Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB Review (2026): A PCIe 3.0 Drive Worth Keeping
By LK Wood IV · 2026-06-03 · ~8 min read · St. Louis County, MO
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus came out in 2019. It runs in my daily machine in 2026 alongside a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and an RTX 5080. At some point, most people with older NVMe drives wonder whether they’re leaving performance on the table by not upgrading. Here’s the honest answer from running this drive for years: probably not.
The hardware, briefly
Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus uses 92-layer V-NAND TLC NAND with Samsung’s in-house Phoenix controller and LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The 1TB variant is rated at:
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 × 4, NVMe 1.3 |
| Sequential read | 3,500 MB/s |
| Sequential write | 3,300 MB/s |
| Random read (4KB) | 600,000 IOPS |
| Random write (4KB) | 550,000 IOPS |
| DRAM cache | Yes (LPDDR4) |
| Endurance | 600 TBW |
| Warranty | 5 years |
| Form factor | M.2 2280 |
Source: Samsung official 970 EVO Plus specifications
The random IOPS numbers matter more than the sequential numbers for everything except file transfers and large data workloads. Game load times, application launches, OS responsiveness — these are IOPS workloads, not sequential workloads. The 970 EVO Plus’s 600K/550K IOPS puts it in a range where it is not the bottleneck in any typical gaming or desktop workflow.
Real-world use as a boot drive
This drive holds Windows and my game library in a Ryzen 7 7800X3D build with a ROG STRIX B650-A motherboard. The B650-A has a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot I haven’t used for anything yet and two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots. The 970 EVO Plus runs in one of the PCIe 4.0 slots at native PCIe 3.0 speeds — that’s the correct behavior, backward compatible with no performance penalty beyond the Gen3 ceiling.
In day-to-day use: fast. There is no situation where I’m waiting on storage in typical workflows. Game loads in Baldur’s Gate 3 take about 12 seconds from click to playable. Cyberpunk 2077 initial load is around 15 seconds. Those numbers on a Gen4 drive at 7,000 MB/s would be roughly 11 and 14 seconds. Half a second to a second faster per load. That’s the real-world gap.
For game load times specifically, the IOPS throughput matters more than sequential throughput, and the gap between a quality PCIe 3.0 drive and a quality PCIe 4.0 drive in IOPS is narrower than the sequential bandwidth gap implies.
Thermals
This is the 970 EVO Plus’s weakest point. Under sustained sequential writes — large game installs, moving large video files, system image backups — the drive runs warm. Surface temperatures in the 55–65°C range under heavy write workloads are normal and within spec, but noticeably warmer than modern Gen4 drives that run cooler due to smaller process nodes.
In a slot without a heatsink, it’s worth monitoring via CrystalDiskInfo or HWiNFO64 the first few times you run heavy workloads. The B650-A’s M.2 slots come with thermal pads and shields; the 970 EVO Plus runs comfortably in those slots with the included heatsink assembly.
Throttling doesn’t occur in typical desktop use — only under sustained sequential writes that would also challenge most people’s SATA connectivity. For a gaming boot drive, thermal throttling is a non-issue.
The Gen4 comparison question
Current Gen4 drives at comparable price points:
- Samsung 990 Pro: 7,450/6,900 MB/s sequential, ~$80-90 for 1TB
- WD Black SN850X: 7,300/6,600 MB/s sequential, ~$85-95 for 1TB
- Crucial T500: 7,300/6,800 MB/s sequential, ~$70-80 for 1TB
In 2026, Gen4 drives are essentially price-equivalent to where the 970 EVO Plus was when new. The sequential bandwidth ceiling is double. In sustained sequential transfer workloads — large file copies, video editing timelines, VM disk images with heavy I/O — the Gen4 drives are meaningfully faster.
For everything else — OS boot, game load, application launch, daily file access — the gap is measured in fractions of seconds.
If I were buying new today, I would not buy the 970 EVO Plus. Gen4 drives are available at the same price, run cooler, offer double the sequential bandwidth, and have matching or better IOPS. The 970 EVO Plus was the right buy in 2019–2021. It is not the right buy in 2026.
If I already own one, I would not replace it. The performance I lose to not having a Gen4 boot drive is less than the time it takes to clone drives and reinstall.
Endurance and reliability
600 TBW on the 1TB is a strong endurance rating. At typical desktop write loads — 30–50 GB/day — you’d reach 600 TBW in 32–55 years. Endurance is not a practical concern for this drive in any normal use case. The NAND will survive longer than the rest of the system.
Samsung’s V-NAND reliability track record is excellent. For a boot drive in a long-running machine, the 970 EVO Plus is among the most reliable options available regardless of generation.
The 5-year warranty is a real warranty from a manufacturer still in business and still supporting the product line. This is a relevant contrast to the EVGA SuperNOVA situation where the brand exited hardware production.
DRAM cache: why it matters
The 970 EVO Plus includes LPDDR4 DRAM. Drives without DRAM (DRAM-less drives, common in budget segments) use host memory buffer (HMB) — borrowing system RAM — which introduces latency. Under sustained write loads, DRAM-less drives hit a write cliff where performance drops dramatically as the SLC cache fills and the controller falls back to writing directly to the NAND.
The 970 EVO Plus’s DRAM cache prevents this cliff for typical workloads. Under heavy sustained write (200+ GB transfers), it will eventually exhaust the SLC layer and fall back to raw TLC write speeds (~1,200 MB/s), but this only matters for transfer workloads larger than most users ever encounter.
Verdict
The 970 EVO Plus is a well-built, reliable, properly-performing PCIe 3.0 NVMe that has aged gracefully. It is no longer a competitive purchase at 2026 prices, but it remains a fully capable daily drive for any workload that isn’t specifically bottlenecked by sequential throughput. If it’s in your system, keep it. If you need more storage, add a Gen4 drive rather than replacing it. If you’re building new, buy Gen4.
Related hardware in this build: ROG STRIX B650-A review covers the motherboard this drive runs in, including M.2 slot configuration and thermal performance. The Gaming PC Build 2026 article lists the full build context.