The Samsung 990 SSD is a speedy and reliable drive, but it's difficult to recommend when the Pro model is right there for the taking

Storage brands usually start with a standard model and wait a few years to launch a more premium version down the line, but not Samsung.

The Samsung 990 Pro has topped our best SSD for gaming guide for as long as I can remember, but now the Samsung 990 SSD has landed long after its premium predecessor. While bizarre, I'm appreciative to see any new drive hit the market. Especially one that provides speeds that aren't too far behind those of its Pro model, which has reached staggering prices in 2026 as a knock-on effect from the RAM Storage Crisis, which is still having its fun with pricing and availability of the best PS5 SSDs and PC drives alike.

I'm honestly thankful to see any new storage that's £212.19 / $269.99 (1TB) and £411.99 / $529.99 (2TB) launch prices have yet to be shaken up a notch. That being said, Samsung's newest 990 SSD shouldn't be your top choice if you're after the speediest drive, and if you can manage to find its Pro counterpart at a similar or cheaper price point, which is still achievable if you know where to look.

Design

There isn't anything that really separates this DRAM-less drive from others available today. Much like the Samsung 990 Pro SSD, this is your standard M.2 SSD with an all-black PCB and some Samsung branding pasted on top so you don't forget what drive you're inserting into your gaming rig.

I will note that this model is not yet available with a heatsink, so you don't get access to that swanky cyberpunk-looking red and black version which you can grab for the Pro model. However, both drives share the same M.2 2280 form factor, so nothing is stopping you from using it with this SSD, should you have one lying around.

Features

The 2TB Samsung 990 SD is a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe M.2 drive available in 1TB and 2TB capacities that utilizes a DRAM-less design that's powered by Samsung's V-NAND and HMB (Host Memory Buffer) tech. It has a 400 endurance rating and comes with a 3 year warrantly. As a DRAM-less SSD, it's not intended to be as speedy as its Pro counterpart, but the line as to what speeds it's meant to be competing with gets a bit blurry.

The 2TB model I was provided with for this review states the drive provides read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s. That's all well and good, but meanwhile the official Samsung product page and marketing for the drive state it can achieve sequential read and write speeds up to 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s. I'm going to guess the sticker on the box that was provided to me ahead of release might be a little inaccurate, but I wanted to state it here in case the images of the provided box made matters a bit confusing.

Besides its speeds, the 990 is designed to be more efficient and power-savvy than previous models in the 990 lineup. Samsung exclaims that it provides "up to 38% improved performance per Watt" over the 990 Pro and that it can handle large files with ease. The drive and its data can also be managed by Samsung's Magician suite, the brand's proprietary software, which allows you to transfer data and track the health of the latest solid-state drive.

Performance

After spending some time with our CrystalDiskMark benchmarking tool, it was the box sticker that was closer to the mark for the 2TB capacity model, at least where my testing was concerned.

The Gen 4 drive managed to achieve an average 7,094.84 MB/s and 5,851.1 MB/s read and write speeds after being put through a series of four tests. This is not quite the 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s as found on the Samsung website and not enough to take the 990 Pro down a peg, but it's still pretty impressive. Let's not forget, the 990 Pro achieved 7,462MB/s reads and 6,877MB/s writes during our older review, so I'd assume this DRAM-less release would be far, far behind its more premium counterpart instead.

As always, speeds need to be put to practice, so I dug out some of my favorite PC games to see what the 990 was truly capable of. There's only so much that numbers on a screen can tell you. My favorite team-based hero shooter, Marvel Rivals, loaded up in an average of 38.13 seconds (over a period of three tests) from its launch menu to its start screen. I was pretty happy about that, as Season 9 just recently dropped and the sooner I can get into the game and work my way through the new battle pass, the better. In comparison, the game loaded to its start screen in 39.5 seconds from the onboard PNY CS1030 drive of my testing rig, so there was a tiny improvement - though it was not all that noticeable in practice.

Counter-Strike 2 loaded in an average of 26.80 seconds on the 990 SSD, which was a few seconds behind my rig's onboard PNY drive. It was a similar case for Dispatch, which loaded to its start screen at an average of 17.11 seconds compared to the PNY drive's 15.21 seconds. Of course, as I was using a stopwatch to time each game, it wasn't an exact science, so there should be a little margin of error to take into consideration. Either way, I had no issue bouncing into a variety of my go-to PC games practically as fast as I'm used to, and the SSD didn't falter or have any issues throughout the entirety of my testing time.

When it came to actually running Marvel Rivals off the 990 SSD, the drive continued to thrive. These days, there's a lot of on-screen clutter now that we've got characters like Jubilee setting off a barrage of fireworks and bright lights everywhere, so I was more concerned about my graphics card giving up the ghost than this SSD. Yet, after many hours of matches under my belt, Samsung's 990 kept chugging along just fine, and I didn't notice any dramatic difference whether I was rumaging through the various event screens or trying to get to the character select screen to select my main, Invisible Woman, as soon as possible.

During testing, I regrettably did not have a DC meter to check the temperature of the drive. Yet after a few check-ins throughout my time loading up games and spending far too many hours diving back in Marvel Rivals, Windows 11 informed me that the 990 SSD sat around the 48-degree mark.

Should you buy the Samsung 990 SSD?

Recommending SSDs in this day and age is tricky. While there are still plenty of impressive drives to go around, and the 2TB Samsung 990 counts as one of those in my eyes, but it's pricing leaves a little to be desired.

The Samsung 990 SSD launched for £411.99 / $529.99, which is a lot to pay for a little bit of extra storage. Especially when you consider that the 2TB 990 Pro originally launched for $309. That's a little over a $220 difference in just a few years, and without jynxing the situation, I fully expect the 990 SSD to rise from its $529.9 MSRP in the future if current SSD prices are anything to go by. (Thanks RAM Storage Crisis.)

That being said, as of the time of this review, its price thankfully hasn't shifted. This is where I'd usually recommend you grab it now before stock is all gobbled up and gone for good, but you can grab alternatives like the WD_Black SN7100 for just $289.99 at Amazon, and even the 2TB 990 Pro is down to $389.99 at Amazon.

If you're browsing retailers at a time when its Pro counterpart is bouncing between eye-watering prices, and yet the Samsung 990 SSD is still at its original price? Then I'd absolutely recommend you grab it to give your PC a boost. However, if luck is on your side and the same-capacity 990 Pro is the same price or even cheaper, you might as well still go for the more premium (and faster) option, even if the speed difference is only marginally higher than this DRAM-less drive.

How I tested the Samsung 990 SSD

As with all of the SSDs that come past my testing bench, I put the Samsung 990 through its paces by hooking it up to the M.2 drive of my testing PC, and running it through the benchmarking tool CrystalDiskMark. With it, I ran the drive through a series of four tests and calculated an average from those speeds. That average was then compared to its advertised on-the-box speeds. Additionally, I downloaded titles like Marvel Rivals, Counter-Strike 2, and Dispatch t via Steam and timed how long it took to load to their respective start screens and compared this to past SSDs that I've tested so far. To read more about the ways we test SSDs and the rest of our gaming tech, have a look at how we test SSDs and our hardware policy.

Check out our guides to the best SSDs for PS5, the best PS5 external hard drive, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive if your gaming platform of choice could use a little boost.