My favorite affordable gaming SSD is now under $60 for 1 TB in the Black Friday sales

An image of a Lexar NM790 SSD against a teal background, with a white border, and a Black Friday Deals logo
(Image credit: Lexar)
Lexar NM790| 1 TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400 MB/s read | 6,500 MB/s write | $99.99 $59.99 at Amazon (save $40)

Lexar NM790| 1 TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400 MB/s read | 6,500 MB/s write | $99.99 $59.99 at Amazon (save $40)
For anyone looking for a cheap, spacious drive offering serious performance, this is a genuinely brilliant SSD for the money. Our review of the 4 TB version clearly shows just how good it is.

I'll be honest right from the start here: I don't normally recommend that folks should buy a 1 TB SDD. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them, it's just that the way that games are ballooning in size, 2 TB or more is better in the long run.

The problem with such capacities, though, is that they're so popular right now, that prices haven't fallen all that much. So while the biggest SSDs offer the best bang for your buck, they can make a sizeable dent in your wallet. If you're looking to save a bit of money, you need to go down in size.

Enter stage left, the 1 TB SSD and in this particular case, welcome a favorite of mine, the Lexar NM790.

👉 Check out all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here 👈

You can pick up the 1 TB version of this excellent SSD for just $60 at Amazon. It's not quite the cheapest it's ever been but it's not far off, so it's well worth considering it.

We reviewed the 4 TB version last year and came away impressed by its overall performance, good thermals, and sheer value for money. Lexar is a relatively new player in the storage market but it's already made a mark, thanks to the NM790.

You might be wondering how it manages to make its SSDs so cheap. Part of that is because Lexar uses lesser-known components for the controller chip and NAND flash memory modules (Maxiotech and YMTC) but they're more than up to the job.

Further savings come from the drive not having any dedicated DRAM to speed things up, but the NM790 has a really big pseudo-SLC cache, so unless you're trying to write hundreds of gigabytes in one go, the lack of DRAM isn't a problem.

So if you want to give your handheld gaming PC a handy storage boost or just want a bit more space for games in your budget gaming PC, then the Lexar NM790 is definitely one to pick.

👉 Check out all the best Black Friday gaming SSD deals right here 👈

Nick Evanson
Hardware Writer

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?