Should I choose the 4TB Crucial P310 Gen4 SSD or the 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro Gen5?

The Samsung makes sense if you specifically want the newest hardware and expect this build to last many years, but its Gen5 bandwidth is unlikely to make games load noticeably faster. I’d personally take the Crucial’s capacity unless you know you’ll never need more than 2TB.

Capacity is generally more useful than theoretical sequential speed for game storage. You also don’t want to keep an SSD nearly full, so the extra headroom on the 4TB drive is valuable.

The P310 does have compromises: it uses QLC NAND, lacks DRAM, and may slow down during very large sustained writes. That mainly matters for workloads like continuously writing huge files or downloading massive games at extremely high internet speeds. For typical gaming use, those drawbacks probably won’t matter, especially with 4TB of free space.

The extra $48 for twice the capacity is hard to ignore. For an OS and gaming drive, Gen4 and Gen5 performance will feel essentially identical in normal use, so I’d choose the 4TB model.

If Micro Center has a reasonably priced Inland drive, that could also be worth considering. For gaming, the difference between SATA, Gen3, Gen4, and Gen5 is usually difficult to notice outside of benchmarks. Just compare the warranty, endurance, and price before buying.