Samsung 980 Pro 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - £119.99 (was £169.99)
The integrated heatsink allows for better sustained performance, and is particularly handy for desktop builds with restricted airflow over the motherboard - for example, if you’re using an AiO liquid cooler. It’s also compatible with the PS5 out of the box, which is handy if you’re finding the ~825GB internal storage a bit limited. Katharine reviewed the 980 Pro during her reign of excellence as RPS hardware editor (before ascending to her current position at the reigns of Horace), calling it a ‘PCIe 4.0 SSD speed demon’ - a characterisation I wholeheartedly agree with. This was the first ‘second-gen’ PICe 4.0 drive, and its 7000MB/s sequential read speeds and comptitive random I/O capabilities wiped the floor with the first PCIe 4.0 drives to hit the market a couple of years earlier. This is down to Samsung’s tight vertical integration - they supply the NAND, the controller and the housing- which allows them to consistently deliver high-performance drives that regularly end up in best SSD lists. Nowadays, the likes of the WD SN850 and Crucial P5 Plus offer similar game load times, but the 980 Pro remains one of the fastest drives on the market - and will likely remain so until PCIe 5.0 examples start appearing, potentially later this year. That makes it a good time to pick up a critically-acclaimed SSD at a discount. This 1TB model launched at £200, so to see it at nearly half that is awesome - especially as you get that useful heatsink included.
