Side-by-side: Crucial T705 4TB ($749) vs Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB ($419). $/TB winner, specs, real-world picks for May 2026.
Gen 5 at 4 TB is one of the most contested SSD segments in 2026, and Crucial T705 4TB versus Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB captures that competition well. The decision rarely comes down to peak speeds — both drives saturate typical workloads.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial T705 4TB runs on the Phison E26 — the first widely-deployed Gen 5 controller, capable but thermally demanding. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB pairs the dual-mode Samsung Piccolo silicon that uniquely runs PCIe 5.0 x2 or PCIe 4.0 x4.
Money matters here — $104.75/TB on the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB versus $187.25/TB on the Crucial T705 4TB. That's enough of a spread that for budget-conscious builders, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB becomes the default unless reviews of your specific workload prefer the Crucial T705 4TB.
Read speeds favor the Crucial T705 4TB: 14,500 MB/s versus 7,250 MB/s for the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB, a 50% advantage. Sequential-heavy workloads notice; transactional workloads don't.
The Crucial T705 4TB writes about 50% faster (12,700 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.
The DRAM-vs-HMB question divides opinion: Crucial T705 4TB's on-board DRAM theoretically helps under sustained workloads, while Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB's HMB approach has matured enough that most users won't see the difference. Pick on price if everything else is similar.
If this purchase is for a PS5 storage expansion, the comparison flattens — Sony's PCIe Gen 4 controller normalizes both Crucial T705 4TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB to roughly equal in-game load times. The cheaper drive is the smart pick. Heavy write workloads — video editing, RAW photo libraries, backup operations — favor the Crucial T705 4TB's 12,700 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.
Go with the Crucial T705 4TB for meaningfully faster reads (14,500 MB/s), higher sustained writes (12,700 MB/s), and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. Crucial drives benefit from being a direct Micron product — the same NAND that powers competitors' drives, but at lower margins.
Go with the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB for the lower retail price ($419 vs $749), and better $/TB economics ($104.75/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.