Which is better, Crucial P510 1TB or Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB? September 2026 side-by-side with prices, specs, and verdict.
A like-for-like comparison: both drives target the same buyer segment at the same Gen 5 1 TB class. The interesting question becomes which manufacturer's implementation aged better.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial P510 1TB runs on an E31T controller that trades DRAM for HMB to hit lower price points. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB pairs Samsung's Piccolo controller — DRAM-less with PCIe 4.0/5.0 dual-mode support.
Crucial P510 1TB's $210.00/TB pricing edges out Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB's $239.00/TB by about 12%. Not transformative, but a real difference at 2-4 TB capacities where it adds up.
On sequential reads the Crucial P510 1TB pulls ahead by 3,750 MB/s (11,000 MB/s versus 7,250 MB/s). That matters for moving large files but rarely shows up in game loads.
Write speeds skew toward the Crucial P510 1TB: 9,500 MB/s sustained against 6,300 MB/s. Content creators feel this; gamers do not.
PS5 owners get no measurable benefit from either drive's peak speed because Sony's internal NVMe controller throttles to ~5,500 MB/s; treat Crucial P510 1TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB as interchangeable here and let price decide. Video editors will gravitate toward the Crucial P510 1TB for its write headroom (9,500 MB/s sustained). Project saves and proxies move faster, which compounds across a workday. Heads-up — these are full-length 2280 drives. Steam Deck and most current handhelds require shorter 2230 modules, so check capacity-specific 2230 variants if that's your target platform.
Market context: we track 6 Gen 5 1 TB drives, and by price per terabyte the Crucial P510 1TB currently sits #1 while the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB sits #2. That puts at least one of them near the top of the value table — a reasonable head-to-head to be choosing from.
As of September 7, 2026, these tracked drives undercut both the Crucial P510 1TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 1TB on $/TB:
Lean toward the Crucial P510 1TB when the lower retail price ($210 vs $239), better $/TB economics ($210.00/TB), meaningfully faster reads (11,000 MB/s), and higher sustained writes (9,500 MB/s) top your priority list.
The 990 EVO Plus uniquely supports both PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2 modes — useful flexibility if you might upgrade motherboard generations.