This Black Friday you can get a better deal than the Samsung 990 Pro SSD, I'd rather buy one of these deals instead
This deal on a Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB SSD for $270 is a great example of how marketing can work. It's not that the price is too high for a fast drive. But, it's strange how much attention this deal gets when there are other options available for less money.
Samsung is a well-known brand. It's also because it makes its own flash memory. Samsung's SSDs have issues, too. Brand recognition isn’t everything.
We've curated the best Black Friday PC Gaming deals right here We curate the best Black Friday PC Gaming deals right here
You could also be seeing this because Amazon's listing claims a 42% discount on 990 Pro. When was the last time this model sold for less than $400, or even $465? A quick price check sweeps that aside.
This is also odd because it's a 4 TB hard drive. I know that game installations are getting larger and larger, but 2 TB still seems to be the best option in most cases. Lexar NM790, a 2 TB drive that I use every day and would recommend as an alternative, is currently on sale for a great deal.
But let's avoid getting ahead of ourselves. For those of you who want to have that much storage, I recommend the WD Black SN850X and Silicon Power UD90, which are both 4 TB drives.
Quick Links
- 4 TB
- Silicon Power UD90 | 4 TB | 5,000 MB/s read | $189.97 @ Amazon
- 2 TB
WD SN850X Black 4 TB
Amazon: $247.49You'll get 4 TB of our gaming SSD. Check out our reviewThe rest is a distant memory. The SN850X is a great device, and it's still as good as when it was first released." data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">The SN850X is the drive for you if you want a drive which can compete with the 990 Pro, but costs less. (Yes, even withouta sale on Amazon). It's our choice for the best gaming SSD because it's so good.
It is a fantastic drive in every way. Its 7,300 MB/s read speed and 6,300 MB/s write speed is made even more impressive by the fact that the drive keeps pretty cool, too. It's slightly slower than the 990 Pro, but it's close enough that I really doubt you'll notice a lick of difference.
It also runs some weird "Game Mode" drive management malarkey automatically in the background, but that wizardry soars right above my head and is difficult to test for anyway. No, the main thing is its speed combined with its low (58 C under load!) temps.
Silicon Power UD90 4 TB
This Silicon Power might not be the fastest of drives, but it's difficult to argue with this much storage for this sort of money. With a sequential read/write of 5,000 MB/s and 4,500 MB/s, it's still not what you'd call slow and should be fine for gaming; plus it comes from a reliable brand.
Price check: Newegg $276.99
" data-widget-type="deal" data-render-type="editorial">If it's value you're after, and you don't need the blisteringly fast PCIe 4.0-maxing speeds of the 990 Pro or SN850X, the UD90 is what you want. Yes, it's a couple-thousand MB/s slower than the former two options, but how often are you transferring hundreds of GB anyway?
If the answer to that is "all the time, actually," then yeah, stick with a faster drive, but if you're an average gamer who installs some games and apps but doesn't do full-system backups or content creation, this UD90 will serve you well for a downright generous cost.
So generous, in fact, that it comes to just 4.7 cents per GB of storage, which is kind of ridiculous. It's a DRAM-less drive, sure, but that won't matter unless you're doing some massive file transfers, because up to a certain point a pseudo-SLC cache is used.
Speaking of which, if 4 TB isn't a necessity, you might want to consider the NM790...
Lexar NM790 2 TB
This drive is DRAM-less, too like the UD90 above, and also like the UD90 you won't notice that fact unless you're doing some seriously big transfers. This is the drive I use in my own machine, and I've never noticed it running out of its pseudo-SLC cache, because I don't transfer the proverbial house and kitchen sink on a regular basis.
This drive is just such damn good value that it's hard not to recommend it--that's why we call it the best budget gaming SSD. At this discounted price, we're talking $0.06 / GB of storage, which is fantastic considering you're getting 7,400 MB/s read and 6,500 MB/s write speeds--even faster than the SN850X.
And yes, it's a 2 TB drive, but I'd seriously consider whether you need 4 TB. 1 TB is pushing it, for sure, but unless you like to have dozens of the latest storage-hungry AAA titles all installed at once, 2 TB is ideal. That extra $100 you'll save could go on another piece of hardware, after all, or perhaps even a PC gaming gift for that special someone this holiday season.
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