Samsung 990 Pro review

Samsung was one of many first SSD makers to supply a product for PCIe 4.0 NVMe with the wonderful 980 Professional. This was a design that stood head and shoulders above lots of the early different choices, and in the present day continues to be thought-about a stable alternative for players and workstations customers.

The snag with being early into any new expertise is that your opponents get to study out of your endeavours and use that data after they come to assemble their designs. Ultimately, the likes of Kingston, Sabrent and Seagate produced Gen 4 designs that went even faster than the Samsung 980 Professional with new controllers and higher NAND reminiscence.

Earlier than Gen 5 SSDs arrive, Samsung goals to stir the cauldron of Gen 4 expertise with the brand new 990 Professional.

Representing its try and regain the efficiency NVMe crown, is the 990 Professional well worth the premium value over competitor designs or its earlier mannequin?

Design & construct

• Easy & smooth
• Heatsink not all the time included (however we’d suggest one)

Apart from that Samsung most likely now wants a brand new naming conference, the one factor that the majority potential purchasers know in regards to the 990 Professional is that it’s the most recent in an extended chain of 900 collection SSDs that goes again to when all of the choices have been SATA and NVMe wasn’t an choice.

Mark Pickavance

The drive isn’t considerably completely different from nearly all of 2280 spec M.2 NVMe drives, having all the parts mounted on the upside of the board after which discretely hidden from view by labels.

Given the excessive throughput and its potential for warmth technology, the truth that the 990 Professional can come with out a heatsink appears a mildly odd alternative. Our overview {hardware} was with out one, and we’d not wish to run such a high-performance gadget with out one hooked up.

Trying on the heatsink-installed design, it’s a slim steel overlaying that ought to simply match on any PC, Sony PS5 or inside a laptop computer with PCIe 4.0 rated M.2 2280 slots.

Putting it alongside a 980 Professional, the brand new 990 Professional has an identical variety of parts and comparable flash modules however a smaller controller. Samsung doesn’t use a third-party controller however one created in-house. Whereas it was fabricated on the identical 8nm course of as was used earlier than, that it’s a smaller chip suggests a extra environment friendly and compact design.

These modifications are mirrored within the energy consumption of the brand new design, and we’ll discuss extra about that later.

Specs & options

• {Hardware} encryption
• TurboWrite 2.0
• Spectacular power-efficiency

Reaching the complete potential of this drive requires an NVMe 2.0 M.2(2280) slot that helps PCIe Gen 4 x4 operations, though it’s going to work in a Gen 3 slot, however at diminished pace.

Samsung describes the controller as an ‘in-house’, which presumably is derived from the Elpis controller developed for the 980 Professional collection. Though, it didn’t trouble naming this one.

A essential characteristic maintained from earlier than is that the 990 Professional helps {hardware} encryption, a characteristic lots of the different manufacturers have determined is simply too area of interest to supply.

An space that always will get missed in SSD critiques is how the drive performs when confronted with a really massive write, like when a drive is cloned. New to the 990 Professional is TurboWrite 2.0 expertise, a change that would triple the buffer dimension of the earlier design.

On the 2TB drive, that gives as much as 226GB of buffered house earlier than the method is compelled to immediately write to the NAND. Although, as with all caching expertise that makes use of SLC buffers, these numbers assume the drive is empty, because the potential buffer quantity will lower because the drive fills.

Mark Pickavance

One fascinating side of the brand new design is that the brand new controller has unlocked energy efficiencies that the 980 Professional lacked. Samsung claims that the 990 Professional is 50% extra energy environment friendly, making it the higher alternative for laptop computer customers.

The facility consumption of the 990 Professional whereas writing is between 5.0 W and 5.1W relying on the drive’s capability, and the learn varies from 5.4W on the 1TB choice to five.8W on the 2TB mannequin.

For comparability, the 1TB 980 Professional used as much as 6.2W studying and 5.7W writing, although it did have a touch decrease 35mW idle draw. When matched with the calls for of the CPU and GPU in any system, these numbers are modest. Nonetheless, any enchancment is welcome for individuals who use battery energy, and fewer energy consumed interprets into diminished warmth generated.

Efficiency

• As much as 7,450MB/s learn pace & 6,900MB/s write
• Solely as much as 2TB whole capability
• Restricted TBW

Critically, the Samsung 980 Professional supplied solely ‘as much as’ 7,000MB/s learn and never above that threshold, one thing that we’ve seen subsequently from the WD Black SN850, Kingston KC3000, Adata XPG Gammix S70, Seagate FireCuda 530 and Corsair MP600 PRO XT.

The quoted pace of the 990 Professional is 7,450MB/s learn pace, making it theoretically no less than 6% faster than its predecessor, no less than in that context.

Write pace supposedly caps out at 6,900MB/s, and these speeds are constant throughout each the 1TB and 2TB fashions.

The place the variations diverge is within the quoted IOPS, with the 2TB drive having barely increased learn IOPs QD32 16 Thread take a look at than its 1TB counterpart. The bigger half consumes extra energy studying, as much as 5.8W from the 5.4W of the smaller capability, and it additionally has a fantastic idle overhead of 55mW over 50mW on the 1TB choice.

Mark Pickavance

And, usually the bigger drive has a greater TBW (whole bytes written) score of 1200TB over the 600TB on the 1TB stick. These are unchanged from the 980 Professional, making the 990 Professional nothing particular in resilience when in comparison with that supplied by the Seagate FireCuda 530, being triple as a lot. And that no capacities over 2TB can be found can be a little bit disappointing.

In our testing, it was attention-grabbing to match the 990 Professional with the earlier scores achieved by the 980 Professional and see the place the modifications have had the best affect on the brand new drive.

Utilizing ATTO for instance, it seems that the 990 Professional is healthier with smaller recordsdata, studying and writing, the 980 Professional by about 15% till it reaches about 128K recordsdata and higher.

As welcome as the improved small file efficiency is, the killer distinction right here is the write pace. On our 980 Professional testing, this peaked at round 4,900MB/s, however on the 990 Professional hit the quoted 6,450MB/s. That’s almost a 32% enhance, and it makes the 990 Professional one of many quickest NVMe drives for writing that we’ve seen.

That enhanced write efficiency shall be extremely noticeable for anybody modifying massive recordsdata, like 4K video, or dumping massive datasets onto this storage.

Utilizing the default profile of CrystalDiskMark 8.04, the 1TB overview drive managed a learn pace of seven,474MB/s and write pace of 6,861MB/s.

As an total impression of all of the benchmark knowledge, the Samsung 990 Professional stands out for the way constant it’s, as all operations are carried out with out large fluctuations. This reveals that the usage of cache is tightly managed to keep away from any noticeable efficiency oscillations and obtain most throughput.

In efficiency phrases, aside from its TBW, this Samsung 990 Professional is undoubtedly the cream that’s floated to the highest of extremely pasteurised retail SSD milk.

Value

Contemplating its mantel because the quickest Gen 4 NVMe drive, the value of the 990 Professional isn’t excessive.

At Amazon within the UK on the time of writing, the price of the 1TB option is £154.99, and the 2TB version is £282.38, making the bigger drive higher worth per GB.

The USA prices are virtually a direct greenback for UK pound translation, being $169.99 and $304.99 for the 1TB and 2TB fashions with out a heatsink. Selecting a heatsink mannequin will increase the prices, in fact.

To place that into some perspective, the earlier 980 Professional with out a heatsink prices $119.99 and $219.99 for a similar capacities, and with a 500GB mannequin in that launch, it may be had for as little as $79.95.

Selecting the 990 Professional is a 50% enhance in price over its predecessor, making the 980 Professional appear to be one thing of a discount at its present asking value.

The blot on Samsung’s fiscal panorama right here is that the Kingston KC3000 is usually cheaper than the 980 Professional, and but that drive is nearer to the efficiency of the 990 Professional.

Over the previous yr, the price of NAND has continued to fall, and it’s more likely to drop much more dramatically when the brand new 256-layer Flash chips seem and usher in 8TB and 16TB modules. And, with Gen 5 simply across the nook, this won’t be the perfect time to purchase an NVMe drive.

See our chart of the greatest SSDs to see what different choices you’ve got.

Samsung

Verdict

There isn’t a doubt that the 990 Professional is faster than the 980 Professional and the wealth of competing merchandise. Nonetheless, as these designs run into the bandwidth limitations of PCIe 4.0, they strategy full saturation of the connection to the PC, and there are few real positive aspects to make. The 990 Professional might be the quickest Gen 4 drive, however the variations between this and different current NVMe launches are refined.

Being sooner than different merchandise is essential to Samsung, probably buying and selling resilience to realize these uncooked speeds.

That brings us to the value, which appears cheap till you begin to take a look at what different manufacturers are asking for his or her Gen 4 merchandise. The Samsung 990 Professional makes even the Seagate FireCuda 530 look low-cost. These merchandise additionally supply a 4TB capability that’s confusingly lacking from the 990 Professional vary.

Samsung says a 4TB choice will seem, presumably in 2023, however that it isn’t prepared at launch is disappointing.

We suspect that after the festive season, the 990 Professional would possibly see a value discount to convey it nearer to competitor merchandise, and if that occurs, the 980 Professional might change into a fair higher deal.

Subsequently, the Samsung 990 Professional is made for those who need absolutely the quickest drive out there and aren’t overly involved about the associated fee or the dearth of a bigger capability. It isn’t for these which can be in search of the perfect worth or who count on added options like a heatsink to be included.

Specs

• Interface: NVMe 2.0 M.2(2280) PCIe Gen 4.0 x4
• Velocity: 7450MB/s learn and 6900MB/s write
• Capacities: 1TB, 2TB
• TBW: 600TB (1TB), 1200TB (2TB)
• Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 2.3 mm
• Weight: 9 g
• Working temperature: 0-70C
• Guarantee/help: restricted 5-year guarantee throughout the scope of the TBW