When a 1TB drive fills up with games or build caches, you reach for a 2TB M.2 NVMe drive. In October 2026 that upgrade costs at least a third more than it did when most of these drives were reviewed. The 990 PRO 2TB that Tom’s Hardware reviewed at $289.99 was $389.99 on Amazon when we checked. The DRAM-less 990 EVO Plus went from $149.99 to $366.50, and that flips the usual advice.
This guide picks the best Gen 4 NVMe SSD for a desktop, a PS5, a laptop and a tight budget, then the three Gen 5 drives that now cost about the same as a good Gen 4 one. Speeds and endurance come from the makers, controller and flash details from independent reviews, and prices from Amazon’s catalog on October 19, 2026. We did not benchmark these seven drives; what we measured is how hard a real drive in our Proxmox lab has worked.
Updated October 2026: specs re-checked against datasheets and reviews, prices against Amazon’s live catalog.
Matching a drive to your machine
All seven are 2TB M.2 2280 drives, and each award links to that exact capacity:
- Best Gen 4 overall: Samsung 990 PRO 2TB, TLC with a 2GB DRAM cache and 1,200 TBW
- Best for a PS5: WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB with heatsink, the heatsink model SanDisk lists for the console
- Best for laptops: Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB, DRAM-less and wired for Gen 4 x4 or Gen 5 x2
- Best budget: Crucial P310 2TB, about $127 per TB when we checked, with QLC flash and 440 TBW
- Best Gen 5: SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 8100 2TB, the renamed WD_BLACK SN8100
- Gen 5 alternatives: Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB and Crucial T705 2TB
The surprise is the Gen 5 line. At October 2026 prices the three Gen 5 picks and the 990 PRO sat about $10 apart, so the slot on your motherboard, not your budget, now decides whether you buy a Gen 4 or a Gen 5 NVMe SSD.
Building the shortlist
We started from the queries that bring readers to this page (“gen 4 nvme ssd”, “best gen 4 ssd”, “best pcie 4.0 ssd”) and from what is sold new on Amazon today. Then we cut anything that failed one of these checks:
- Sold new on the Amazon listing, not only used or renewed
- A 2TB listing that matches the exact model and variant
- Specs on the maker’s own datasheet or product page
- An independent review that names the controller, DRAM and NAND
- A price that still makes sense next to the other picks
The price check cut two obvious candidates. The Crucial T500 2TB was about $450 for the same 1,200 TBW as the cheaper 990 PRO. The bare WD_BLACK SN8100 listing asked $536.00 for the drive that SanDisk now sells as the Optimus GX PRO 8100 for $399.99. The SN7100, renamed the Optimus GX 7100, was only offered at 2TB for back-order from a third-party seller, so we left it out. Speeds in this guide are the makers’ ratings rather than our benchmarks, and controller and NAND details come from Tom’s Hardware and KitGuru teardowns where the maker doesn’t publish them. Server and ZFS buyers want a different list: power-loss protection matters there, which is why the server and homelab SSD guide and the Proxmox NVMe picks exist.
Comparing Gen 4 and Gen 5 NVMe SSD specs
Controller, DRAM and NAND decide how a drive behaves once its fast cache fills, so they sit next to the headline speeds:
| Drive (2TB) | Interface | Controller | NAND | DRAM | Seq read / write (MB/s) | TBW | Price when we checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 PRO | PCIe 4.0 x4 | Samsung Pascal | Samsung TLC | 2GB LPDDR4 | 7,450 / 6,900 | 1,200 | $389.99 |
| WD_BLACK SN850X (heatsink) | PCIe 4.0 x4 | WD in-house | BiCS5 TLC | DDR4 | 7,300 / 6,600 | 1,200 | $419.99 |
| Samsung 990 EVO Plus | PCIe 4.0 x4 or 5.0 x2 | Samsung Piccolo | Samsung V8 TLC | None (HMB) | 7,250 / 6,300 | 1,200 | $366.50 |
| Crucial P310 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | Phison E27T | Micron 232-layer QLC | None (HMB) | 7,100 / 6,000 | 440 | $254.13 |
| SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 8100 | PCIe 5.0 x4 | Silicon Motion SM2508 | BiCS8 TLC | DDR4 | 14,900 / 14,000 | 1,200 | $399.99 |
| Samsung 9100 PRO | PCIe 5.0 x4 | Samsung Presto | Samsung V8 TLC | 2GB LPDDR4X | 14,700 / 13,400 | 1,200 | $399.00 |
| Crucial T705 | PCIe 5.0 x4 | Phison E26 | Micron 232-layer TLC | LPDDR4 | 14,500 / 12,700 | 1,200 | $399.00 |
Six of the seven carry the same 1,200 TBW rating at 2TB, so endurance only separates the P310 from the rest. Read the DRAM column next. The two drives marked HMB borrow a slice of your system’s RAM for their mapping table instead of carrying their own. That is a trade we’d accept in a laptop and avoid in a desktop that writes for long stretches.
1. Samsung 990 PRO 2TB: best Gen 4 overall
If your motherboard tops out at Gen 4 and you want one drive you will not second-guess, buy this one.
Samsung’s datasheet lists its in-house controller, Samsung TLC V-NAND and a 2GB LPDDR4 cache at 2TB, rated at 7,450 MB/s read and 6,900 MB/s write with 1,200 TBW and a five-year warranty. That DRAM cache is the reason it stays consistent. The drive keeps its own map of where every block lives, so a long game install or a build that writes thousands of small files does not lean on your system memory. Tom’s Hardware’s review identifies the controller as Pascal.
It was $389.99 (list $639.99) when we checked, against $289.99 when Tom’s Hardware reviewed it in 2022. Check the current price on Amazon.
Buy it for a Gen 4 desktop that runs games, a code editor full of containers, or both. Pass on it if your board has a Gen 5 M.2 slot, because the Gen 5 picks cost about $10 more and roughly double the rated sequential speed. For a PS5 you would also need a separate heatsink, since the bare drive is only 2.3 mm thick and Sony requires a cooling structure.
2. WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB with heatsink: best for a PS5
For a PS5, start with a drive that already ships with a heatsink sized for the console.
SanDisk’s datasheet gives the heatsink model (WDS200T2XHE) 7,300 MB/s read, 6,600 MB/s write and 1,200 TBW, and lists PlayStation 5 support for the heatsink version only. It measures 80 by 23.40 by 8.90 mm, which clears Sony’s limits of 25 mm wide and 11.25 mm thick. Tom’s Hardware’s review found WD’s own controller, a DDR4 cache and 112-layer BiCS5 TLC, so this is a DRAM-equipped drive, not a cut-down console part.
When we checked it was $419.99, against $309.99 when Tom’s Hardware reviewed the 2TB heatsink model. SanDisk split from Western Digital in 2025 and is moving the WD_BLACK drives to Optimus GX names, so the same drive is also listed as the Optimus GX PRO 850X; its heatsink version was $549.99, which makes the WD_BLACK listing the cheaper way to buy it. Check the current price on Amazon.
Best fit: PS5 owners who want a drop-in drive with no extra parts. Not the one for a desktop whose board already has an M.2 heatsink: there the 990 PRO costs about $30 less for the same 1,200 TBW and a faster rated read.
3. Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB: best for laptops
A laptop with one M.2 slot and a tight thermal budget is where a DRAM-less Gen 4 drive still earns its place.
Samsung lists the 990 EVO Plus with its in-house controller (Piccolo, per Tom’s Hardware), TLC V-NAND, no DRAM and a Host Memory Buffer instead, rated at 7,250 MB/s read and 6,300 MB/s write. It keeps the 990 PRO’s 1,200 TBW rating, so this is TLC without the endurance penalty you get from QLC. It also runs on PCIe 4.0 x4 or 5.0 x2, which helps in newer thin laptops that wire their M.2 slot with two Gen 5 lanes.
The catch is price. Tom’s Hardware reviewed the 2TB at $149.99 in 2024. When we checked it was $366.50 (list $579.99), about $23 less than the 990 PRO with its DRAM. Check the current price on Amazon.
Made for laptops and small PCs where one slot, low heat and TLC endurance matter. Look elsewhere if you are building a desktop. For about $23 more the 990 PRO adds a DRAM cache, and if the price gap returns to its launch level, this becomes the value pick again.
4. Crucial P310 2TB: best budget Gen 4
When the job is holding a game library or a media folder, the P310 is the cheapest way into 2TB here.
Crucial rates the 2TB 2280 model at 7,100 MB/s read and 6,000 MB/s write with 440 TBW and a five-year warranty. KitGuru’s review of this exact model found a DRAM-less Phison E27T controller and Micron 232-layer QLC flash. It called the endurance rating lower than you would expect from a 2TB Gen 4 drive because of the QLC. QLC stores four bits per cell instead of TLC’s three, and the lower endurance rating is the trade you make here.
For perspective, our lab drive (more on it below) has written about 81 GB a day. At that rate 440 TBW would last roughly 15 years, so for games and media the rating is a non-issue. For VM disks or a database it is the wrong drive, and the NVMe vs SATA datastore comparison shows why write-heavy hosts need more.
It was $254.13 when we checked, about $127 per TB against $195 for the 990 PRO. The buy box at that price was Amazon Germany, so the order ships from abroad: check the delivery date, any import fees shown at checkout and the return terms before you buy. That price makes it the drive you buy as a second disk for games, photos or media. Avoid it for anything that writes all day, such as build servers, VM hosts or video scratch disks. Check the current price on Amazon.
5. SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 8100 2TB: best Gen 5
If your board has a Gen 5 M.2 slot, this is the Gen 5 NVMe SSD we would put in it.
This is the WD_BLACK SN8100 under its new name. ComputerBase set it against the SN8100 it had tested earlier and found the same SM2508 controller, BiCS8 TLC flash and datasheet figures; only the name, packaging, heatsink design and firmware changed. SanDisk’s datasheet rates the 2TB at 14,900 MB/s read and 14,000 MB/s write, the highest pair on this list, with 1,200 TBW and a five-year warranty. Tom’s Hardware’s review lists a DDR4 cache and names power efficiency among its reasons to buy.
SanDisk rates the 2TB at an average 6.4 W reading and 7.0 W writing, measured over bursts of sequential I/O. Samsung measures its 9100 PRO figures (8.1 W and 7.9 W) on its own test system, so treat the gap as a rough guide rather than a lab result.
When we checked it cost $399.99 (list $444.43), against $279.99 for the bare SN8100 when Tom’s Hardware reviewed it in 2025. Check the current price on Amazon. This is the bare drive. For a board with no slot heatsink, the heatsink version still sells under the old name as the WD_BLACK SN8100 2TB with heatsink, at $447.96 with stock running low when we checked.
Put it in a Gen 5 desktop where the M.2 slot is wired to the CPU. Not worth it in a Gen 4 board or a PS5, where the slot caps it at Gen 4 speed and the 990 PRO does the same job for less.
6. Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB: the Samsung Gen 5 option
The 9100 PRO is the Gen 5 drive to buy if you want Samsung’s controller and Magician software.
Samsung’s datasheet lists an in-house controller (Presto, per Tom’s Hardware), TLC V-NAND, a 2GB LPDDR4X cache, 14,700 MB/s read and 13,400 MB/s write at 2TB, 1,200 TBW and five years of warranty. It lists an average active read power of 8.1 W, while the 990 PRO datasheet gives 5.8 W. Plan on your board’s M.2 heatsink or a case with real airflow over that slot.
The listing showed $399.00 (list $679.97) when we checked, but only for back-order from a third-party seller. Tom’s Hardware reviewed it at $299.99 in 2025. Check the current price and stock on Amazon.
Pick it over the T705 when both are in stock at the same price: it has the higher rated write speed (13,400 against 12,700 MB/s) and the newer LPDDR4X cache. Skip the wait if you need the drive this week, and buy the Optimus GX PRO 8100 instead.
7. Crucial T705 2TB: Gen 5 at its launch price
The T705 is the one pick on this list that costs what it did when it was reviewed.
Crucial rates the 2TB at 14,500 MB/s read and 12,700 MB/s write with 1,200 TBW and a five-year warranty. Tom’s Hardware’s review lists a Phison E26 controller, LPDDR4 cache and 232-layer Micron TLC. Read one footnote on Crucial’s own page before you build: if you fit it under a motherboard heatsink, you must not peel off the copper-clad label, or you lose the warranty.
It was $399.00 when we checked, against $399.99 when Tom’s Hardware reviewed it in 2024. Check the current price on Amazon.
A good backup choice for Gen 5 builders when the other two are out of stock or dearer. Third of our Gen 5 picks because its rated write speed trails both, and the E26 controller is an older design than the SM2508 in the Optimus.
Tracking 2026 prices against launch
Every drive in this table except the T705 costs more now than when Tom’s Hardware reviewed it, and the jump is not even across the list:
| Drive (2TB) | Price at review | Price when we checked | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 EVO Plus | $149.99 (Oct 2024) | $366.50 | 2.44x |
| Optimus GX PRO 8100 (SN8100 at review) | $279.99 (May 2025) | $399.99 | 1.43x |
| WD_BLACK SN850X (heatsink) | $309.99 (Oct 2022) | $419.99 | 1.35x |
| Samsung 990 PRO | $289.99 (Oct 2022) | $389.99 | 1.34x |
| Samsung 9100 PRO | $299.99 (Mar 2025) | $399.00 | 1.33x |
| Crucial T705 | $399.99 (Feb 2024) | $399.00 | 1.00x |
The drive that was cheapest at review, the 990 EVO Plus, took the biggest hit, so the old rule of saving money with a DRAM-less drive barely works at the moment. If you are wondering why flash went up this much, our look at what pushed RAM and storage prices up covers it. Because these prices move week to week, treat the table as a snapshot and check the live price before you buy.
Choosing between Gen 4 and Gen 5
Buy Gen 5 only when your board has a Gen 5 M.2 slot wired to the CPU and something to cool it. At October 2026 prices the money barely matters, so the checks are about the slot:
- A Gen 5 M.2 slot, named as such in the board manual
- A heatsink over that slot, or a drive with its own
- Whether the slot shares lanes with your graphics card slot
Lane sharing is the one people miss. On some boards, filling a particular M.2 slot drops the GPU to fewer lanes, and the PCIe lane guide for GPU and NVMe builds shows how to read a board’s lane map. In a Gen 4 board or a PS5, a Gen 5 drive runs at Gen 4 speed, so a gen 4 NVMe SSD is the right buy there and the difference stays in your pocket.
Reading DRAM, HMB, TLC and QLC on a spec sheet
A drive with its own DRAM keeps the table that maps logical blocks to flash pages on the drive. A DRAM-less drive keeps part of that table in a Host Memory Buffer, a small slice of your system RAM reached over PCIe. We put the DRAM-less drive in the laptop slot of this list and the DRAM drives in the desktop slots for that reason: a desktop is where long write sessions happen.
Flash type matters for endurance. TLC stores three bits per cell, and every TLC pick here is rated at 1,200 TBW at 2TB. That works out to about a third of the drive’s capacity written every day for five years. QLC stores four bits per cell, so the P310 gets 440 TBW at the same capacity. Use TBW to compare drives of the same size; for how a consumer drive compares with a SATA SSD in a server, the homelab SSD guide goes further.
Fitting an NVMe drive in a PS5
Sony’s M.2 SSD requirements for PS5 are specific, and the heatsink rule catches most people:
- PCIe Gen 4 x4 M.2 NVMe, Key M; SATA M.2 is not supported
- 250GB to 8TB, form factor 2230 to 22110
- Up to 25 mm wide and 11.25 mm thick, heatsink included
- Of that thickness, up to 8.0 mm above the board and 2.45 mm below
- 5,500 MB/s sequential read or faster recommended
- A cooling structure such as a heatsink or heat transfer sheet
Sony says the cooling can be single-sided or double-sided, and that single-sided structures are the easier fit. The SN850X heatsink model fits inside those limits as shipped. A bare 990 PRO meets the speed and size rules but still needs a heatsink or heat transfer sheet before it goes in. Samsung also makes a heatsink version (MZ-V9P2T0CW), but the Amazon listing only offered it for back-order when we checked. A Gen 5 drive gains nothing in the console’s Gen 4 slot. If you want to move games or backups off the console later, the same drives work in a USB NVMe enclosure.
Checking drive health after you install it
Once the drive is in, the one number to watch is how much of its rated endurance it has used. On Linux, smartmontools reads it straight from the NVMe health log. Install the package first:
sudo apt install smartmontoolsOn Fedora, Rocky or Alma the package has the same name under dnf. Then read the health fields that matter:
sudo smartctl -a /dev/nvme0 | grep -E "Model Number|Critical Warning|Temperature:|Available Spare|Percentage Used|Data Units Written|Power On Hours|Unsafe Shutdowns|Media and Data Integrity"This is the Samsung 980 1TB in one of our Proxmox lab nodes, read on October 19, 2026:
Model Number: Samsung SSD 980 1TB
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 46 Celsius
Available Spare: 94%
Available Spare Threshold: 10%
Percentage Used: 8%
Data Units Written: 75,680,240 [38.7 TB]
Power On Hours: 11,451
Unsafe Shutdowns: 1,246
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 1After 11,451 power-on hours and 38.7 TB written, the drive reports 8% of its endurance used, so on a lab workload that writes about 81 GB a day it has years left. Watch three lines: Percentage Used climbing toward 100, Available Spare falling toward its threshold, and Media and Data Integrity Errors growing. A single integrity error over years, as here, goes in your notes; a count that rises week to week means it is time to copy the data off. Firmware is the other day-2 job: Samsung ships updates through its Magician software, and the other makers list theirs on their support pages, so check once after install and again if a drive misbehaves. If this drive is going into a Linux development workstation, add this check to the same cron or monitoring job that watches the rest of the box.
