A 1TB NVMe SSD is the most cost-effective upgrade you can make to a gaming PC today: shorter load times, near-instant boot, and if you go PCIe 4.0 or 5.0, plenty of headroom for years to come.

PCIe 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0: what it actually changes

Of the eight, two are PCIe 5.0 (the Samsung 9100 PRO reaches up to 14,700 MB/s, but needs a compatible motherboard to take advantage of it), four are PCIe 4.0 (WD_BLACK SN850X, Kingston NV3, Samsung 990 EVO Plus, and SanDisk Extreme, between 5,000 and 7,300 MB/s), and two are PCIe 3.0 (Netac NV3000 and fanxiang S500 Pro, up to 3,500 MB/s, with the Patriot P300 even lower). For gaming today on a recent motherboard, PCIe 4.0 is the sweet spot between price and performance; PCIe 3.0 is still fine if you just need the space and your board doesn't support more.