If you've actually got a PS5, you've probably noticed that the storage fills up quickly. With only 667 GB of usable space and games sometimes exceeding 100 GB in size, managing that is very important.

Fortunately, the PS5 allows for storage expansion using commercially available SSDs, but this is likely to be a costly endeavor.

Currently, Sony has not mentioned an official price for PS5 storage upgrades. However, the console uses an advanced PCIe 4.0 interface for its internal SSD, which allows for a transfer rate of at least 5.5 GB/s.

However, UK retailer Scan sells a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4 SSD for £456, which shows how expensive this cutting-edge PCIe 4.0 SSD is. Converting this price as is would be about $614, which means the SSD is about $500, even after deducting about 20% UK tax.

The 1TB version is more affordable at $230, but looking at the cost per GB, it is not much cheaper. This indicates that upgrading the PS5's storage will be a very expensive undertaking.

We have already seen some evidence that a 500GB PS5-compatible SSD will cost $115, which alone is not too bad. However, this is not a significant amount of storage capacity, so a larger PS5 storage upgrade seems the most sensible, albeit expensive, option.

This was somewhat expected, given that the Seagate 1TB storage expansion card for the Xbox Series X, which also uses PCIe 4.0, costs $219.99. However, since this is a more convenient external storage upgrade, whereas the PS5 requires an internal storage upgrade, one would have expected additional SSDs for the PS5 to be a bit cheaper.

At this time, the PS5's storage cannot be expanded; a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD can be installed in the expansion slot under the cover, but the PS5 cannot read it until that particular feature has been enabled by Sony. It is also unclear which SSDs are compatible, but it is clear that they are not cheap.

Any additional SSDs would have to be at least as good as the SSDs built into the console itself. That is, it must have a PCIe 4.0 interface and a transfer rate of at least 5.5 GB/s. This is no small requirement, especially since the speed is due to the physical demands of the game itself. Therefore, it is not possible to play PS5 games simply by connecting an external hard drive.

However, unlike the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S external SSD upgrades, the PS5 SSD upgrade is expected to be an off-the-shelf PCIe 4.0 SSD that can be manufactured by any company, provided it is PS5 certified. Such SSDs are by no means plentiful, but expect prices to eventually come down as SSD technology is more widely adopted, especially in the best gaming PCs.

In reality, however, Sony needs to tell us which SSDs are compatible with the PS5 and update the PS5 console to be able to load additional storage. [especially since the Xbox Series X storage expansion cards are readily available. Sony, please wait a little longer!