Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB (NVMe PCIe 4.0/5.0)

Our analysis

Same 1 TB as the WD_BLACK SN850P 1TB, but built for a different machine: the WD comes with a heatsink fitted and PS5 licensing, while this Samsung is a bare M.2 2280 drive for a PC, rated at up to 7150 MB/s reads and 6300 MB/s writes. It runs in a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot and in a 5.0 x2 one, so it fits new and older motherboards alike. It is the upgrade we recommend first if your system still runs from a SATA SSD or a hard drive.

What stands out

• Up to 7150 MB/s reads. Samsung's figure. A SATA SSD tops out around 550 MB/s by the interface itself, so coming from SATA or a hard drive, Windows and games load from a much faster drive.
• PCIe 4.0 x4 and 5.0 x2 support. One drive that works in a new board and in an older one, so it can follow you to your next build.
• Ready for DirectStorage. Games that use it can pull assets straight from a fast NVMe drive like this one.
• Standard M.2 2280 size. It is the main drive in our value build, holding the system plus a game library.

Where it falls short

• It has no DRAM cache; it uses the host memory buffer (HMB) instead, something the 990 PRO does include.
• 1 TB fills fast with modern games. If you can stretch to 2 TB, do it, or plan on adding a second drive later.

Look elsewhere if

• You want room for a large library on one disk: the Crucial P310 2TB is our pick for price per terabyte, a Gen4 drive with reads up to 7100 MB/s. If you want a DRAM cache, the Samsung 990 PRO 2TB adds one and, per Samsung, up to 1.4 million random-read IOPS.

We compare capacities and generations in our gaming SSD guide, and it is the drive in our best value gaming PC build.