Samsung Lowers 970 PRO and 970 EVO SSD Prices

Last-minute Pricing Change for Samsung 970 SSDs

Good news for those upgrading their SSDs. Samsung has lowered the price of their new 970 PRO and 970 EVO drives. This is just one day before its actual availability in stores. The price cuts are between 5 to 25% of their original MSRP, coming directly from Samsung’s website (via Anandtech).

Although some stores now list the original prices, they are offering ïnstant savings” to reflect the new pricing structure. For NY-based photography equipment website B&H for example, has up to $130 off the 1TB 970 PRO model.

The two new NVMe 1.3 M.2 drives uses Samsung’s Phoenix controller. Both also make use of Samsung’s 64L V-NAND MLC, however the 970 PRO uses the 2-bit variant while the 970 EVO uses the 3-bit version.

Leveraging the PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 interface, the 970 PRO reaches sequential read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,700MB/s. In terms of Random read/write, it reaches up to 500,000 IOPS. The 970 EVO is slightly lower with up to 3,500 MB/s sequential read and 2,500MB/s sequential write. It also does up to 500,000 IOPS on random read but does 480,000 IOPS on random write.

In comparison, the 960 PRO has a max sequential read/write of 3,500/2,100 MB/s, while the 960 EVO reaches up to 3,200/1,900 MB/s sequential read/write.

What Are The Updated Prices for the Samsung 970 PRO and 970 EVO SSDs?

The table above shows the new prices as listed on the Samsung US product page website. These are the SKUs on regular retail units ending in “BW”. Meanwhile, Samsung’s pricing for the Business SKUs ending in “E” reflect the original pricing. There does not appear to be any hardware distinction between the “BW” and “E” SKUs. However, this might be a difference in warranty coverage or packaging.