Great Performance at a Great Price

Samsung is aiming to do something a bit different with its latest 990 EVO Plus NVMe SSD. Delivering a hybrid design compatible with PCIe 5.0 x2 and 4.0 x4, you’ll find that this M.2 NVMe drive delivers solid performance at an even better price.

Samsung 990 EVO Plus

$80 $110 Save
$30

Samsung’s latest 990 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe SSD is built for both desktop and laptop use cases. With read and write speeds of up to 7,250MB/s and 6,300MB/s respectively, you’ll find that the 990 EVO Plus works with both PCIe 5.0 x2 as well as PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 storage slots. It doesn’t ship with a heat sink, and doesn’t need one in most cases. Coming in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB storage options, this is a drive that’s great for any computer build.

Pros & Cons

• Supports both PCIe 5.0 x2 and PCIe 4.0 x4
• Fast (and sustainable) read and write speeds
• Multiple storage options available

• Would be nice to see smaller than 1TB options available for those on extreme budgets

Price and Availability

The Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe SSD currently retails from $84.99 for 1TB, going up to $139.99 for 2TB, and $269.99 for 4TB.

PCIe 5.0 Isn’t Needed to Enjoy Full-Speed Transfers

While PCIe 5.0 is the latest storage standard, it’s not necessary for the Samsung 990 EVO Plus to hit its top speed. Honestly, PCIe 5.0 x4 is mostly irrelevant for storage.

The 990 EVO Plus does support PCIe 5.0, but only at x2, which gives it the same throughput capability of a PCIe 4.0 x4 drive. Meaning, whether your system is PCIe 5, or PCIe 4, you can fully take advantage of the speeds the 990 EVO Plus has to offer.

It’s actually really awesome that Samsung has made the drive compatible with both PCIe 5.0 x2 and PCIe 4.0 x4 slots. This factor alone allows the drive to be much more versatile, delivering its speed to a wide range of systems. Plus, those with a PCIe 5 system could put more of these drives per lane when using an expansion card while still enjoying full-speed data transfers.

Samsung Offers Multiple Storage Options to Fit Any Build or Budget

With Samsung offering storage options as low as 1TB and as high as 4TB here, you can really fit this drive to your specific build or budget.

I remember when a 1TB SATA SSD would cost $300. Now, a 1TB NVMe SSD that has read/write speeds over 10x that of a SATA drive is just $85. So, regardless of whether you’re looking for a budget build or a premium system, the 990 EVO Plus can easily fit the bill.

However, I do wish that Samsung had a smaller storage option available. Having a 512GB version of the drive for half the cost of the 1TB would make it an easier entry point for those who aren’t ready to drop nearly $100 on a storage drive.

The 990 EVO Plus Delivers Solid Real-World Performance

Let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of this drive: how does it actually perform in the real world.

Samsung boasts “sequential read/write speeds up to 7,250/6,300MB/s”, and I was able to achieve almost that in my testing. With the 2TB drive, I hit 7,040MB/s read and 6,065MB/s write using CrystalDiskMark 8. This is well within margin for a drive like this, and depending on cooling, load, and other factors, it could easily hit up to the speed that Samsung touts.

This type of read/write performance makes it an ideal drive for all use cases. Whether you’re a video or photo editor, gamer, programmer, or just general user, the 990 EVO Plus won’t leave you wanting for extra speed. In fact, I have a PCIe 5.0 SSD that does 12,400MB/s transfer speeds, and I see little-to-no difference in real-world performance between a drive like the 990 EVO Plus and a higher-end PCIe 5.0 x4 drive.

I also love that it doesn’t need a heat sink either, though many motherboards do come with one built-in now. The drive was able to hold up under repeat tests and loads and still deliver solid performance across the board, though adding some form of heat dissipation wouldn’t be a bad idea for drive longevity.

Either way, this drive handled anything I threw at it. I used it for video editing, photo editing, and 4K gaming on my desktop, and it easily did all the tasks I asked it to.

The thing I love about modern NVMe storage is that the storage kind of just gets out of the way. In the past, you’d hear a mechanical drive moving. You’d feel the slowness of data transfers happening. But, with modern NVMe, especially PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2, is that it just—works. The storage moves data at crazy fast speeds that Patrick eight years ago would never have dreamed possible.

Should You Buy the Samsung 990 EVO Plus?

Overall, I was pleasantly impressed with the Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD. It offers ample storage at solid speeds for a decent price. While there are more affordable drives out there, none (from reputable companies) offer similar performance at significantly lower prices.

While I’m typically a Western Digital fan when it comes to storage, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus gets my stamp of approval when it comes to NVMe SSDs for desktops or laptops. In fact, the 4TB model is priced in a way that, if I end up upgrading my desktop with more storage, it’ll be high on my list of drives that I consider buying.

Samsung 990 EVO Plus

$80 $110 Save
$30

Samsung’s latest 990 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe SSD is built for both desktop and laptop use cases. With read and write speeds of up to 7,250MB/s and 6,300MB/s respectively, you’ll find that the 990 EVO Plus works with both PCIe 5.0 x2 as well as PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 storage slots. It doesn’t ship with a heat sink, and doesn’t need one in most cases. Coming in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB storage options, this is a drive that’s great for any computer build.