Side-by-side: Samsung 990 PRO 1TB ($239) vs Crucial P310 2TB ($292). $/TB winner, specs, real-world picks for July 2026.
Both run on Gen 4 hardware but at different capacities: 1 TB for the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB versus 2 TB for the Crucial P310 2TB. Whether the larger drive's $/TB advantage justifies the higher upfront cost depends on how much you actually need.
Hardware-wise, the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB runs on the in-house Samsung Pascal — engineered specifically for the 990 PRO at 8nm. The Crucial P310 2TB pairs an E27T controller built specifically for DRAM-less Gen 4 SSDs.
Money matters here — $146.00/TB on the Crucial P310 2TB versus $239.00/TB on the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB. That's enough of a spread that for budget-conscious builders, the Crucial P310 2TB becomes the default unless reviews of your specific workload prefer the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB.
The DRAM-vs-HMB question divides opinion: Samsung 990 PRO 1TB's on-board DRAM theoretically helps under sustained workloads, while Crucial P310 2TB's HMB approach has matured enough that most users won't see the difference. Pick on price if everything else is similar.
Crucial P310 2TB earns higher TBW ratings (880 vs 600 TBW) — relevant for sustained write workloads, irrelevant for everything else.
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 Crucial P310 2TB wins this matchup on $/TB. For content creators routinely rendering 4K or 8K video, the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB's 6,900 MB/s sustained write is the deciding factor — multi-GB project files land noticeably faster than on the alternative. Note for handheld gamers: M.2 2280 is the desktop/laptop standard. Steam Deck and the ROG Ally line need 2230 drives — neither Samsung 990 PRO 1TB nor Crucial P310 2TB fits without modification.
Market context: the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB ranks #3 of 4 Gen 4 1 TB drives we track by $/TB, while the Crucial P310 2TB ranks #4 of 11 Gen 4 2 TB drives. Neither cracks the top of the value table, so it's worth glancing at the alternatives below before picking either.
Go with the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB for the lower retail price ($239 vs $292), and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. Among consumer SSD makers, Samsung's PRO series consistently scores highest on long-term reliability surveys (Backblaze, Puget Systems Q1 2026 data).
Go with the Crucial P310 2TB for better $/TB economics ($146.00/TB), and a higher TBW endurance rating (880 TBW).