Solid state drives are the go-to option for primary storage in desktops, laptops, and consoles these days. Large capacity drives have gotten cheaper over time, and high performance has come to even lower-end models. That's exactly the kind of combination we've hunted down today. You can get Lexar's 8TB NM790 PCIe Gen4 SSD for just $499 during Amazon's Prime Big Deals Day — a generous 32% off its list price, making for the cheapest we've ever seen this drive.
The NM790 is a DRAM-less SSD, which means it relies on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) tech to use part of your system memory as its cache. This usually affects random read/write performance, but our review found that this drive's performance in real-world usage is top-notch regardless.
That's partly due to the use of Maxio's MAP1602 controller, paired with YMTC's 232-Layer TLC NAND, a combo which is usually only reserved for PCIe 5.0 drives. We get read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6,200 MB/s, along with 6000TBW of endurance, which should be plenty to keep this bad boy running for years.
Speaking of, Lexar backs this drive up with a 5-year warranty. Moreover, there's no proprietary software supplied by Lexar so you're free (nay, encouraged) to use industry-standard tools like Clonezilla for backup, and CrystalDiskMark to gauge health info. The drive doesn't come with a heatsink because it doesn't need one — it stays under 70 °C in use— and, therefore, makes for a great option for laptops and the PlayStation 5. The standard M.2 2280 form factor means you can also fit this inside most handheld consoles.
Lexar's NM790 is an all-rounder that performs great across the board. In our testing of the 4TB model, it regularly beat out similarly-spec'd and priced models, often coming out on top as the fastest DRAM-less Gen4 SSD. It's incredibly efficient, too, consuming significantly less power than the competition, which helps with usage in laptops.
As you can see in the charts above, it tops most charts and aces benchmarks left-and-right, with no blatant areas of weaknesses. It has great sustained performance that's now matched at an even greater capacity, all available for the greatest price.
If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.
