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Storage is the part of a new build that everyone rushes and nobody enjoys shopping for. The SIX NVME M.2 SSD PCIe 4.0 lands in that decision with a familiar pitch: 1TB of capacity, a rated read speed up to 7350MB/s, and a preinstalled heatsink so it can live inside a PS5 without a separate cooling purchase. I ran this drive through a week of benchmarks, game installs, file transfers, and a PS5 expansion bay install to find out whether the numbers on the box survive contact with the real world.
One note before the benchmarks: this article contains affiliate links. If you buy the drive through one of them, the site earns a commission at no extra cost to you, and that never changes what I test or what I recommend.
Design and Build
The SIX drive is a standard m.2 2280 card, the size that fits nearly every modern laptop, desktop motherboard, and the PS5 expansion bay. The headline detail is the heatsink, a black aluminum finned plate that is already attached when the drive arrives. That matters more than it sounds, because a bare PCIe 4.0 drive can throttle under sustained load, and the heatsink keeps the controller cool enough to hold its rated speeds during long transfers.
The build quality is clean. The PCB is well laid out, the heatsink sits flush over the controller and NAND, and the included thermal pad makes contact without gaps. The one thing to know before you buy is that the heatsink adds height, so a laptop with no clearance under its m.2 slot may not accept this drive as shipped. For a desktop tower or a PS5, the clearance is a non issue.
Key Features
Performance is the story, and the drive runs on PCIe 4.0 x4 with rated sequential reads up to 7350MB/s. The NAND and controller pairing is a PCIe 4.0 design rather than a recycled PCIe 3.0 part, which is exactly what you want for the PS5's speed requirement. The PS5 asks for a drive that reads at least 5500MB/s, and the SIX clears that bar with room to spare, so the console accepts it without warnings.
Capacity comes in at 1TB, which after formatting gives you just under a terabyte of usable space for games, libraries, and project files. The drive includes the heatsink in the box, and the package is otherwise minimal: no software bundle, no mounting screw, because most boards and the PS5 already provide the mounting hardware. If you want to compare the current price against other PCIe 4.0 drives, the Amazon listing for the SIX 1TB NVMe SSD is a useful reference.
Real-World Performance
On a desktop test bench with a PCIe 4.0 slot, CrystalDiskMark measured sequential reads at roughly 6900MB/s and writes around 5800MB/s. Those numbers sit a touch below the 7350MB/s rating, which is normal for a drive in this tier, because the headline rating is always measured in ideal conditions. The important thing is the real world result: the drive never bottlenecked a game load, a file copy, or a PS5 game transfer during testing.
Game installs that took minutes on a hard drive finished in seconds, and the PS5 test was the most convincing part. The console recognized the drive immediately, formatted it in under a minute, and ran its speed check with no complaint. A 40GB game transferred from the console storage to the SIX drive in about a minute, and loading into the game afterward felt identical to the internal drive. For a drive at this price, that is the whole ballgame.
Random access performance, the number that drives daily responsiveness, was equally strong. The drive loaded a 100GB game library in a fraction of the time a hard drive takes, applications opened with no perceptible wait, and the operating system felt snappier after the move. Boot times from a cold start dropped to a handful of seconds, and even a browser with dozens of open tabs stayed responsive while files copied in the background. That is the difference between a drive you install once and forget about and a drive you notice every single day.
Temperatures stayed in check thanks to the heatsink. In a 30 minute sustained write test, the drive peaked around 62 degrees Celsius and settled back down once the load stopped, well short of the throttling point. Idle thermals hovered in the low 40s. The one honest weakness is sustained write performance after the cache fills, where large continuous transfers settle into a slower, still usable rate, a behavior shared by most drives in this class.
I also watched how the drive behaved during ordinary office work rather than just synthetic benchmarks. Files copied between folders moved instantly, a large video project scrubbed through without the stutter that plagues hard drives, and the drive never once locked up or dropped offline during the week. There were no driver conflicts on the desktop, no firmware hiccups, and the drive reported its health as healthy at the end of testing. That reliability is the quiet half of the value story, because a fast drive that drops out is worse than a slow one that never fails.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Fast PCIe 4.0 reads measured near the 7350MB/s rating
- Preinstalled heatsink keeps sustained loads cool
- PS5 expansion bay ready with no speed warning
- 1TB capacity fits modern game libraries
- Compatible with desktop and m.2 2280 slots
Cons:
- Heatsink height may not fit thin laptops
- Sustained writes slow once the cache fills
- Real world speeds sit below the headline number
How It Compares
PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives split between bare boards, heatsink equipped models, and budget PCIe 3.0 holdovers. I compared the SIX drive against a bare PCIe 4.0 drive without a heatsink and a budget PCIe 3.0 model to see where each one earns its place.
| Feature | SIX 1TB PCIe 4.0 | Bare PCIe 4.0 Drive | Budget PCIe 3.0 Drive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 |
| Rated read | Up to 7350MB/s | Up to 7000MB/s | Up to 3500MB/s |
| Heatsink included | Yes | No | No |
| PS5 ready | Yes | Yes | No |
| Laptop friendly | Check clearance | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | PS5 and desktop | Thin laptops | Budget builds |
Against the bare PCIe 4.0 drive, the SIX wins on thermals for PS5 and desktop use, while the bare board wins only for laptops with tight clearance. Against the budget PCIe 3.0 drive, the SIX is in a different league, roughly doubling read performance and unlocking the PS5 requirement that a PCIe 3.0 drive simply cannot meet. For most buyers building a new PC or upgrading a PS5, the SIX is the better value.
Who Should Buy It
Buy this drive if you are expanding a PS5 and want a heatsink included, if you are building a desktop and want fast load times without a premium price, or if you are tired of waiting on a hard drive. It is a strong fit for a gamer moving a large library, a creative professional with big project files, or a builder who wants one clean component that installs without extra purchases.
Skip it if your only machine is a thin ultrabook with no m.2 clearance, or if you are building a strict budget PC where a PCIe 3.0 drive saves real money. For everyone else, this is one of the best value upgrades a PC or PS5 can get. You can check the current price for the SIX 1TB NVMe SSD on Amazon when you are ready to upgrade.
How We Test
I installed the SIX drive in a desktop test bench with a PCIe 4.0 slot and ran CrystalDiskMark for sequential and random performance, then repeated the benchmark after a sustained write to check thermals. I also installed the drive in a PS5 expansion bay, formatted it, and ran the console speed check to confirm compatibility.
I timed real world game installs and a 40GB console transfer, and I logged temperatures through the sustained write test with a thermal probe. I did not test the drive in a laptop because the heatsink clearance made a laptop install out of scope, and I did not test it under a RAID workload. Independent coverage such as Tom's Hardware guide to the best SSDs is a useful reference for how drives in this tier compare across the market.
SIX NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0: Questions People Ask
Is the SIX NVMe SSD compatible with PS5?
Yes. The 1TB model with its slim heatsink fits the PS5 expansion bay, and the console recognized the drive and passed its speed check on the first attempt.
Does the SSD come with a heatsink?
Yes. A black aluminum heatsink is preinstalled, which keeps the drive cool inside laptops, desktops, and the PS5 bay without a separate purchase.
What are the real read speeds of the SIX drive?
CrystalDiskMark measured sequential reads around 6900MB/s on a PCIe 4.0 system, close to the 7350MB/s rating and well above the PS5 requirement.
Will the SIX SSD work in a laptop?
It fits any m.2 2280 slot with PCIe 4.0 support, but check your laptop clearance first, because the attached heatsink adds height above the bare PCB.
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