New SSD just dropped — swallows Xbox Game Pass whole and dares your Steam backlog to challenge it

What if you could fit the entire PC Game Pass library on a single SSD? That could theoretically be possible with a new drive from Kioxia.

The Kioxia LC9 has a 245.76TB capacity, and no, that's not a typo. It also has 8TB of storage on a single NAND package.

With all that space, you could store a massive library of games, movies, or anything else.

PC Game Pass gets you access to over 400 games. If you follow my colleague Cale Hunt's advice, you'll grab many of those titles through PC Game Pass rather than buying them on Steam.

Even if you downloaded every single game available through PC Game Pass, you wouldn't need a second SSD. If each game were 150GB — which they aren’t — you'd still have space for thousands more after installing the entire library.

But before you go racing for your wallet, the Kioxia LC9 is not meant for everyday consumers.

As much fun as it is to joke about using this SSD for PC gaming, the Kioxia LC9 is an enterprise storage device. Its large capacity and high speeds are ideal for AI training and hyperscale workloads, as highlighted by our friends at Tom's Hardware.

If you're only used to consumer SSDs, the specs of the Kioxia LC9 will sound unbelievable. Read speeds of up to 12 GB/s and write speeds of up to 3 GB/s make the best SSDs (for everyday users) look slow.

But those speeds are actually slower than some enterprise PCIe 5.0 SSDs. As is generally the case with drives, there's a tradeoff between capacity and speed.

The Kioxia LC9 is the highest capacity PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD, according to Kioxia. The drive is available in 2.5-inch and EDSFF E3.L form factors. A smaller capacity 122.88TB SSD is available in the E3.S form factor.

One benefit of having such a large and high-performance SSD is that a single drive can replace multiple HDDs. In comparison to SSDs, HDDs use quite a bit of power. Using a single drive also frees up storage slots.

Select customers have received samples of the Kioxia LC9 already. The company will also feature the SSD at the Future of Memory and Storage 2025 conference that runs from August 5–7 in Santa Clara, California.

Gaming SSD

SK hynix Platinum P41: $129.99 at Newegg

If you want an SSD to store a lot of PC games, I recommend the current deal on the SK hynix Platinum P41. While the drive does not have 245TB of storage like the Kioxia LC9, it is a 2TB SSD with excellent read and write speeds.

Form: M.2 2280. NAND: 176-layer 3D TLC. Controller: SK hynix Aries. Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe. DRAM cache: 2GB LPDDR4. Durability: 1,200 TBW. Warranty: 5 years.

👉 See at: Newegg.com

💰 Alternate deal: Samsung 990 EVO 2TB for $129.99 at Newegg