Samsung Launches 990 Pro Series PCIe 4.0 SSDs With up to 7,450 MB/s
Samsung has launched the long-awaited 990 Pro series SSD. These are high performance NVMe M.2 2280 SSDs “optimized for gaming and creative applications”. Prior to this announcement, there were hints that Samsung’s 990 Pro series SSDs would feature a PCIe 5.0 interface. But at least it hasn’t happened yet. The new Samsung 990 Pro series SSDs use the PCIe 4.0 interface.
If you’re a little disappointed that the 990 Pro series SSDs don’t use PCIe 5.0, there’s at least some consolation. It features a 990 Pro SSD capable of read and write speeds, a step up from previous drives. This compares well with the Samsung SSD 980 Pro, which can handle up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,100 MB/s respectively. Additionally, the IOPS performance numbers are 55% better than the 980 Pro SSD.
In a broader comparison, when gaming on Forspoken, Samsung claims the new SSD loads a game level in about 1 second, which is 4x faster than a SATA SSD and 28 times faster than loading a level from an HDD. It’s twice as fast.
Samsung SSD 990 Pro /990 Pro HS |
|
---|---|
interface |
PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 |
controller |
Inside Samsung |
NAND/LPDDR4 cache |
1TB/1GB, 2TB/2GB, 4TB/4GB |
Sequence read/write |
Up to 7,450 MB/s, up to 6,900 MB/s |
random read/write |
Up to 1,400K IOPS, up to 1,550K IOPS |
encryption |
AES 256-bit full disk encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, encrypted drive (IEEE1667) |
TBW Endurance |
600TB, 1,200TB, 2,400TB |
guarantee |
5 years or TBW (whichever comes first) |
A second consolation is that the 990 Pro series will launch in two variants with three capacities of 1, 2, and 4 TB. One variation uses a nickel coating on the controller and a heat spreader label across the Samsung V-NAND 3-bit TLC IC. Samsung will also sell a 990 Pro HS (with heatsink) model. This model comes with a sturdier sculpted heatsink with a “fast stripe” that lights up the RGB LEDs.
Samsung has not made any concrete, data-driven claims about the benefits of purchasing the RGB heatsink model. It’s just that the heatsink “prevents performance degradation due to overheating”. No matter which model you buy, Samsung claims the new controller is designed to dramatically improve power efficiency, making him a 50% improvement over the controller used in the SSD 980 Pro. doing.
There have been some hints that Samsung’s SSD 990 Pro will be a PCIe 5.0 device. Instead, it’s all the more surprising given that smaller storage players like Corsair and Gigabyte recently announced PCIe 5.0 SSDs with transfer speeds up to 12,400 MB/s. This may be because Samsung wants to use its own SSD controller, but Phison’s is the only PCIe 5.0 storage controller currently shipping.
Retailers will start selling the 1 TB and 2 TB models in October, priced at $179 and $309 respectively. Unfortunately, we don’t have a price for his 4TB model, which isn’t expected until 2023. Also, Samsung has not revealed a premium price for his RGB heatsink model.