Compare Crucial P510 1TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB: prices, speeds, $/TB. Which to buy in May 2026? Full spec breakdown.
Both the Crucial P510 1TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB sit in the Gen 5 category at 1 TB, so the matchup turns on controller efficiency, cache topology, and current pricing rather than raw class differences.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial P510 1TB runs on the DRAM-less Phison E31T, built specifically for budget Gen 5 drives that prioritize cost over peak speed. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB pairs the dual-mode Samsung Piccolo silicon that uniquely runs PCIe 5.0 x2 or PCIe 4.0 x4.
There's a modest pricing advantage for the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB: $129.00/TB compared with $169.00/TB. For typical gaming and productivity, this becomes the deciding factor when specs are close.
Read speeds favor the Crucial P510 1TB: 11,000 MB/s versus 7,250 MB/s for the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB, a 34% advantage. Sequential-heavy workloads notice; transactional workloads don't.
The Crucial P510 1TB writes about 34% faster (9,500 MB/s vs 6,300 MB/s). Whether that matters depends entirely on what you write to the drive — gameplay capture and large project saves benefit, browsing and gaming do not.
Heading to a PlayStation 5? Both drives drop into the console's M.2 bay and report identical real-world benchmarks since the PS5 caps storage at PCIe 4.0 speeds. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB wins this matchup on $/TB. Heavy write workloads — video editing, RAW photo libraries, backup operations — favor the Crucial P510 1TB's 9,500 MB/s sustained write speed. Both drives use the 2280 form factor, which is too long for Steam Deck or ROG Ally — you'd need a 2230 variant if either manufacturer offers one, or a dedicated handheld-format drive instead.
Pick the Crucial P510 1TB if you value meaningfully faster reads (11,000 MB/s), and higher sustained writes (9,500 MB/s).
Pick the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB if you value the lower retail price ($129 vs $169), and better $/TB economics ($129.00/TB). Among Samsung's lineup, the 990 EVO Plus is the only consumer drive that physically supports dual-generation PCIe — same hardware, different bus speed depending on platform.