Last month, we selected Samsung's 500GB 960 Evo as the best SSD for gaming due to its excellent performance and good price per gigabyte (for an NVMe drive). The performance hasn't changed, but the price has, and for the better—the drive is on sale today for $200.
The same drive was selling for $234 last month, and at times in the past it has approached $250. This is the lowest we have seen it, and it's worth every penny. This could also be the beginning in a trend of lower NAND and SSD prices, as we've heard from multiple vendors that they expect NAND prices to start dropping this year.
This is an M.2 model, meaning it's one of those gumstick-sized SSDs that plug into your motherboard (if it has an M.2 slot). It's also an NVMe drive that shuttles data through the PCIe bus. Samsung rates this 960 Evo as being able to deliver up to 3,200MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 1,900MB/s of sequential write performance.
Those are far and away better than anything in SATA territory. Granted, you won't notice a huge difference between a SATA and NVMe SSD in gaming performance, though if you do a lot of file transfers, the added speed is a boon. It's also nice having a drive that plugs directly into the motherboard, rather than having to connect a SATA cable and power cable.
You can find the drive on sale at several places, including Amazon, B&H Photo, Newegg, and direct from Samsung.
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