8 Gen4/Gen5 M.2 NVMe drives at 8TB are currently in our tracked catalogue. Cheapest Gen4: $0.167/GB. Cheapest Gen5: $0.241/GB. Published game-load testing found the two generations close to indistinguishable for gaming - see our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page for the cited measurements before generation drives your decision here.
Updated
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 8TB drive holds all five of those example titles installed simultaneously, with roughly 7.4TB 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.
8TB is the tier where capacity stops being the constraint for nearly any single-drive gaming library, per the arithmetic above - the remaining headroom after installing every example title cited on our capacity guide is itself larger than most buyers' entire libraries. This tier suits buyers consolidating multiple smaller drives into one, or maintaining an unusually large rotating library without ever uninstalling.
An 8TB drive used purely for games, per the publisher figures cited above, could hold dozens of large current titles simultaneously - the practical constraint at this tier shifts from "will it fit" to "is this the right amount of money to spend on capacity headroom you may not use." That's a genuinely different question from the one smaller tiers answer, and it's why this page frames 8TB as suited to a specific stated need rather than a default recommendation.
| Drive | Gen | Capacity | Cache | Price | $/GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD WD_Black SN850X 8TB NVMe SSD with Heatsink | Gen4 | 8TB | DRAM | $1337.65 | $0.167 | Buy Now |
| Lexar 8TB NM790 Internal NVMe SSD, 7000/6200 MB/s | Gen4 | 8TB | DRAM | $1499.99 | $0.187 | Buy Now |
| WD WD_Black SN850X 8TB NVMe SSD with Heatsink | Gen4 | 8TB | DRAM | $1529.99 | $0.191 | Buy Now |
| SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 8TB 850X NVMe Internal Gaming Solid State Drive with | Gen4 | 8TB | DRAM | $2049.99 | $0.256 | Buy Now |
| SanDisk 8TB Optimus GX PRO 8100 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD with Heatsink | Gen4 | 8TB | DRAM | $2199.99 | $0.275 | Buy Now |
| Drive | Gen | Capacity | Cache | Price | $/GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung SSD 9100 PRO w/Heatsink 8TB | Gen5 | 8TB | DRAM | $1928.00 | $0.241 | Buy Now |
| Samsung SSD 9100 PRO w/Heatsink 8TB | Gen5 | 8TB | DRAM | $2389.95 | $0.299 | Buy Now |
| Samsung SSD 9100 PRO 8TB | Gen5 | 8TB | DRAM | $2423.19 | $0.303 | Buy Now |
8TB carries the smallest population of qualifying listings we track in this cluster, and per-gigabyte pricing at this tier reflects that - it is priced for buyers who have a specific, large-library reason to want it, not as the default recommendation this page would give a typical buyer. See the live $/TB ladder on our capacity guide for exactly how much premium today's market is charging for the extra headroom over 4TB.
The cheapest Gen5 drive at 8TB costs $590.35 more than the cheapest Gen4 drive at the same 8TB 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 8TB 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.
If you arrived at this exact page from a search for 8TB 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.
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.
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 8TB 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.
This page only renders a full qualifying table when enough real, in-stock inventory exists at 8TB 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.
Every capacity we track · DRAM vs DRAM-less cache · Thermals and heatsinks · Back to the gaming SSD hub
See the live table above, sorted by $/GB - it updates as stock and prices change, so the cheapest listed drive is the cheapest one we currently track in stock at 8TB. We split the table by generation (Gen4 and Gen5 separately) rather than blending them, since mixing generations into one ranked list would bury a same-generation price comparison inside a cross-generation one.
Published game-load testing (see our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page) found the two generations close to indistinguishable for gaming specifically. At this capacity, compare the live Gen4 and Gen5 rows above on price - the cheaper tier is frequently the better buy for a gaming-only build, per the cited evidence. The same-money section below shows exactly what the Gen5 premium costs at this specific size today.
It can, and it varies by model line rather than by capacity alone - see our DRAM-vs-DRAM-less explainer for what the distinction means. The Cache column above shows what we could verify per listing; a dash means we could not confirm it from our own data, not that the drive lacks DRAM.
Check each listing individually - some model lines ship with a factory heatsink at this capacity, others don't. See our thermals page for the live fitted-vs-bare price comparison and what published testing found about cooling Gen5 drives specifically, including documented throttling behavior on drives run without adequate cooling.
It depends entirely on which games - see our capacity guide for publisher-stated install sizes on several major current titles, framed as estimates since install sizes change with patches. The section above works through the arithmetic against five specific, currently-cited examples at this exact capacity.
Some of the drives tracked on this page are also tracked in our PS5 SSD cluster, since a PS5-compatible Gen4 x4 NVMe drive is a standard gaming SSD by construction. Check each drive's own page for a PS5-specific compatibility note, or see our PS5 SSD hub for Sony's own published requirement - PS5 compatibility and PC gaming suitability are related but not identical questions.