Is 2020 the Right Moment to Get a PC? Comparison with PS5

There aren't many specifics that have been revealed about PlayStation 5 so far, one thing we know for sure: the launch of new consoles will also affect the PC market. So is it worth buying a gaming PC in 2020? How much does one as powerful as PS5 cost?

PC equivalent of PS5 – SSD

One of the most important changes in next-generation consoles is the addition of a high-speed SSD on NVMe interface.

Sony's marketing took advantage of the fact that the next generation of PlayStation will finally see an SSD. HDD are slowly fading into oblivion, and this is actually a big change. No more lengthy loadings and objects popping-up in front of our eyes. No more random frame drops caused by prehistoric components.

But let's be realistic. Although Sony has not revealed the final capacity of the disk, but according to it may be even be 1TB. It would certainly make sense to have storage that large, but when we consider the price, it turns out rather improbable. With the projected budget, there is absolutely no way get a 1TB NVMe disk. Either the SSDs would have to become radically cheaper, or Sony would have to loose money on every piece. A 500-GB disk from the middle shelf is much more probable.

There are disks and disks. Just because Sony can boast of PCIe 4.0 in PlayStation 5 does not mean that their disk will even reach the theoretical values of this standard. In 2019, the standard is PCIe 3.0, and the vast majority of devices support this solution. It's similar on PC; some NVMe disks reach 3.5 Gbit/s of bandwidth, but there are also cheaper ones that reach only 1 Gbit/s, sometimes less (the same number of operations per second also decreases), yet both use the same interface. The second question is the price. 1TB NVMe SSD on PCIe 4.0, which offers significantly better performance than PCIe 3.0, costs more than $200.

The most optimistic scenario for the PS5 is a high-speed NVMe 1 TB SSD. These cost about $150 for the fastest ones (3 Gbit/s) and $130 for the slower ones (1-2 Gbit/s). . We know next to nothing about the mass storage on PS5, but one thing is certain – the SSD on PS5 has to be durable. If next-gen consoles will stay around for the next 7 years, you can imagine how much data will go through it. The cheapest components aren't an option.

Sony, when launching the next PlayStation, can successfully employ the strategy that proved in the mobile market. They could simply release two version of the console at two prices – the 0.5 and 1TB. How the customers would respond? I do not know.

Table of Contents

PC equivalent of PS5 – SSD