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There’s fierce competition in the 2230 NVMe SSD space right now, as these pint-sized SSDs are the only ones that will fit in PC handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. Previously Sabrent were offering the cheapest option available at the 1TB price point at £85, but now Scan has reduced the price of the WD SN740 to just £80. This is a good deal on a PCIe 4.0 2230-size SSD, offering speeds of up to 5150MB/s on the ROG Ally and around 3500MB/s for the PCIe 3.0 Steam Deck.
The WD SN740 is surprisingly fast for a drive that measures just 22x30cm, with sequential reads up to 5150MB/s and sequential writes up to 4900MB/s. Random read and write figures also stand up to full-size drives, with 740K IOPS reads and 800K IOPS writes being the maximum possible. That’s about average for a PCIe 4.0 SSD, and an impressive showing for a drive that uses TLC NAND flash and doesn’t have space for a DRAM cache.
Finally, installation. Here’s what I said last time:
If you are thinking of giving this a go, I would recommend it as it’s easier than it looks. The ROG Ally install is particularly painless, requiring only the removal of the back plate and replacing the drive, but the Steam Deck install procedure is only slightly more involved; just follow along with the iFixit guide and you’ll be fine.
So there we have it – a nice upgrade for Steam Deck and ROG Ally users, and soon Legion Go users too! Let me know if you found this deal helpful and stay tuned for more deals as we discover them.