1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive SSD Expired

Hard to get excited about this after getting on the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB, $30 deal a few weeks back.

Glad I saw this I was just getting ready to waste everyone's time posting the exact same deal (fortunately the pop up window for the title showed the same item )

One heads up I wanted to give people.. the $7 coupon is a promotional credit that is automatically added to your current amazon promotional credit.. so let's say you already had $20 in amazon promo credit prior to placing the order.. the amazon website will FORCE you to use the $20 in promo credit you already had for $27 off the order total regardless of if you want to use your entire promo credit on the order or not.

For some people no big deal, people like me who remember the old days when amazon made the coupon separate from your promo credit and you had a choice, it's rather annoying.

In theory you can call customer service or chat with them online like I did.. in reality chatting with them online is absolutely useless, you get a terrified chat rep (I thought I was being nice I think all amazon employees are just terrified of meeting their unrealistic quotas) who doesn't really want to transfer you to her supervisor and will vainly try every method possible and waste 30 minutes of time before she tries to transfer you to a supervisor.. the chat window will then time out as the supervisor waits for you to type something, and even if you type something it will automatically transfer you to another supervisor who will also time out.. or at least that was my experience today I'm sure it's not that way ALL the time but be aware this can happen.

I had a similar problem with a logitech webcam amazon offered a coupon on and that also took a long time to resolve albeit via phone which is what I would do.. be prepared to waste time as the phone rep frantically tries to resolve the problem on their own, realizes they can't then transfers you to a supervisor who will issue the promo credit you're losing out on back onto your amazon account after watching you place the order (note that it's a promo credit good only towards items sold and shipped by amazon ) .. so if you go that route make sure you have lots of emails to check or other things to keep you busy so it's not a complete waste of time for you ..

I got this about 3 weeks ago for $50 plus tax. I hadn't looked at ssd for two years but my PNY drive's health dropped to 66%. I had an excuse to shop for a replacement. This Samsung drive is fast but it runs hot even with heat sink. It is for desktop.
PNY gave me 30-40C in temperature. This Samsung 970 gives me 40-55C.

what software did you use to determine the health?

Do people think that prices will continue to drop on SSDs?

Sorry I'm confused, why would you go through so much trouble to not use the credit? Why not just use it?

How much cheaper do you need them to be?

We're already below the $/TB of desktop mechanical drives with a significant boost in performance.

What you'll probably see is larger drives replacing the baseline 1TB price point as smaller 128GB and 256GB drives get phased out.

I got this about 3 weeks ago for $50 plus tax. I hadn't looked at ssd for two years but my PNY drive's health dropped to 66%. I had an excuse to shop for a replacement. This Samsung drive is fast but it runs hot even with heat sink. It is for desktop.
PNY gave me 30-40C in temperature. This Samsung 970 gives me 40-55C.

thank you, just cancelled, i saw some old slickdeals posts the 2tb has been at $75

I can vouch for this too the samsung 970 does run hot to the point where I got worried about it and did a ton of online research to convince myself it was going to be okay

Opinions vary on the internet but a few takeaway points I came up with after hours of research (not saying I'm an expert by any means, if someone knows more by all means please step in and correct me so I and everyone else will know better )

- the "bigger", "main" part of the drive "likes to be hot" to a certain degree.. the "controller" part of the drive prefers lower temps... apparently heatsinks just try to cool off the entire m2 drive .. plus if you decide to get a heatsink you really should check the heatsink's measurements vs the motherboard not all heatsinks fit all MB's apparently .. there's some debate as to whether heatsinks help or are necessary

- my theory is that big large graphics cards that generate lots of heat can drive up the temp too .. the first samsung 970 plus I grabbed tends to stay at 42 degrees in my daughter's desktop PC but the video card in it is a more "humble" one that doesn't even need to have a power supply cable connected to it and (obviously) draws less electrical power.. my son's desktop PC has a much larger video card with an 8 pin power supply and the big fans that go with it blowing out hot air, and the samsung 970 evo plus in that stays around 48 to 53 degrees all the time which leads me to my next point

- at first you might want to just go ahead and use the heatsink that comes standard with some motherboards for the m2 drive like I did.. with some MB's though they do that because the m2 slot is directly under the video/graphics card which tends to drive heat to it.. some people on the net have actually reported lower temps when they move the samsung 970 evo to the drive without the heatsink but it's further away from the video card (not in my son's desktop PC build's case though temp stayed the same even when relocated see below )

- there are people who feel that temps in the high 40's to low 50's are perfectly fine and you only need to worry if it routinely goes above 70 degrees which is the "maximum safe operating temp" apparently and even then the m2 drive will (apparently) throttle itself down to a lower speed to try and cool itself off but of course you'll take a performance hit which isn't the best possible outcome

- strangely enough when I tried stress-testing the samsung 970 evo plus by installing and playing Batman Arkham Knight on it after relocating it to the non heatsink m2 port it did not make much of a difference temp wise, tended to hover around 53 degrees, the same temp the samsung sits at when it's doing nothing at times.. on the other hand one might argue an older game like Batman Arkham Knight isn't much of a stress test (didn't want to tax my son's desktop build by running Deus Ex Mankind Divided on it and that's the most demanding PC game I have in my library right now)

- when used as a Windows 11 drive in my daughter's desktop PC I noticed the temp rose at most from 40 to 42 degrees even when my daughter was multitasking on the PC (playing a game and talking to friends online though I should note I have her install and run the games on a different drive other than the samsung) .. not sure if Windows demands less such that the samsung runs cooler compared to gaming?

- the humble crucial P3 m2 drive (I say humble because no DRAM but that';s a whole another debate right there as to whether you need DRAM ) in contrast even when put into the heatshield/heatsink under the graphics card in my son's desktop tended to be around 38 to 43 degrees so definitely runs cooler than the samsung 970 evo plus

- there are many reports online about the samsung 970 evo plus just plain running hot compared to other m2 drives .. so you'll have to decide on your own if you're okay with that... given the low price and how various online reviewers claim it's a great m2 drive I've decided to risk it and just make it the Windows 11 boot drive in all my desktop PC's (my son's not in a position for me to upgrade him to Win 11 yet but will be doing so later on when he's on winter break from school and will make the samsung 970 evo the new Win 11 boot drive during a clean install)

This drive requires a 0.5mm thick thermal pad over the NAND chips (the big black chips at the end of the board)

and a 1mm thick thermal pad over the rest of the board (DRAM and Controller the the connecting end)L

Or else the heatsink/heatshim/will not make any contact with the controller or the DRAM

My question was more to see if it's a good time to buy. I feel like a lot of times a good deal is posted only to be bested a few weeks later.

I saw this method in YouTube, and I already tried that.
It does lower the temperature by 3 to 5 C.