The Samsung 990 1TB deal puts the PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive at a reported $189.99 on Amazon, according to Tom’s Hardware. That is $40 below the $229.99 comparison price cited in its report, and works out to about 19 cents per advertised gigabyte when 1TB is treated as 1,000GB. It is a retailer price, not a permanent new MSRP, so the checkout total deserves a look before anybody treats it as settled.
There are two different price baselines in the report. Tom’s Hardware says Amazon’s $189.99 price is $40 below $229.99, while separately reporting that Samsung introduced the 1TB 990 earlier in the year with a $269.99 MSRP. Those are not interchangeable numbers. The reported Amazon price is $80 below the stated launch MSRP.
Samsung’s 990 is the standard 990, not the 990 Pro or 990 EVO Plus. The drive uses Samsung V9 QLC NAND and a DRAM-less controller, according to Tom’s Hardware. It is a single-sided M.2 2280 SSD, a physical format the report says should suit a range of desktops, laptops and mini-PCs.
What do buyers get with the Samsung 990 1TB deal?
Samsung rates the 1TB model for sequential reads of up to 7,150 MB/s and sequential writes of up to 6,450 MB/s. The company also rates it for up to 400TB written and provides a three-year warranty, Tom’s Hardware reports. Those specifications describe the product; they do not turn an Amazon listing into a live price guarantee.
The drive could be relevant to people adding game storage or moving up from an older SATA SSD or hard drive. An SSD stores data without the spinning disks used in a hard drive, and the speed and capacity trade-offs are covered in Kernel’s guide to SSDs versus HDDs. Buyers should confirm the exact model, capacity and current price at checkout.
How did the Samsung 990 perform in testing?
Tom’s Hardware tested the 2TB version, not the discounted 1TB unit. In those tests, it found reasonably good general performance, especially in games and everyday applications. The 2TB drive was similar to Samsung’s 990 EVO Plus in some results, while Crucial’s P310 and WD Blue SN5100 led it in some file-transfer tests.
That 2TB sample sustained nearly 6,100 MB/s for more than 57 seconds before its write cache was exhausted and performance declined, according to the review. Tom’s Hardware also found its power efficiency was not among its strengths. Those observations belong to the 2TB test result, not a promise about the 1TB model.
The report calls the 990 a competent budget PCIe 4.0 SSD. Its deal framing cites difficult conditions for NAND and DRAM supply, but the supplied reporting does not independently establish broader market pricing or availability. The concrete claim here is narrower: Tom’s Hardware reported an Amazon listing at $189.99, and a listing can change without asking permission.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
