Sony has taken an interesting approach to storage upgrades on the PlayStation 5. Rather than featuring an external expansion slot, the PS5 has a standard M.2 port for connecting regular NVMe SSDs. This means that the PS5 offers a much wider range of SSD compatibility than the Xbox Series X/S - which uses a proprietary (and more expensive) card - at the cost of requiring a more complicated and risky installation. Corsair’s new M.2 SSD, the MP600 Pro LPX, makes the frustrating process as simple as possible. You’ll still need to partially disassemble your PS5 and manually move your games to the new drive, but the MP600 eliminates enough unnecessary guesswork from the shopping and installation process that it will no doubt be a go-to solution for your PS5 storage needs.
The PS5 is compatible with almost any M.2 SSD with a cooling structure. Sony’s support website provides a complete list of required specs for compatible devices, but stops short of offering an actual list of products that work with the console. It can be daunting to try to figure out which drives are compatible based on thickness and socket type, but fortunately, the MP600 confirms PS5 compatibility right on the box. This is surprisingly uncommon, given the demand for PS5 storage options, so it’s great to know that the MP600 is compatible without having to do any additional research.
Inside the box is a safety manual, a QR code for installation directions, and the drive itself, packed snuggly in thick foam. The MP600 is heavier than it looks thanks to the large aluminum heatspreader. It fits perfectly into the PS5’s M.2 slot without any force required, but the width and thickness does make it a bit difficult to line up correctly with the connectors. It took me two attempts to slot the drive in using the weird high-angle approach that M.2 requires. This is particularly stress-inducing given the fragility and cost of the drive, but I managed to connect and secure it without damaging anything, thankfully.
While it’s not an ideal process, Corsair goes to some lengths to simplify it. The included QR code leads to extraordinarily detailed installation instructions, both written with photos or video, if you prefer. I find the official installation video from PlayStation is easier to follow because it uses animations to visualize the different components you’ll be working with, but Corsair’s video has a more realistic, hands-on quality that some people might find more useful. In any event, Corsair provides all the resources you need to quickly install the drive and get your PS5 up and running.
When you boot up the PS5 after installing the drive, it will automatically detect the device and prompt you to format. The MP600 supports up to 7100MB/s read and 6800MB/s write, but for whatever reason the PS5 caps read and write at 5555MB/s. That throttling won’t make any difference to you in terms of downloading since your internet bandwidth is undoubtedly far below 5555MB/s. The internal PS5 has a read speed of 5500MB/s, so you won’t notice any difference in gameplay either.
The big difference, of course, is in storage capacity. You only get about 667GB on the PS5’s internal storage, but the MP600 comes in either 1TB or 2TB. It’s worth noting that those sizes represent the true space of the drive without any of the partitioning or unusable space that normal hard drives typically have. The 2TB SSD I tested gave a full 2TB of extra space. For me, more space means more freedom to download games I otherwise just wouldn’t play. It allows me to have more of my library easily accessible so that I can play anything on a whim and not worry about whether or not it's installed. With some games eclipsing 100GB with over an hour of download time even on the highest internet speeds, extra space is a luxury that makes a huge difference.
Once the drive is formatted you have to do some manual customization to further set things, which is an unfortunate hassle. Once I made my way to the correct settings page, I was able to set the SSD as my default storage device for games and apps and transfer my existing games over. I moved 15 games, or about 558GBs, in just seven minutes. Every game I’ve played since moving things over to the drive has loaded and run the same, if not better than before.
I thought I’d be fine deleting games when I was done playing them to make room for new ones, but too often I found myself uninstalling games I wasn’t quite done with, or removing things I still like to play on rare occasions. The MP600 eliminates the need to pick and choose which games you can actually play. You don’t need it, but it’s an easy way to get so much more out of your PS5. Corsair makes the frustrating installation process as simple as possible with its packaging and instructions, and the drive performs exactly as advertised. It’s going to be a huge year for the PS5, and upgrading with a bigger drive is the best way to prepare for Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, and so much more.
