The Samsung 990 Pro superseded it, but the Samsung 980 Pro was one of the best SSDs. Now, it may be nearly three years old, but it’s a popular PCIe 4.0 drive that’s far more affordable than its successor, so it’s no shock that there are many fakes on the market.
1 Chinese user from Baidutieva (opens in new tab) (via Harukaze 5719 (opens in new tab)) I recently came across a fake Samsung 980 Pro on a forum. The fake drive contained everything that suggested it was genuine, including a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB sticker and firmware that later turned out to be fake. The counterfeiting was so good that the mystery drive even managed to trick the Samsung Magician software. Once the sticker was removed, the drive showed all signs of a counterfeit SSD.
The SSD utilizes the same Maxio MAP1602A PCIe 4.0 SSD controller that powers the Acer Predator GM7. The SSD controller comes from TSMC’s 12nm process node and features a DRAM-free design. More experienced consumers know that Samsung manufactures and uses his SSD controllers and NAND chips in his SSDs of the brand.
For the Samsung 980 Pro, the SSD uses an 8nm Elpis controller with a DRAM design. Additionally, Samsung’s SSD controllers are typically larger than the competition. As for NAND selection, the Samsung 980 Pro employs 128-layer TLC 3D V-NAND. The rogue Samsung 980 Pro drive uses YMTC’s 128-layer TLC 3D NAND (X2-9060) and is built with the Chinese chip maker’s Xtacking 2.0 technology.
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Using a different SSD controller and NAND, the fake drive obviously doesn’t perform as well as the real Samsung 980 Pro. According to user-provided benchmarks, the SSD delivered sequential read and write speeds of around 4.8 GBps and 4.5 GBps respectively on CrystalDiskMark, and up to 4.2 GBps and 3.9 GBps on the AS SSD. Conversely, the Samsung 980 Pro offers sequential reads and writes of up to 7 GBps and 5 Gbps respectively, depending on capacity. So the fake drive’s performance numbers are off by a lot.
This merchant sold a fake Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD for 880 RMB or $127.77 on Xianyu, a Taobao second-hand market. The drive is also in official Samsung packaging. Price alone makes it easy to tell that an SSD is a fake.The actual drives currently being sold are $169.99 (opens in new tab) in the US market. The scammed users claim that they had been away from PC gaming for some time and were unfamiliar with the latest technology. Additionally, he reportedly didn’t have his PC on hand, so it was 10 days before he was able to test the drive.
Especially in China, there is always an immediate risk of buying computer hardware on the second-hand market. However, even popular online shopping platforms such as AliExpress and Taobao are rife with malicious merchants looking to take advantage of uninformed consumers. These same actors are infiltrating US retailers as third-party sellers. I’ve seen quite a few scams, including Walmart’s $39 30 TB portable SSD and Amazon’s $100 16 TB SSD. If something sounds too good, it usually is.
