Ratchet’s authors are testing SSD extensions in the PS5 -apkrig console

Sony prepared a surprising but even more interesting report for yesterday. It will soon allow players to expand their storage on the PlayStation 5 with another SSD, for which Japanese designers have prepared a special slot. We’ve known about this option since the detailed analysis of the console, but Sony didn’t indicate when it would offer players a solution to the place problem. We are all the more eager to find out how fast storage will be, simply because M.2 SSDs are not sold cheaply. And since the firmware is currently available in beta only to players in selected regions, we have to settle for mediated test results. But we can thank the developers from Insomniac Games, who in their last game flashed with very fast loading times. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is therefore an ideal candidate to test how the additional SSD works, and the developers’ conclusions are positive.

Exciting to see PS5 beta testers getting access to the M.2 SSD feature! I’m sure the public beta will result in plenty of benchmarking across different games and drives, but I’ll spoil with some of our results from early testing at Insomniac on Ratchet & Clank: it’s looking good.

— Mike Fitzgerald (@fitzymj) July 29, 2021

“I am thrilled that the first beta testers were given the opportunity to test the M.2 SSD. I’m sure the public beta will result in a plethora of tests across different games and discs, but I can already reveal some of our results from early testing at Insomniac, “said Mike Fitzgerald, chief technology officer on Twitter. “It looks good,” he says optimistically, expressing his belief that Gen4 discs that meet Sony’s requirements will work just as well as internal storage. The differences are said to be indistinguishable, which is positive and in Rift Apart they were achieved in the same way insanely loading, as Fitzgerald adds.

However, it warns players who would try to place a disc in the PS5 that does not meet the specified specifications. “We tested some M.2 Gen4 drives whose attributes were below the recommended level, and we saw an approximately 15 percent drop in performance in the places that are most demanding on SSDs,” warns Fitzgerald. It’s not a big deal, but players should be extra careful about which disc to choose, suggesting that they should invest in the best. However, Sony makes no warranty in this regard and there is currently no list of officially supported discs, let alone a certificate.

So far, confirmation of support only comes from SSD manufacturers, with Seagate being the first to sign up with a suitable variant. He recommends his FireCuda 530 to his player, which not only meets the set speeds, but should fit into the slot in the console. A day later, the manufacturer Western Digital also signed up with its own variant with its WD Black SN850 model, which also meets the set specifications and will fit into the slot with a heatsink. It is sold in variants from 500 GB to 2 TB, while the cheapest 500 GB variant can be obtained in Czech stores for approximately CZK 4,000.