Get the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB w/ heatsink for £98 (was £144)
The 980 Pro is getting on a bit now, having been released in 2020, but it still occupies the upper echelon of ‘first-gen’ PCIe 4.0 SSDs alongside the WD SN850, and it is now considerably less expensive as a result of its age. At launch, it cost £83 for a 250GB model without heatsink, so getting one with four times the capacity and a heatsink for only £15 more is a pretty excellent result. This particular 1TB heatsink model normally retails for £125, so picking it up for under £100 is a real bargain. In terms of the specs, the 980 Pro uses Samsung’s own flash memory and controller for some impressive speeds - it’s rated for 7000MB/s reads and 5100MB/s writes, with impressive random performance too at up to 1000K IOPS on both reads and writes. That places it alongside the later WD SN850x and only slightly behind the newer 990 Pro, which now occupies the ‘fastest’ slot on our best SSD recommendations. As expected, performance is excellent, and having used Samsung SSDs for a long time in my own machines, I can speak to their reliability as well. If you want the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD you can find under £100, this is an excellent candidate!
