1TB Gaming SSD: Gen4 & Gen5, Live Prices

Updated 2026-09-16

What 1TB actually holds

Weighed against the publisher-stated install sizes on our capacity guide (Cyberpunk 2077 at ~70GB, Grand Theft Auto V at ~125GB, Starfield at ~125GB, Baldur's Gate 3 at ~150GB, and Call of Duty at ~161GB "at launch," per each publisher's own Steam store page): a 1TB drive holds all five of those example titles installed simultaneously, with roughly 0.4TB left over for the rest of your library. These are publisher figures, not measured by us, and real install sizes grow with patches and content updates - so treat this as a snapshot of today's numbers rather than a permanent ceiling.

Who 1TB suits

A single actively-played large title plus a handful of smaller games is a realistic fit at 1TB, per the publisher figures above - but a library holding more than one of the largest current titles at once will feel the ceiling quickly. This tier suits a buyer who installs, plays, and uninstalls rather than maintaining a standing library, or who is pairing this drive with a second one for older titles.

A realistic scenario at 1TB

Picture a boot/OS drive scenario rather than a full library: Windows and background applications typically consume 30-60GB before a single game is installed, leaving roughly 900-950GB of the drive's nominal 1,000GB for games. Per the publisher figures above, that's comfortable room for one of the largest current titles plus several smaller ones - but a buyer planning to keep both Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 installed simultaneously, for instance, is already most of the way to the ceiling before adding anything else.

Gen4 at 1TB

Gen5 at 1TB

How 1TB compares to the capacity next door

Stepping up to 2TB roughly doubles the raw capacity for a price increase that, per our own live $/GB data, is frequently less than double the 1TB price - larger capacities often carry a lower per-gigabyte rate, not a proportionally higher one, because the fixed costs of a drive's controller and packaging spread across more storage. See the live $/TB ladder on our capacity guide for the current numbers at every size we track, rather than a generic rule of thumb.

The same-money note

The cheapest Gen5 drive at 1TB costs $76.77 more than the cheapest Gen4 drive at the same 1TB capacity right now - a live price fact, not a performance argument. See our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page for what published testing says that premium buys in practice.

This figure is computed fresh on every page load from live in-stock pricing, not a snapshot taken when this page was written - the actual dollar gap between generations at 1TB moves with the market, sometimes by a meaningful amount week to week, which is exactly why we compute it rather than state a remembered number. Treat it as today's answer to "what does Gen5 cost me at this size," not a durable industry fact.

Buying for 1TB specifically, versus a different size

If you arrived at this exact page from a search for 1TB specifically, it's worth double-checking that capacity is actually the right target before committing to it - our capacity guide lays out the same publisher-sourced install-size figures used above alongside the full live $/TB ladder across every size we track, so you can compare this capacity against its neighbors on one page rather than reloading this one repeatedly at different sizes. Nothing about the Gen4-vs-Gen5 question, the thermal considerations, or the DRAM-cache distinction changes by capacity - only how much of each you're buying does.

Reading the live tables above

Both tables are sorted cheapest-first by $/GB and refresh with the same pricing cycle as the rest of this site - a row that disappears has gone out of stock, not been removed from our catalogue. The Cache column shows DRAM or DRAM-less where our own data confirms it; a dash means the cache architecture is not confirmed for that specific listing rather than assumed either way. There is deliberately no speed column - see the doctrine note on the gaming SSD hub for why: every performance figure in this cluster is cited to a named publication, never asserted by us, and a bare manufacturer speed spec sitting in a sortable price table would invite exactly the apples-to-oranges comparison this cluster exists to avoid.

What this page does not do

It does not rank the drives above by speed, does not run a benchmark, and does not tell you which specific model to buy - it ranks by live price only, splits by generation so that comparison stays honest, and links to the cited testing this cluster relies on for the performance context a raw price table can't provide on its own. If you came here wanting a single "best 1TB gaming SSD" pick, the honest answer this page gives instead is: whichever row at the top of whichever generation's table fits your budget, since the cited testing elsewhere in this cluster found little reason to pay a premium for one drive over an equivalently-priced peer at the same capacity and generation.

Why this page can go thin, and what that means

This page only renders a full qualifying table when enough real, in-stock inventory exists at 1TB across both generations combined - the same exists-gate discipline this site applies to every capacity-specific page it publishes. If stock at this capacity thins out enough, this page is built to say so honestly rather than pad the table with an out-of-stock listing or a mismatched capacity dressed up as a fit. What you see above reflects real, currently-buyable inventory at the moment you loaded this page, not a static snapshot from whenever this page was first built.