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When we think of GameStop, we don’t exactly think SSD. However, the company has released a PS5-friendly NVMe SSD “Card” that’s surprisingly capable. The heatsink is aesthetically pleasing, and the prices are good at all capacities. That’s almost too good to be true – what’s really behind this unusually marketed drive? Have any corners been cut to make this work?
We’re pleased to say the GameStop NVMe SSD is actually a pretty good bargain. Our testing revealed no unpleasant surprises, and the drive, on the whole, is a pretty good budget pick. Performance is good, power efficiency is acceptable for use in a laptop sans heatsink, and the hardware is surprisingly good. We’re not seeing any weird SSD controllers or flash here – just a reliable controller from Silicon Motion paired with Samsung flash. The heatsink is capable and PS5-compliant, so no complaints there. The only thing that might make you hesitate is the lack of hard specifications for the drive. However, in our testing, it meets our expectations, and this drive is backed by a known company. So far, so good. Let’s get into it.
GameStop NVMe SSD Specifications
Swipe to scroll horizontally Product 1TB 2TB 4TB Pricing $175.74 $237.49 $427.49 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Interface / Protocol PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 Controller Silicon Motion SM2268XT2 Silicon Motion SM2268XT2 Silicon Motion SM2268XT2 DRAM N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) Flash Memory Samsung 236-Layer TLC Samsung 236-Layer TLC Samsung 236-Layer TLC Sequential Read 7,400 MB/s 7,400 MB/s 7,400 MB/s Sequential Write 6,400 MB/s 6,400 MB/s 6,400 MB/s Random Read N/A N/A N/A Random Write N/A N/A N/A Endurance N/A N/A N/A Part Number 24VG-GSPL-NVMeSSD-Heatsink-1TB 24VG-GSPL-NVMeSSD-Heatsink-2TB 24VG-GSPL-NVMeSSD-Heatsink-4TB Warranty 5-Year 5-Year 5-Year
The GameStop NVMe SSD Card, or just NVMe SSD, was originally intended to be available only at 1TB and 2TB. Currently, there is also a 4TB version. These are priced at $175.74, $237.49, and $427.49 at the time of review. The 1TB price isn’t bad, being priced a bit above the Crucial P310 , the Kingston NV3 , and the Biwin Black Opal NV7400 . Considering this drive has a heatsink and TLC flash, it should be more than a match for any of those three. The price at 2TB has no competition at the moment, and the same goes for 4TB, for that matter. It’s a pretty good deal if you’re willing to go through GameStop for an SSD.
Specifications on the drive have limited availability. It’s rated for up to 7,400 / 6,400 MB/s, but no random read and write IOPS numbers are given. It should be able to hit 1 million IOPS or more, if that matters to you. The warranty should be good for the standard five years, but this is not clearly indicated, plus we don’t have TBW endurance information. This is a red flag for some, but we would expect the drive to be covered for the normal 600TBW per TB. This drive is manufactured in Taiwan, which has us thinking about Nextorage, but of course, that would have a Phison controller, which our sample does not, but it should be treated about the same. The lack of TBW and warranty information would be most concerning to heavier users who want to use this drive for workstation tasks, and we cannot recommend this drive for that use case.
GameStop NVMe SSD Software and Accessories
With limited direct support, we have to recommend third-party utilities for drive management. We recommend CrystalDiskInfo for general drive information. For cloning and data backup, check out MultiDrive for Windows and Clonezilla for everything else. While not having official software can suck, it’s usually not a big deal in our experience. If you are someone who wants firmware updates, you might want to look elsewhere, though.
GameStop NVMe SSD: A Closer Look
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