The price of even high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs keeps slippin’, including the fastest SSD we’ve ever tested here at planet RPS: the Samsung 990 Pro. This PCIe 4.0 SSD is now available for £146 at Tech Next Day in the UK when you use code TND-10, beating the best deal we found for this drive in May by nearly £20.
If you’re a regular reader of these columns, you’ll know that the Samsung 990 Pro is a frankly obscene SSD when it comes to the random speeds that are the best indicator of real-time gaming performance, maxing out at 1.4M IOPS reads and 1.55M IOPS writes – incredible figures given even the fastest PCIe 3.0 drives are in the 0.5M IOPS range, and almost every other PCIe 4.0 drive is below 1M IOPS.
Peak sequential speeds, which you’ll see when transferring large files like videos or CD ISOs, are also off the scale when it comes to drives of this category – think 7450MB/s reads and 6900MB/s writes, only falling behind the (still uselessly expensive and overheating) PCIe 5.0 drives.
And in course, in real world testing the Samsung 990 Pro also performs brilliantly, netting it that coveted ‘fastest’ spot in our SSD recommendations. If it’s good enough for James, it’s good enough for me – and I hope it’s good enough for you too!
If you do pick up this drive, then do be sure to update the firmware – there was a rare (but nasty) bug going around that affected the 980 Pro and this model, the 990 Pro. Drives shipping now should have the firmware fix pre-installed, but Samsung’s Magician utility is useful for other reasons and can confirm you have the latest firmware and update it if necessary. The more you know!
Thanks for joining me for another deal, and stay tuned – we’re halfway through the deals week, so still plenty to come on Wednesday and Thursday. Cheers!
