Samsung was a little late to the party with its first PCIe Gen4 SSD (980 Pro) for client PCs, losing market share to Phison and its partners. However, the company doesn’t want to fall behind with PCIe Gen5 drives for enthusiast-grade drives. Therefore, the next generation 990 Pro SSD is already registered in the Korean customs database.
Samsung’s 990 Pro SSD entry in customs database (found by @harukaze5719) hasn’t revealed many details about the upcoming drives, other than model numbers (MZ-V9P1T0, MZ-V9P2T0), which could point to 1TB and 2TB configurations.1 TB and 2 TB. ‘s capacity isn’t the maximum capacity point for M.2 drives these days, but it does indicate that the upcoming Samsung 990 Pro SSD won’t be aimed at entry-level PCs.
It’s been just under a year since processors with PCIe 5.0 interface shipped, and more CPUs with PCIe support are expected to become available from AMD (codenamed Raphael) and Intel (codenamed Raptor Lake) this fall. So it makes little sense for a company like Samsung to release another generation of premium drives with a PCIe 4.0 interface. So, it’s safe to assume that Samsung’s next-generation 990 Pro SSD will feature a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface.
In fact, Samsung has been shipping the PM1743 enterprise-grade PCIe Gen5 SSD for some time, but such drives are expensive and overkill for desktop PCs. you need an adapter. As such, few enthusiasts used them in Intel’s 12th Generation Core “Alder Lake” systems.
In contrast, Samsung’s 990 Pro SSD is expected to use the M.2-2280 form factor, making it compatible with desktops and laptops. The only thing that isn’t clear is how much heat these drives give off and what kind of cooling system they need.
Note that the Korean customs database already lists Samsung’s 990 Pro SSD. Unfortunately, we don’t know how much Samsung will charge for these products.
