Buy the WD BLACK SN850X 2TB NVMe SSD.

It matches the 990 Pro everywhere that matters and costs $395 less doing it.

What was compared

1. Same job done for $395 less
The SN850X is $244.99, the 990 Pro is $639.99, and the real-world speed gap between them is 150 MB/s you will never feel. That money buys you nothing in ordinary use, it just makes the Samsung box heavier.
2. Fewer horror stories from actual owners
Owners have reported the 990 Pro's health degrading rapidly on certain firmware batches, a problem serious enough that Samsung had to patch it. The SN850X carries no comparable pattern of reported failures in the same research.
3. Warranty and lifespan are a dead heat
Both drives carry a 5-year warranty and land around the same TBW endurance rating for 2TB. You are not buying extra years of life or extra write budget with the pricier Samsung, so the premium buys nothing here either.
4. Your games will not load one second faster
Gaming load times are bottlenecked by the game engine and CPU, not by drive speed once you are already on Gen4 NVMe. The SN850X delivers the exact same boot-and-load experience as the 990 Pro in a real gaming rig.
5. Yes, the 990 Pro benchmarks higher. Ignore it.
The 990 Pro does lead on paper in random IOPS and sequential read, a real number that shows up in sustained server-style workloads and heavy content creation. Unless you are running database or video-editing workstation loads all day, that is a spec you pay for and never see, and we do not think that is most gamers.