This gargantuan 4TB NVMe SSD is on sale for $177
The Lexar NM790 is our top value PCIe 4.0 SSD pick.
Lexar's NM790 4TB NVMe SSD thrums at the heart of my most beautiful , functional computer, the Digital Foundry CPU test bed. And now it can thrum at the heart of your PC too, as this capacious drive has dropped in price from $210 to $177 at Amazon US.
The Lexar NM790 is an interesting drive, as it delivers similar performance to the very fastest gaming SSDs on the market, yet lacks the DRAM cache that those drives rely on for sustained performance. For most users, this isn't an issue - you're only likely to notice the lack of DRAM during a sustained random write scenario that doesn't happen when playing games or using a computer for web browsing and the like. And by eschewing that DRAM cache, and instead using HMB which relies on your computer's RAM instead, you can make a drive that's significantly cheaper than the competition while being within touching distance when it comes to performance benchmarks.
It's this mixture of performance and value that's made the Lexar NM790 our 'best cheap PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming' pick. It'll even work in the PS5, though Sony recommends picking up a cheap NVMe heatsink.
After all, when you consider that the popular WD SN850x has similar maximum speeds to the NM790 yet costs $260 for a 4TB model even when on sale, you can see that there's a pretty massive price gulf between the two SSDs. Given that the NM790 loaded our Shadow of the Tomb Raider save in seven seconds and the WD SN850x took 6.7 seconds, is it worth paying nearly 50% more for the WD drive? For most people, the answer is that it's not - the NM790 is just the sensible choice.
In any case, you can read our write-up of the NM790 for more insight, but I think this is a fine deal and well worth considering. Thanks for your time, and keep your stick on the ice.
Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon's latest sale event for Prime members, is running across October 10th-11th. We're rounding up all the best Prime Big Deal Days PC gaming deals, with dedicated guides to our picks of the best graphics card deals and Steam Deck accessories deals.