If I didn’t already upgrade my Steam Deck with a 2TB drive, I’d be buying the Crucial P310 on Cyber Monday. This is one of the better deals I’ve seen during Cyber Week, frankly, and if you have a handheld gaming PC like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally, you owe it to yourself to upgrade the storage for a great price.
You can grab the for $181 right now. Regardless of how you look at the sale, it’s a great deal. That’s $84 off the list price, or 32% off, and it’s a similar price as the competition. The WD Black SN770M, for example, , which is also a Cyber Week deal. Crucial is my top choice, though.
The Crucial P310 is a PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive, and the company claims sequential speeds up to 7,100MBps. That’s not quite peak PCIe 4.0 speed — read my Samsung 990 Pro review for that — but it’s very close. Certainly, it’s fast enough for a handheld gaming PC. The drive also comes fit with firmware optimized for Microsoft’s DirectStorage, so it shouldn’t run into issues in games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
Although you can technically use the P310 in any PC that supports PCIe 4.0 SSDs, this drive is best for a handheld due to its size. It’s a 2230 SSD, which means it’s much smaller than the typical 2280 size you see in desktops and laptops. 2230 SSDs are usually more expensive than their 2280 counterparts, but with this deal, Crucial is matching the 2280 competition.
For instance, the , while the slower . I’d normally expect to spend over $200 on a 2TB 2230 SSD, but with this discount, the P310 is right in line with the 2280 options on sale.
Although it can be a little intimidating opening up your Steam Deck or ROG Ally, replacing the SSD is surprisingly simple. After removing your microSD card and unplugging the charger, the process simply involves removing a few screws. If you’re a newbie to this kind of upgrade, I strongly recommend following iFixIt’s guide.
Replacing the SSD itself shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. The more difficult part of the process is reimaging the Steam Deck. You’ll need to reinstall SteamOS on your Steam Deck, as well as reinstall your games — thankfully, Valve has a guide on how to do exactly that. For the ROG Ally, you can follow our guide on how to install Windows 11 or, ideally, reimage Windows through the ROG Ally BIOS.
Upgrading the storage in your Steam Deck or ROG Ally is one of the best (and simplest) mods you can do. Although both devices allow you to expand your storage with a microSD card, SSDs are significantly cheaper. A 2TB microSD card, in the rare case you can actually find one, will run you close to $200 on sale.
