Amazon has confirmed its 2024 Prime Day dates as July 16 and July 17, but you might not want to wait that long if you’re shopping around for a new solid-state drive (SSD). With Best Buy and Samsung’s current deal pricing on this M.2 drive, it might even be best to forego Prime Day and grab some new storage right now.
It’s no secret that Samsung makes some of the fastest and most reliable storage on the market, and its 990 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD is a relatively recent release with PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 hybrid compatibility. It’s available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, it can hit read speeds up to 5,000MB/s, and it’ll work in desktop or laptop PCs.
The 2TB Samsung 990 EVO is usually priced around $240, but right now you can pick it up for about $140. That’s cheaper than the 1TB model’s suggested $150 pricing, essentially allowing you to double up your storage on the cheap.
If you’d rather cap the capacity at 1TB, I’ve spotted the smaller 990 EVO drive on sale for $90 at Samsung, which is $60 off the regular price.
Why choose the Samsung 990 EVO over the 990 PRO?
Samsung’s two-punch approach to modern M.2 storage also includes the 990 PRO we reviewed favorably enough to give it a Windows Central Best Award. It’s strictly a PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with a focus on maximum transfer speeds; it tops out at 7,450MB/s on the read side and 6,900MB/s on the write side.
Both the 990 EVO and 990 PRO use Samsung’s own V-NAND TLC memory and in-house controllers, though the 990 EVO goes with the newer Piccolo while the 990 PRO uses the older Pascal. They have a similar Terabytes Written (TBW) rating at 1,200TBW for the 2TB SSD; that means you should theoretically be able to write 1,200TB of data to either SSD before it leaves the warranty zone, which itself is five years.
Both drives have 256-bit AES encryption, and Samsung’s Magician software is super useful for keeping track of drive health, optimization, and security.
The biggest differences between these drives are transfer speeds, PCIe compatibility, and cache. The newer 990 EVO featured here thanks to its deep discount lacks any DRAM, which in turn pulls back its potential top speeds and makes it less suited for gaming purposes than its 990 PRO sibling. Nevertheless, the 990 EVO tops out at about 5,000MB/s read and 4,200MB/s write speeds whether you’re using PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0, which is more than fast enough for most people’s needs.
Why the same speeds across PCIe standards? Samsung uses a PCIe 4.0 setup with four lanes and a PCIe 5.0 setup with two lanes, which essentially come out to the same performance. Because the 990 EVO has compatibility with both, it’ll work in more systems and will allow you to potentially free up specific PCIe lanes for other purposes.
We’re getting into the weeds a bit here, especially since most PC users are looking for strong performance and a competitive price when it comes to storage. The 990 EVO will work well in a wide selection of desktop and laptop PCs, and the fact that you can right now pick up the 2TB version for less than what Samsung usually charges for the 1TB version will matter most.
If you don’t want to wait for Prime Day, spending $140 now on 2TB of versatile M.2 storage doesn’t sound too bad at all. If you’d rather stick with a 1TB version, Samsung’s own sale has it discounted to $90, which is $60 off the regular price.
