Best value SSD for a mid-range Intel i5 gaming setup?

Yo, congrats on the 13600K! Solid chip. Honestly, the SSD market is kinda annoying right now because prices are creeping back up. Unfortunately, everyone just defaults to the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe but I have been pretty disappointed with it lately. Samsung had those nasty firmware bugs a while back and the premium you pay just isnt worth it for a mid-range rig anymore. Regarding the DRAMless thing... yeah, it sucks. I really had issues with some budget drives stuttering during massive Steam downloads or heavy multitasking. While the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770 1TB NVMe Gen4 is okay because of Host Memory Buffer, its not as good as expected when the drive starts filling up past 60 or 70 percent. You lose that snappiness you want in a brand new build. Since you have a Microcenter nearby, you have better options under 100 bucks:

• Inland Performance Plus 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4
• This is their house brand and uses the Phison E18 controller. Honestly, it outperforms the 980 Pro in sustained writes and usually costs way less.
• Crucial T500 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe
• This has actual DRAM and is insanely fast for the price. I was disappointed with the older P5 Plus thermal throttling, but the T500 is a beast.
• SK hynix Platinum P41 1TB NVMe Gen4
• If this is on sale at the store, grab it immediately. It runs circles around the WD drive for boot times and heavy workloads. Basically, skip the DRAMless stuff for your primary OS drive. The micro-stutters when Windows is doing background updates are just annoying... save the SN770 for a secondary storage slot later.

Just saw this. I swapped to a Lexar NM790 1TB NVMe Gen4 and honestly couldnt be happier with how it handles my library.

• boots fast
• runs cool Prioritize capacity over speed.

I would suggest you be careful about the sustained write speeds on those cheaper modules and dont just look at the peak numbers, especially when the SLC cache fills up and you start hitting the raw NAND performance. Sustained I/O can drop off a cliff once the buffer is gone. I once had a drive essentially crawl to a halt during a massive patch because of heat soak and bad controller management. It actually reminds me of my old workstation setup back in 2018 when I was obsessed with cooling. Exhaustive testing was my whole life back then. I spent way too much time measuring the ambient temperature in my office with digital probes just to see if the intake fans were actually doing anything. My wife thought I was crazy because I had wires taped to the walls and I was logging everything to a spreadsheet every hour. Thermal cameras are fun tho, I even bought one to find hotspots on the motherboard just to justify adding one more tiny fan. Anyway lol sorry kinda went off topic there.