The Samsung 990 Pro 2TB is the best-seller among internal SSDs on Amazon this Black Friday, and that makes total sense given what you’re getting. Storage speed is the single greatest determinant of whether your computer feels snappy or sluggish, as fast SSDs eliminate boot delays, application loading, and file transfer bottlenecks. This drive delivers flagship performance at pricing that makes it the best value proposition in the SSD market right now. Amazon has it down to $169 for Black Friday, down from $229, which marks a record low that places professional-grade storage well within reach of anyone building or upgrading a PC.
7,450 MB/s Read Speed Eliminates Storage Bottlenecks
The sequential read speed of 7,450 MB/s represents the ceiling of what PCIe Gen 4 technology can do. You boot Windows in under 10 seconds, fire up applications in an instant, and transfer large files between drives in a matter of seconds-not minutes. In-game loading, when the game is loaded on this drive, is faster than on SATA SSDs or hard drives, with some titles eliminating loading screens altogether through DirectStorage support. It makes a big difference in day-to-day use, where everything from opening folders to extracting compressed files happens faster than you expect.
Sequential write speeds reach 6,900 MB/s to handle large file creation and modification with ease. For video editors working with 4K or 8K footage, timeline scrubbing remains smooth, while render times significantly decrease. Content creators exporting large projects onto this drive find transfers complete in a fraction of the time that SATA drives normally would take.
The 2TB capacity allows for installing your OS, applications, and a substantial game library without relying on secondary storage. Modern games take up 50-150GB each, and with this capacity, you can store 15-40 titles depending on how large the files are. You keep the most played games installed and ready, instead of always having to reinstall and uninstall based on which one you want to play.
To achieve these speeds, the PCIe Gen 4 interface uses four lanes of bandwidth on compatible motherboards. The M.2 2280 form factor fits into the standard slots on modern motherboards without the need for adapters or special mounting hardware. This drive will work in older systems that have PCIe Gen 3 slots but will run at reduced speeds limited by that interface. Most motherboards from the past five years support PCIe Gen 4, making this drive compatible with the majority of current builds.
The thermal solution involves a heat spreader that radiates the heat during continuous operation. High-speed SSDs generate thermal energy during continuous intensive read and write operations, and proper cooling keeps performance within limits. The included spreader does its work quite effectively in most scenarios, but it’s even better with systems that have dedicated M.2 heatsinks or motherboard cooling solutions. The drive implements thermal throttling, which drops the speeds temporarily when temperatures exceed safe limits, ensuring hardware protection while continuing operation.
Drive management tools such as performance optimization, firmware updates, and health monitoring are available through Samsung Magician software. You manage remaining drive life, securely erase data, and optimize settings for different workloads. The software normally runs in the background, usually alerting you to firmware updates or potential issues before they can become a problem.
At $169, you get Samsung’s flagship SSD with PCIe Gen 4 speeds for 26% off, dropping pro performance down to the mid-range drive price class.
