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The Samsung 970 Evo Plus just missed out on one of our top gaming SSD recommendations due to its premium price, so I was happy to spot this drive had been severely discounted by Amazon UK. Right now, the 1TB model has dropped precipitously – from £140 to just £110.
That’s a great price for one of the most performant PCIe 3.0 drives on the market, offering great sequential and random performance and rock-solid reliability.
When Katharine reviewed the 970 Evo Plus in those heady pre-pandemic times, she saw 3243MB/s sequential read speeds and 3102MB/s sequential write speeds once Samsung’s ‘Magician’ software had been installed. In my own testing, the 970 Evo Plus appeared to be more or less equivalent to the earlier 970 Evo, beating it in some tests and falling behind in others.
Later PCIe 4.0 and even 3.0 drives like the 970 Pro have the 970 Evo Plus beat, but for the money it’s pretty outrageous performance – and without the common pitfalls of budget NVMe drives, like the use of QLC NAND over faster TLC or the ommission of a DRAM cache. The 970 Evo Plus has it where it counts.
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at comparable 1TB NVMe SSDs on Amazon and see where the 970 Evo ranks. The WD SN550 is much cheaper at £71, as is the Crucial P2 at £79, but this drive is limited to speeds of 2400MB/s – still way faster than SATA SSDs but not quite as speedy as the 970 Evo Plus. The newer Samsung 980 (no Evo or Plus designation) is faster in some metrics, but doesn’t have a DRAM cache – a deal-breaker for some consumers. In any case, it’s a viable alternative in my eyes, at £85.
So, there you have it. I think the 970 Evo Plus is definitely worth considering at this reduced price, but I’d be tempted to go for a cheaper drive if I was going to use it for game storage only. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!
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