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How to Install an SSD

Installing an SSD is the easiest meaningful upgrade there is — ten minutes, one screwdriver, and everything on your PC feels faster. Most people today are installing an M.2 NVMe drive, which is a small stick that slots straight into the motherboard. The older SATA style takes two cables and a drive bay. Both are covered here.

M.2 NVMe install — the one most people need

1. Power off, unplug the power cable, and press the power button once to discharge any leftover power. Take the side panel off.
2. Find the M.2 slot — a horizontal slot on the motherboard, usually just below or beside the graphics card. Many boards cover it with a metal plate (the board's heatsink). Unscrew the plate and set it aside.
3. Check the standoff — the little raised post the screw goes into. It should sit at the position matching your drive's length. Nearly every drive today is "2280" (80mm long), and the standoff is usually already in the 2280 spot. If it isn't, move it — it unscrews by hand or with the screwdriver.
4. Hold the drive at about a 30° angle and slide the notched end into the slot. It only fits one way — the notch lines up with the key in the slot, so don't force it.
5. Press the far end down gently until it sits flat on the standoff, then put the screw in. Snug, not cranked — it's a tiny screw in a small post.
6. If your board has a heatsink plate for the slot, put it back on now. One exception: if your drive already has its own heatsink built in — like the Lexar NM790 in our Mid-Range Build — don't stack the board's plate on top of it. Use one heatsink or the other, never both.
7. Put the side panel back on and boot up.

Adding a second SSD for games

Same steps, second slot. Most boards have two M.2 slots — use the top slot for your Windows drive and the second slot for the games drive. Once Windows is running, the new drive appears in Disk Management and needs initializing before it shows up in File Explorer — that's a two-minute job covered in new SSD not showing up.

Moving games onto the new drive is easy too: in Steam, go to Settings → Storage, add the new drive as a library folder, then right-click any installed game → Properties → Installed Files → Move install folder. No re-downloading.

SATA 2.5" SSD — the older style

If you're adding a 2.5-inch SATA drive (the flat rectangle, about the size of a phone), the steps are different but just as simple:

1. Mount the drive in a 2.5" bay or bracket in the case — four small screws, or a tool-less tray if your case has one.
2. Plug a SATA data cable from the drive to a SATA port on the motherboard.
3. Plug a SATA power cable from the power supply into the drive.
4. That's it — two cables, no drivers, no jumpers. Boot up and initialize it in Disk Management like any new drive.

SATA drives are much slower than NVMe drives, so only buy one if your board has no free M.2 slot, or if it's a spare drive you already own. For a new purchase, NVMe is the right call — see how to choose an SSD.

The SSDs in our builds

The short version