While SSD pricing isn't quite as bad as RAM, buying more storage for your PC is tough these days. Samsung recently released a new 'budget' version of its 990 M.2 SSD, and it just got a decent discount at Amazon. The 990 2 TB SSD is now $339 instead of $529, a 36% saving.
The 990 SSD is an interesting product because it is one of the few SSDs released after the AI pricing crunch sent storage prices into orbit. As such, we know what Samsung thinks this drive is worth in the current climate, namely $529. While 2TB of storage would have been much cheaper a year ago, a 36% discount on a new SSD is not to be sniffed at, especially given all signs point to these drives getting more expensive, not cheaper, in the future.
990 2TB SSD: was $529.99 now $339.99
Save 36% on an M.2 Gen 4 SSD with up to 7,250/6,450 MB/s sequential read/write speeds.View Deal
We reviewed this drive at launch last month and liked its full-fledged Gen 4 throughput, decent power consumption, and good all-around performance. The 990 is essentially a QLC-based 990 EVO Plus, featuring Samsung's PiccoloQ controller and V9 QLC Flash memory.
As you can see from our testing data, it scores very close to the 990 EVO Plus in latency testing, while beating the 990 Evo drive in bandwidth and 3DMark overall score.
This drive also scored well in our PS5 test, so this drive could serve as an expansion drive for your PlayStation if you so choose. At its list price, this drive makes no sense as a purchase up against the 990 Pro or Samsung's Gen 5 9100, but at this price it is a good chunk cheaper than both of those options. Amazon does have a 39% discount on the 990 Pro 2TB, now $389 instead of $639 if you want to spend a bit more on that slightly more performant drive. Or, if your motherboard supports Gen 5, you might want to eat the $60 jump for the 9100 Pro 2TB, currently $399 at Amazon. This regular 990 also has a 1TB model on sale, but that discount is just 13%, so its $199.99 price tag makes it poorer value compared to the 2TB model.
As always with storage deals, these prices are tough to stomach, but they aren't going to improve any time soon. In fact, all signs point to the AI pricing crunch continuing to make things worse going forward, meaning leaving it too long could make storage even more expensive in the future.