Spring is a time of refreshment, and nothing is more refreshing than new than future-proofing your gaming PC with the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD. This solid state drive is one of the highest-performance M.2 options in the brand’s repertoire, but it’s $159.99 MSRP, especially for 1TB worth of storage, leaves a lot to be desired.
That was, until the tech spring sales came around, which has thankfully brought the SSD down to just $99.99 at Amazon right now. The last time I saw big savings like this on one of the best SSDs for gaming was during last year’s holiday sales, but even then, the price just hovered around the $90 mark. Discounts on drives last year weren’t as grand as I had hoped, regardless, which is what makes seeing the 990 Pro for under $100 right now so inviting.
Sure, 1TB might not be a lot for a lot of us – especially when you consider how storage-demanding AAA games are getting year in and year out. Yet, if you have a spare M.2 slot going and just need a little extra space for the odd download, the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD feels like a no-brainer. Better yet, if you’re okay sourcing your own heatsink, this is one of the best SSDs for PS5 and gives your Sony a ton of extra space for more PS Plus game downloads.
Should you buy the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD?
The Samsung 990 Pro SSD isn’t the latest drive to come from Samsung (that award goes to the Samsung 91000 Pro), however, it’s still one of the best drives from the brand’s long line of storage solutions, and ideal for your rig – so long as you’re okay with just having 1TB at your disposal. Whether or not you should pick up the 990 Pro 1TB SSD primarily comes down to that – is 1TB enough for everything you need it for?
To put it into perspective, one of my favorite PC games, Baldur’s Gate 3, takes up around 150GB worth of my PC’s storage. It’s worth it to get to spend time with the vampire hunk that is Astarion, but if your Steam library is as ridiculous as mine adding even more games into the mix can easily take up 1TB in no time. Of course, unless you have a set of online games you need to have access to 24/7, you don’t need to have everything installed at all times. And being more wary of that will definitely help add more value to grabbing the currently discounted Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD.
If you aren’t too fussed about its 1TB worth of storage, you’ll be happy to know that it doesn’t disappoint where performance is concerned. Our hardware team’s own Duncan Robertson put the drive to the test in his Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD review, and while it was the 2TB version, your experience should be the same. (Other than the lack of an additional 1TB worth of space.) Duncan noted that the SSD “offers some top-contender performance” for both PC and even PS5.
As I briefly touched on earlier, PS5 owners can benefit from this spring sale discount, so long as you’re okay with attaching your own heatsink. The Samsung 990 Pro 1TB would be more than enough to tackle any PS Plus downloads and put that annoying ‘storage is full’ notification to bed. If you aren’t tech-savvy enough to install your own heatsink, then the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB with a heatsink pre-attached is down to just $109.99 at Amazon too. That’s not quite under $100 but it’s pretty close and will have your aging PS5 rival the built-in storage of the Slim PS5 model, too.
If you need some extra storage for your favorite consoles, check out our guides to the best Nintendo Switch SD cards, the best Xbox Series X hard drive, SSD, and memory card solutions, and the best SSDs for PS5 to give your pixel-pushing machine the perfect storage boost.