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Sony open up M2 SSD port to beta testers of system software

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess
For the speeds on the PS5 its a mess I dont mind honestly
 

Mr Moose

Member
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess
Why would you come into a thread that has prices and lie like that?
 
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess
What are you even talking about?

There will be plenty SSDs with integrated heatsinks available. A proprietary solution is never in any way a better solution.
 
  • Not all games are necessarily playable with the exact same performance provided by the PS5 console’s internal Ultra-High Speed SSD, even where the M.2 SSD device’s sequential read speed is faster than 5500MB/s.
This is the portion I was worried about, the whole channel thing is bound to create some overhead when going from 6 to two channels
Yeah Cerny said we needed >5.5GB/s ones, and it seems Sony have backtracked on this requirement. I wonder what could be the reasons now? 🤷‍♀️
1 - Not all games use bandwidth in the same manner, I would expect most third party titles to run well on drives that offer performance similar to what the xbox machines have, others on much less
2 - Read the point in the first quote, they recommend 5500MB/s, but they are not even willing to set the expectation that if you were to get a 5500MB/s drive you will never have to transfer the games to the internal SSD
 

Tripolygon

Banned
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess
Why am I not surprised that you would make such a really stupid statement. This is no different than how PS2, PS3 and PS4 supported open market storage solutions. And the price of an SSD that work on PS5 is cheaper than the expansion storage the XSX use.

PNY CS3040 5.6GB/s
1TB - $159
500GB - $89

 
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2 - Read the point in the first quote, they recommend 5500MB/s, but they are not even willing to set the expectation that if you were to get a 5500MB/s drive you will never have to transfer the games to the internal SSD

For some people buying a cheap slow SSD would be great for storage. Then if they have any games that require high speeds they can install them on the faster drive.

At least I hope that option will be available.
 
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess

Are you sure you're a PC gamer?
 

ManaByte

Member
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess

Remember when you said there was no Series S?
 
Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.
You compare some mid-range drives to some of the very top of the line drives out there... The question is how will prices turn out to be in a year or two?

I say this trusting you looked into it correctly, if MS sells their proprietary drives even close to the price these third party drives are sold at they are screwing you big time, their drives perform like middle of the road nvme drives (which is fine), Sony has a top tier IO solution, if you want to upgrade and not loose too much functionality (assuming it makes a difference, which we will see pretty fast when someone tests the PS5 with slower drives) . They're two completely different classes of products, the better drives usually last much longer as well, so in a sense it's a win to "force" people into buying the good stuff.
 
For some people buying a cheap slow SSD would be great for storage. Then if they have any games that require high speeds they can install them on the faster drive.

At least I hope that option will be available.
You can already get an external SSD (I don't like external drives, so I get why someone would not want to do this)

But given the way things are worded it seems to me that the PS5 will accept any nvme drive (that is not SATA), but if the drive is too slow work well with a given game you will have the same option as you would have with a USB drive (copy to the built-in storage)... which would open the door to slow/cheapo solutions—to be used at your own risk, games that don't do much streaming should, I imagine, work well with 2500MB/s drives, but they will load a bit slower.

I wonder if and when this will be tested with drives that don't fit the specs, given the wording I don't think that there is a list of "approved" drives in the machine.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
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You can already get an external SSD (I don't like external drives, so I get why someone would not want to do this)

But given the way things are worded it seems to me that the PS5 will accept any nvme drive (that is not SATA), but if the drive is too slow work well with a given game you will have the same option as you would have with a USB drive (copy to the built-in storage)... which would open the door to slow/cheapo solutions—to be used at your own risk, games that don't do much streaming should, I imagine, work well with 2500MB/s drives, but they will load a bit slower.

I wonder if and when this will be tested with drives that don't fit the specs, given the wording I don't think that there is a list of "approved" drives in the machine.

That's what I'm hoping for because slower drives tend to be cheaper.
 

splattered

Member
Storage solution will be exactly the same in the upcoming revisions, I can bet everything on that. There's nothing half-baked about it.

I really hope they find a way to make it more plug and play friendly with Sony/partner branded solutions or something soon. Why the fuck have they not even partnered with any company at this point to have anything specific ready by now? I expected Western Digital to have drives ready for market by now at the very least. This isn't about "choice" ... The average consumer that wants expandable storage is going to be completely lost going this route, esp with the heatsync requirements. The fact that different drives are going to provide different levels of game performance also sucks. Why is this a "beta" program and not a "we've been working on this for you guys for 3+ years, here is the best possible solution at the best possible price" moment... I would be pissed if i only owned a PS5.
 

Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue



You could go this route and buy your own heatsink. Seems you may be able to get one for about $20 separately. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-wd_...-for-laptops-desktops/6425637.p?skuId=6425637. I bought it when it was $349.99 U.S. $399.99 now on sale from $529.99(allegedly)
 

Elios83

Member
And people wonder why Microsoft went proprietary. Not only did they have support and function at release, there's no clusterfuck on the consumers end trying to figure out what will work, how much it cost, where they can get it or whether or not it's even available.

Sony completely fucked this up. Not only is any possible drive more expensive than Microsoft's option, they require a heat sink that you also have to buy which doesn't come with any of these high-speed SSD's.

What a mess

Consumers don't have to figure much at all.
By the time the firmware will be out of the beta phase (September?) there will be already a clear list of recommended SSDs with heatsinks already mounted on that you can buy and install with no issues.
The beta was released just today and Digital Foundry is already indicating 4 models that satisfy all the requirements and you don't have to buy any heatsink separately at all:
  • Seagate FireCuda 530 (heatsink version available) - $255/£200 for 1TB
  • Western Digital Black SN850 (heatsink version available) - $250/£218 for 1TB
  • Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen 4 7000S - $199/£188 for 1TB
  • Patriot Viper VP4300 - $225/£210 for 1TB
You're pretty much stating incorrect things just to do useless console war.
Microsoft's solution has half the speed of these SSDs, it's a gen behind technology and you can only use it on the Xbox console, with a non proprietary solution if you decide you don't need the extra space on PS5 anymore at some point you can use the drive on your PC or even as a general purpose fast external unit. And in the long run competition among different brands will drive prices down quickly, at this stage this is still pretty much state of the art technology and most people will continue to be perfectly happy with the internal storage.
 
Consumers don't have to figure much at all.
By the time the firmware will be out of the beta phase (September?) there will be already a clear list of recommended SSDs with heatsinks already mounted on that you can buy and install with no issues.
The beta was released just today and Digital Foundry is already indicating 4 models that satisfy all the requirements and you don't have to buy any heatsink separately at all:
  • Seagate FireCuda 530 (heatsink version available) - $255/£200 for 1TB
  • Western Digital Black SN850 (heatsink version available) - $250/£218 for 1TB
  • Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen 4 7000S - $199/£188 for 1TB
  • Patriot Viper VP4300 - $225/£210 for 1TB
You're pretty much stating incorrect things just to do useless console war.
Microsoft's solution has half the speed of these SSDs, it's a gen behind technology and you can only use it on the Xbox console, with a non proprietary solution if you decide you don't need the extra space on PS5 anymore at some point you can use the drive on your PC or even as a general purpose fast external unit. And in the long run competition among different brands will drive prices down quickly, at this stage this is still pretty much state of the art technology and most people will continue to be perfectly happy with the internal storage.

If anything Sony is just protecting themselves by stating that you need a heatsink. I honestly don't believe any PS5s will catch on fire if you forget to put one in it. Maybe the performance of the SSD will suffer if you don't have one but that remains to be seen.
 

dotnotbot

Member
I really hope they find a way to make it more plug and play friendly with Sony/partner branded solutions or something soon. Why the fuck have they not even partnered with any company at this point to have anything specific ready by now? I expected Western Digital to have drives ready for market by now at the very least. This isn't about "choice" ... The average consumer that wants expandable storage is going to be completely lost going this route, esp with the heatsync requirements. The fact that different drives are going to provide different levels of game performance also sucks. Why is this a "beta" program and not a "we've been working on this for you guys for 3+ years, here is the best possible solution at the best possible price" moment... I would be pissed if i only owned a PS5.

 
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Mr Moose

Member
Consumers don't have to figure much at all.
By the time the firmware will be out of the beta phase (September?) there will be already a clear list of recommended SSDs with heatsinks already mounted on that you can buy and install with no issues.
The beta was released just today and Digital Foundry is already indicating 4 models that satisfy all the requirements and you don't have to buy any heatsink separately at all:
  • Seagate FireCuda 530 (heatsink version available) - $255/£200 for 1TB
  • Western Digital Black SN850 (heatsink version available) - $250/£218 for 1TB
  • Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen 4 7000S - $199/£188 for 1TB
  • Patriot Viper VP4300 - $225/£210 for 1TB
You're pretty much stating incorrect things just to do useless console war.
Microsoft's solution has half the speed of these SSDs, it's a gen behind technology and you can only use it on the Xbox console, with a non proprietary solution if you decide you don't need the extra space on PS5 anymore at some point you can use the drive on your PC or even as a general purpose fast external unit. And in the long run competition among different brands will drive prices down quickly, at this stage this is still pretty much state of the art technology and most people will continue to be perfectly happy with the internal storage.
Can save ~£20 on the SN850 with heatsink on Scan (cheapest I've found so far, and £159.98 without heatsink).
 

Derktron

Banned
Ouch, this seems like a complete hassle, and Sony should have thought about this, this is not going to go well for the common consumer who does know about specs and what to buy for expanded storage. I don't understand why Sony went this route and could not do what Xbox just did and make their own storage or sooner or later allowed companies to make their own. This is stupid and a big turn-off for me and the people that will defend it are the reason why companies get away with such stupidity such as this hassle and the fact that you have to beta test this is funny.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Ouch, this seems like a complete hassle, and Sony should have thought about this, this is not going to go well for the common consumer who does know about specs and what to buy for expanded storage. I don't understand why Sony went this route and could not do what Xbox just did and make their own storage or sooner or later allowed companies to make their own. This is stupid and a big turn-off for me and the people that will defend it are the reason why companies get away with such stupidity such as this hassle and the fact that you have to beta test this is funny.
It's just like putting them in a PC's motherboard, it's not hard.
The screws!

95b.jpg
 

Gobjuduck

Banned
Ouch, this seems like a complete hassle, and Sony should have thought about this, this is not going to go well for the common consumer who does know about specs and what to buy for expanded storage. I don't understand why Sony went this route and could not do what Xbox just did and make their own storage or sooner or later allowed companies to make their own. This is stupid and a big turn-off for me and the people that will defend it are the reason why companies get away with such stupidity such as this hassle and the fact that you have to beta test this is funny.
Sony has a fanboy problem. They have an army of people defending every bad decision they make. On the other hand Xbox has a perception issue, and they can never do anything right, but this leads them to making decisions that are consumer friendly. Look at the $70 dollar price increase from sony, you will see fans defending it. While xbox got blasted for the xbox live gold price increase, so they quickly made a correction.
 

splattered

Member

Compatible with PS5 sure, not made for the PS5. There are a handful of drives linked on the forum already - some that come with the heatsync and some that don't. I guess people will just have to stick to those drives for now until something more official is released. I'm still not touching this until there is some sort of hardware revision. If that never happens then i guess i'm just skipping PS5 this generation, no biggie.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Compatible with PS5 sure, not made for the PS5. There are a handful of drives linked on the forum already - some that come with the heatsync and some that don't. I guess people will just have to stick to those drives for now until something more official is released. I'm still not touching this until there is some sort of hardware revision. If that never happens then i guess i'm just skipping PS5 this generation, no biggie.
That's rather... drastic/dramatic.
 
Ouch, this seems like a complete hassle, and Sony should have thought about this, this is not going to go well for the common consumer who does know about specs and what to buy for expanded storage. I don't understand why Sony went this route and could not do what Xbox just did and make their own storage or sooner or later allowed companies to make their own. This is stupid and a big turn-off for me and the people that will defend it are the reason why companies get away with such stupidity such as this hassle and the fact that you have to beta test this is funny.

It's probably going to be a lot easier than you think. As someone whose built a PC before installing an NVME is a really simple task. And it should be even easier to do with the PS5.

I honestly believe relying on the PC market isn't a bad idea due to all the completion between the different SSD manufacturers. The consumer will benefit from this.
 

Derktron

Banned
It's just like putting them in a PC's motherboard, it's not hard.
The screws!

95b.jpg
And here we go.......................................Just as expected with the ignorance. Trying telling that to the soccer mom. This is why companies get away with murder. Or heck try telling that to the common gamer who is not a nerd like yourself
 

Topher

Gold Member
And here we go.......................................Just as expected with the ignorance. Trying telling that to the soccer mom. This is why companies get away with murder. Or heck try telling that to the common gamer who is not a nerd like yourself

Sony is going to provide a list of compatible SSDs to those soccer moms. If they can replace the batteries in the remote controlled toy monster truck they bought for little Timmy then they can handle this.

It will be ok.

Cartoon Yes GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants
 
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ViolentP

Member
And here we go.......................................Just as expected with the ignorance. Trying telling that to the soccer mom. This is why companies get away with murder. Or heck try telling that to the common gamer who is not a nerd like yourself

It sounds like you have settled into the idea of an ignorant society. People are smarter than you think, information is ample, and the process is easy. If you don't know that first hand, you shouldn't defend the contrary.
 

TheBomb

Member
If anything Sony is just protecting themselves by stating that you need a heatsink. I honestly don't believe any PS5s will catch on fire if you forget to put one in it. Maybe the performance of the SSD will suffer if you don't have one but that remains to be seen.
I'm glad Sony mentioned it.
 
And here we go.......................................Just as expected with the ignorance. Trying telling that to the soccer mom. This is why companies get away with murder. Or heck try telling that to the common gamer who is not a nerd like yourself

You don't need to be very intelligent to be able to swap an NVME in a PS5. All you have to do is know how to read a list and then remove the plates and a screw to install the NVME. There's already guides on YouTube on how to do that and it's fairly simple to do.



I honestly think you're talking about people that are severely handicapped. Even using a console can be a complicated task for them depending on how serious their disability is.
 
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phil_t98

#SonyToo
I think while Sony's idea is great in principle I just think for the casuals it will cause a fair few issues regarding the heat sync and stuff
 
Consumers don't have to figure much at all.
By the time the firmware will be out of the beta phase (September?) there will be already a clear list of recommended SSDs with heatsinks already mounted on that you can buy and install with no issues.
The beta was released just today and Digital Foundry is already indicating 4 models that satisfy all the requirements and you don't have to buy any heatsink separately at all:
  • Seagate FireCuda 530 (heatsink version available) - $255/£200 for 1TB
  • Western Digital Black SN850 (heatsink version available) - $250/£218 for 1TB
  • Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen 4 7000S - $199/£188 for 1TB
  • Patriot Viper VP4300 - $225/£210 for 1TB
You're pretty much stating incorrect things just to do useless console war.
Microsoft's solution has half the speed of these SSDs, it's a gen behind technology and you can only use it on the Xbox console, with a non proprietary solution if you decide you don't need the extra space on PS5 anymore at some point you can use the drive on your PC or even as a general purpose fast external unit. And in the long run competition among different brands will drive prices down quickly, at this stage this is still pretty much state of the art technology and most people will continue to be perfectly happy with the internal storage.
You greatly underestimate the ignorance of the average consumer, for the average consumer which this product is a 90th percentile this is a clusterfuck. Also that's not correct, Microsoft's drive is not half as slow as Sony's. There's a big difference between the way they advertised their SSD's.

Microsoft only ever advertised the sustained speed of their SSD, sustained speed. Sony on the other hand advertised theoretical peak speed and never mentioned sustained. Given the actual results in games it appears that Sony and Microsoft's drives both in sustained and peak performance function virtually the same.

Per usual people such as yourself got hook, lined and sinkered by marketing snake oil.
 

ManaByte

Member
You greatly underestimate the ignorance of the average consumer, for the average consumer which this product is a 90th percentile this is a clusterfuck. Also that's not correct, Microsoft's drive is not half as slow as Sony's. There's a big difference between the way they advertised their SSD's.

Microsoft only ever advertised the sustained speed of their SSD, sustained speed. Sony on the other hand advertised theoretical peak speed and never mentioned sustained. Given the actual results in games it appears that Sony and Microsoft's drives both in sustained and peak performance function virtually the same.

Per usual people such as yourself got hook, lined and sinkered by marketing snake oil.
 

Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue
Ouch, this seems like a complete hassle, and Sony should have thought about this, this is not going to go well for the common consumer who does know about specs and what to buy for expanded storage. I don't understand why Sony went this route and could not do what Xbox just did and make their own storage or sooner or later allowed companies to make their own. This is stupid and a big turn-off for me and the people that will defend it are the reason why companies get away with such stupidity such as this hassle and the fact that you have to beta test this is funny.
There are going to be an amount of the player base that can't figure it out or be bothered to. I do find though that if there is a need, people either figure it out with a bit of research, have a friend do it, or pay someone to do it.

I installed two sinks in my house with zero knowledge based on a bit of Internet search and Youtube videos. I'm not a handy person. People can do things if they really really want to.
 

Mr Moose

Member
You greatly underestimate the ignorance of the average consumer, for the average consumer which this product is a 90th percentile this is a clusterfuck. Also that's not correct, Microsoft's drive is not half as slow as Sony's. There's a big difference between the way they advertised their SSD's.

Microsoft only ever advertised the sustained speed of their SSD, sustained speed. Sony on the other hand advertised theoretical peak speed and never mentioned sustained. Given the actual results in games it appears that Sony and Microsoft's drives both in sustained and peak performance function virtually the same.

Per usual people such as yourself got hook, lined and sinkered by marketing snake oil.
20200329134552.jpg

5GB/s (at least) is twice as fast as 2.4GB/s.
anigif_sub-buzz-24113-1507761490-13.gif
 
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GHG

Gold Member
I think we are starting to see why MS went the proprietary route. Doing it that way guaranteed compatibility and ease of use, things consoles are known for. It also was a working solution from day one. Looking at the prices for the NVME drives you really aren't getting the major savings the 'open' solution promised either. I hope that the differences in the drive type won't affect game performance but I'm certain there will be some variances. I suppose if the MS drive never drops in price or goes up in price while these drop we can at least get a price advantage at some point in time. I guess now the only real question is when will all PS5 owners be able to use the expansion bay. Maybe next month or the next.

It was the same last gen, you couldn't just buy any internal hard drive to increase your internal storage - you needed to make sure the drive speed and size were correct. Didn't know that was such a big issue.

But yeh you're right, they clearly didn't have any faith in their user base's ability to do some fact checking, select the right drive to purchase and then finally use a screwdriver.

To be honest it's hard to blame them based on the comments throughout this thread.

For what it's worth, the only people currently missing out on cost savings are Xbox users who wish to expand their storage. If you weren't forced down the proprietary route then you'd have access to drives roughly half the price which would actually make it a big deal. What a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
 
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THEAP99

Banned
this is complicated as fuck for no reason. i should just be able to walk into best buy and buy something that says "PS5 expandable storage" and then not worry about it again. Console gaming becomes less and less like console gaming and more and more complicated like pc gaming and I hate it
 
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Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue
It was the same last gen, you couldn't just buy any internal hard drive to increase your internal storage - you needed to make sure the drive speed and size were correct. Didn't know that was such a big issue.

But yeh you're right, they clearly didn't have any faith in their user base's ability to do some fact checking, select the right drive to purchase and then finally use a screwdriver.

To be honest it's hard to blame them based on the comments throughout this thread.

For what it's worth, the only people currently missing out on cost savings are Xbox users who wish to expand their storage. If you weren't forced down the proprietary route then you'd have access to drives roughly half the price which would actually make it a big deal. What a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
As someone that owns both systems, and have an XSS/XSX expansion card, I personally feel the biggest issue out there with the X at the moment regarding a proper SSD expansion for XSX titles is the fact it's locked to a 1TB only option. Price is another issue for that expansion, but.. 1TB. That's it. You can't have more than one expansion card either. The format of the expansion is pretty limiting as well. It's not like you can really just pop in another drive in the casing of the old one. At least, not that I've found to have been tested.

On a separate note, on YouTube, someone did find that you can buy a broken XSXs internal SSD if it's working, and clone your dead XSXs working SSD and put it into a new working XSX and that works, but the drive had to be from an XSX to be cloned. They tried to bust out one from the expansion card case and clone the one in the XSX to replace into a working XSX, but.. that test failed.
 

Mr Moose

Member
this is complicated as fuck for no reason. i should just be able to walk into best buy and buy something that says "PS5 expandable storage" and then not worry about it again. Console gaming becomes less and less like console gaming and more and more complicated like pc gaming and I hate it
There you go.

"We have done some testing with Sony on the PlayStation 5 and today we can confirm that the FireCuda 530 with the heatsink has met all the PS5 requirements. With the PS5 design, the SSD card slot is very narrow, so there's not much room for the SSD to mount. However, with the FireCuda 530 – even with the heatsink on the top – the slim design allows for it to fit. Of course, the FireCuda 530 without the heatsink is slimmer, so both of them will fit into the PS5.”

– Country Manager for Seagate Technology, ANZ, Jeff Park
 
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