Samsung Announces 990 PRO SSDs for PCIe 4.0 with a Big Hit in Speed

The Samsung 990 PRO, the latest NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, aims to give gamers, 3D renderers and 4K/8K video editors a decent price-to-performance ratio if this top-of-the-line drive can come close to its promised performance. in real tests.

The 990 PRO is advertised as offering “nearly the fastest speed currently available with the new PCIe 4.0 interface”and a 55 percent random performance increase over the 980 Pro. Samsung claims sequential read and write speeds of 7450 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 6900 MB/s, respectively. Random read/write speeds are listed as 1400K and 1550K IOPS, respectively, based on IOmeter 1.1.0 performance. DRAM for 990 PRO drives is 1 GB per terabyte of storage, up to 4 GB for the 4 TB model.

Samsung suggests that the performance boost is due to its own advances in V-NAND and the proprietary controller. Energy efficiency is increased by 50 percent compared to the 980 PRO, the company claims, while the nickel plating and heat dissipation label dissipate heat. The heatsink model gives you more confidence in the temperature and of course adds RGB lighting.

The 990 PRO line uses 3-bit TLC (Three-Level Cell) NAND memory. As noted in our review of the Samsung 980 line, you’re sacrificing some read and write endurance for that kind of density and speed. Samsung hasn’t provided cache data for its latest drives, which could affect when the buffer is used up and write speeds “fall off the cliff.”

The 990 PRO and PRO with heatsink drives will be available in October for a suggested retail price of $179 for 1TB and $309 for 2TB (presumably for non-heatsink versions). The 4TB model should be available in 2023. All models are M.2 2280 and come with a five-year limited warranty. You can subscribe on the Samsung website to receive updates on ordering 990 PRO.