When thinking about mining cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (opens in new tab) and Ether, picking up the best mining SSD (opens in new tab) might not be high on your list of priorities.
However, it's possible you should reconsider. After all, once you've made your choices for the best mining GPU (opens in new tab), best mining motherboard (opens in new tab) and best mining CPU (opens in new tab), you'll need a fast and reliable SSD to round out your rig.
The good news is that, for a mining rig, you don't need to buy an SSD with huge amounts of storage, which means it's not too difficult to keep the prices low. We recommend an SSD for mining with a minimum capacity of 120GB for Windows installs, or even as low as 60GB if you're going to run Linux. This provides plenty of room to install the operating system, along with the best mining software (opens in new tab).
As well as speed and capacity, the best SSDs for cryptocurrency mining are also nice and efficient. This gives the advantage of keeping your electricity bills down, and preventing your mining rig from overheating.
- These are best external hard drives
- If you'd prefer to purchase crypto instead, check out our list of the best Bitcoin exchanges (opens in new tab) and best Bitcoin wallets (opens in new tab) around
If you want to save a few bucks, but don't want to sacrifice too much in the way of performance, the WD Blue SATA SSD is a great compromise. It nearly maxes out the bandwidth of the SATA 3 interface with its read speeds of 560 MB/s and write speeds of 530 MB/s using 3D NAND. The price of the 250GB version is a brilliant value. Best of all, it's reliable and cost effective to run, making it the best SSD for mining in 2021.
Mining needs to be profitable, so for those on a budget, the ADATA SU800 is a good choice. Its life will far exceed its warranty. It's price is lower than some others, but its build quality is on par with more expensive offerings. Speeds are plenty fast with the SATA 3 interface enhanced with “Built-in intelligent SLC caching.”
The Samsung 860 Evo (opens in new tab) is a great offering from a leader in SSD’s. The 860 Evo is an excellent choice for a mining SSD, as it features Samsung's build quality and speeds that are found in more expensive drives. Along with a pretty compelling price for the smaller capacity drives, performance is enhanced with Samsung V-NAND Technology to optimize performance.
- Read the full review: Samsung 860 Evo (opens in new tab)
The Crucial BX500 isn’t the fastest SSD you can buy, but it is seriously affordable and chiefly reliable to boot. If you want to maximise your cryptocurrency mining profits by keeping the cost of your hardware as low as possible, then this is an excellent choice. You don't completely lose out on performance either - it’s a better performer than some pricier drives with read speeds of 540 MB/s. Finally, it is backed by the Crucial limited 3 year warranty.
This is a fantastic 2.5-inch SSD from SanDisk that is an excellent choice for including in a mining PC. It comes with plenty of storage options, though the price goes up due to the smallest capacity available at 250GB. However, with Advanced 3D NAND technology, and nCACHE 2.0 Technology for faster speeds, it performs really well. While it's not the cheapest SSD on this list, it can be found on sale where you can grab it for an excellent price.
- We've also featured the best mining PCs (opens in new tab)
