The Samsung 990 PRO 4TB is $799.90 at Amazon at the time of writing, down $300.09 from a $1,099.99 list price Samsung charges on its own store. It is also the dearest terabyte of the four NVMe drives cut alongside it.
The 4TB works out at $199.98 per terabyte. The 2TB beside it in the same sale costs $183.00.
Three other drives fell at the same moment. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB is $365.99, the Samsung 990 1TB is $189.99, and the SanDisk Optimus GX 7100 1TB is $199.00.
Cost per terabyte across the four drives
Buying a bigger drive normally buys a cheaper terabyte. Dividing each price by its capacity shows that it does not here.
| Drive | Price | List price | Cost per terabyte | Rated sequential read and write |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 PRO 4TB | $799.90 | $1,099.99 | $199.98 | 7,450 / 6,900 MB/s |
| SanDisk Optimus GX 7100 1TB | $199.00 | Not published | $199.00 | 7,250 / 6,900 MB/s |
| Samsung 990 1TB | $189.99 | $229.99 | $189.99 | 7,150 / 6,450 MB/s |
| Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB | $365.99 | $579.99 | $183.00 | 7,250 / 6,300 MB/s |
Speeds are each maker's published figure for that exact capacity. The 4TB costs $16.98 more per terabyte than the 2TB and $9.99 more than the Samsung 990 1TB.
Samsung's own price list runs the other way. It asks $319.99 for the 990 PRO 1TB, $639.99 for the 990 PRO 2TB and $1,099.99 for the 4TB.
That is $319.99 per terabyte at 1TB against $275.00 at 4TB. Samsung does give the big drive a discount.
Amazon's uneven cuts wipe it out. The 2TB 990 EVO Plus is the drive to buy on this arithmetic, and the 4TB is what one free M.2 slot costs, with NVMe prices still climbing.
Samsung 990 PRO 4TB specifications
| Specification | Samsung 990 PRO 4TB |
|---|---|
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 |
| Sequential read and write | 7,450 / 6,900 MB/s |
| Random read and write | 1,600K / 1,550K IOPS |
| DRAM cache | 4GB LPDDR4 |
| Endurance | 2,400 TBW |
| Warranty | Five years limited, or the TBW |
| Form factor | Single-sided M.2 2280 |
| Cost per terabyte | $199.98 |
Those numbers come from Samsung's 2023 announcement of the 4TB capacity, not from its datasheet. The 990 PRO datasheet covers the 1TB and 2TB models only.
This is the fastest and the best documented drive of the four. It is also the only one with a published DRAM cache, at 4GB, which is the part a drive loses first when a maker cuts cost.
Samsung gave the 4TB a $344.99 MSRP when it announced it in September 2023. Its own store now asks $1,099.99, so the 27% discount is 27% off a price Samsung has tripled.
At $799.90 the drive is still $454.91 above that launch price.
The 990 EVO Plus 2TB is the cheapest terabyte here
At $365.99 the 990 EVO Plus 2TB is $214.00 below a $579.99 price Samsung still lists and currently cannot ship. Samsung shows the 2TB as out of stock on its own store.
Two of them hold 4TB for $731.98. That is $67.92 less than one 990 PRO 4TB, for anyone with a second M.2 slot free.
Samsung rates it at 7,250 MB/s read and 6,300 MB/s write, with 1,200 TBW and a five-year warranty. It runs on PCIe 4.0 x4 or PCIe 5.0 x2, and it has no onboard DRAM.
This is not a fresh low. The same listing read $366.50 on October 21, when a marketplace seller held the buy box, and $359.99 on September 19. Amazon is the seller again today.
Two 1TB drives, and only one publishes an endurance rating
The Samsung 990 1TB is $189.99, down $40.00 from $229.99. The price is not new, because the same listing read $189.99 on October 15 and again on October 21.
Samsung publishes no endurance rating, no warranty term, no cache type and no NAND cell type for the plain 990. It publishes all four for the 990 PRO and the 990 EVO Plus.
The SanDisk costs $9.01 more and publishes every one of them. SanDisk's data sheet gives the 1TB 600 TBW, a five-year limited warranty, TLC 3D CBA NAND and a host memory buffer in place of DRAM.
SanDisk rates it at 7,250 MB/s read and 6,900 MB/s write, a faster write than the Samsung 990 1TB. It is the drive SanDisk sold as the WD_BLACK SN7100 until it renamed the line in January.
However, Amazon publishes no list price for it, so there is no saving to check and no basis for calling it a discount. SanDisk's own store does not print a price in its product page either.
What the listings leave out
None of the four Amazon listings states an endurance rating or a warranty term. Samsung's datasheets add that its write speeds are measured with Intelligent TurboWrite running, which works only up to a certain transfer size.
Samsung's own 1TB page needs care. Its title, its structured data and its body text all give the 990 1TB speeds of 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s.
The capacity table printed inside that page's own speed graphic rates the 2TB at 7,250 MB/s and the 1TB at 7,150 MB/s. The Amazon listing uses the lower figure, and so does the table above.
No end date is published for any of the four cuts, and Samsung has said nothing about why its own list prices have risen so far. Prices at Amazon can change at any time.
Discussion (0)
Be the first to comment.