage of speeds beyond its Gen4 requirement. The reason it's on this list isn't PS5 performance. It's for players who split their time between PS5 and a Gen5-capable gaming PC and don't want to buy two separate drives for two separate systems.

Price: starting at approximately $100–$130 for the 1TB model — a smaller capacity than the other picks here, which is the trade-off for Gen5 pricing. If you go this route for GTA 6 specifically, 1TB is tight once you add anything else to the drive.

Who it's for: dual-system owners planning ahead for whatever comes after PS5, not players focused purely on this console generation.

Check the Crucial T700 1TB price on Amazon →

A Quick Note on What "NVMe" Actually Means

If you've never shopped for a PS5 SSD before, the spec sheets can look like alphabet soup. Here's the short version: NVMe is the connection standard that lets an M.2-format drive communicate directly with the console's processor instead of going through a slower intermediate controller, the way older SATA drives do. PCIe Gen4 is the specific speed tier of that connection — Gen4 is what PS5 requires, and Gen5 (like the Crucial T700 above) is the newer, faster tier that PS5 can't fully utilise yet but that some PC setups benefit from.

Every drive recommended in this guide is a PCIe Gen4 or Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD. You don't need to shop outside that category — a SATA SSD, no matter how well-reviewed, will not meet PS5's minimum speed requirement and won't be usable for installing games at all.

How to Install an SSD in Your PS5

Installing an M.2 SSD in a PS5 takes about 10 minutes and one Phillips-head screw. Rough steps:

1. Power off the PS5 completely and unplug it. Remove the side panel covering the SSD expansion slot.
2. Locate the expansion slot cover, unscrew the single retention screw, and remove the cover.
3. If your SSD didn't come with a pre-installed heatsink, attach one now — PS5 will refuse to recognise a bare drive without adequate cooling.
4. Insert the SSD into the slot at an angle, press down gently, and secure it with the same screw from step 2.
5. Replace the side panel, power on the PS5, and follow the on-screen prompt to format the new drive. It'll be usable within a minute or two.

For the full walkthrough with photos, Sony maintains an official SSD installation guide on playstation.com — worth reading once before you open the console for the first time.

Is 1TB or 2TB Better for GTA 6?

Short answer: 2TB, unless you're certain GTA 6 is going to be the only thing installed for a while.

A 1TB drive sounds like a lot until you do the maths. At a 150–200GB estimated install size, GTA 6 alone could take up 15–20% of a 1TB drive. Add your existing library — most players have at least 3–5 games installed at once — and you're right back to the deleting-games problem this guide opened with, just delayed a few months rather than solved.

2TB gives you room for GTA 6 plus a proper library without having to think about it every time a new game releases. It's the capacity every pick in this guide defaults to for good reason. If budget is the deciding factor, the Seagate FireCuda 530 gets you to 2TB at the lowest price of the four options above — a better move than buying 1TB from a pricier brand.

Get Ready Before 19 November

Whichever drive you land on, the goal is the same: have it installed and formatted before GTA 6 releases, not on launch night while your mates are already playing. Storage is the one piece of GTA 6 prep that takes an afternoon now instead of an emergency later.

For more on what else to know before launch, see our GTA 6 release date, price, and editions guide and our best gaming monitor for GTA 6 on PS5 breakdown.

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