Overview
- Retailers are running notable, short-term discounts on internal and portable SSDs with TechRadar flagging several steep price cuts across Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and Newegg.
- Western Digital’s WD_Black SN7100 1TB Gen4 was promoted at just under $190 as reported by TechRadar while the WD_Black SN8100 2TB Gen5 was listed at $400 at Amazon in separate July 14 coverage.
- Samsung’s new 990 PCIe Gen4 SSD, which launched Tuesday, July 14, is available in 1TB and 2TB models with manufacturer-claimed sequential reads up to 7,250 MB/s, writes up to 6,450 MB/s, and lower power draw versus older models.
- Independent benchmarks of Samsung’s quoted 990 numbers are still pending and publications caution that Gen5 drives like the SN8100 only hit rated throughput on motherboards and CPUs with true Gen5 M.2 support and adequate M.2 cooling.
- Buyers should match drive generation to their workload because Gen5’s much higher sequential bandwidth mainly helps large file moves, video editing and AI tasks while everyday actions like booting and app launches show smaller gains over a good Gen4 drive.