Samsung 990 PRO
Let's take a look at the Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD, which is great for gaming and productivity systems.
Last updated
Let's take a look at the Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD, which is great for gaming and productivity systems.
Last updated
The Samsung 990 PRO is a high-end NVMe SSD that's great for gaming and productivity work, such as video editing, 3D artists, and Computer Aided Design (CAD). The drive has the M.2 2280 form factor, which is common on ATX motherboards for desktop gaming systems. Laptops can also often use the 2280 form factor, depending on which model you have; make sure you check compatibility with your laptop before purchasing.
This drive is offered in several different capacities:
1 TB (MZ-V9P1T0BW)
2 TB (MZ-V9P2T0BW)
4 TB (MZ-V9P4T0BW)
The type of NAND used by an NVMe drive is incredibly important. The lower tier of NVMe drives commonly use QLC NAND, which generally has very slow read/write performance. However, the 990 PRO uses Samsung's V-NAND 3-bit MLC instead, providing significantly better performance.
It uses a Samsung "in-house" storage controller, which little detail is known about. Aside from the NAND itself, there is also a separate DDR4 DRAM cache on the 990 PRO, on all of the different capacity models. Even though MLC NAND is pretty fast, the drive can still benefit from having an additional on-device cache.
The Samsung 990 PRO drive claims to have read speeds up to 7,450 MB per second. Manufacturers often overstate their performance figures however, so it's inadvisable to take this claim at face value. That's where benchmarking comes into play, so we can determine how the drive actually works in real-world applications.
The claimed write speed is 6,900 MB per second, but again, that's an extremely idealistic figure. According to Tom's Hardware, the 990 PRO is capable of sustaining a high write speed of 1.4 GB per second. While that's nowhere near the 6.9 GB figure from Samsung, it's still nothing to sneeze at.
If you need to clone your existing hard drive and copy your operating system boot drive and data over to the new Samsung 990 PRO, Samsung offers a cloning utility called Magician. You can download Magician here for MacOS or Windows operating systems. This program can also perform a firmware update on your drive periodically.
Keep in mind that this software only works to transfer your data to a Samsung drive. You can't use Samsung Magician to clone data to another manufacturer target drive.
So what do people in product reviews say about the Samsung 990 PRO? What are the best attributes of this drive?
Relating to file transfers, one reviewer said that "large file transfers are breeze".
Regarding drive temperatures, one reviewer claimed that the Samsung Magician software's performance benchmark never caused the temperature to exceed 30 celsius.
It's easy to install the Samsung 990 PRO in a PlayStation 5 for extra game storage.
Another user said that their 990 PRO only got up to 42 celsius during a 3-hour file transfer
There is no free lunch, and there are always trade-offs with products. Nothing is perfect, right? So what are people saying about the Samsung 990 PRO that they don't like?
The price is high, compared to other NVMe SSD drives. This is understandable, but it also provides much better performance than QLC NAND drives.
One person claims to have installed it in a PCIe 4x4 slot rated for 7500 MB / sec, but only got 3500 MB / sec speeds during a test.
Doesn't include the M.2 mounting screw: this is an inexpensive and small part that NVMe drive manufacturers should include
While the Samsung 990 PRO costs more than other NVMe SSDs on the market, it is a high performance drive that operates at reasonable temperatures. We would highly recommend spending the extra money for the 990 PRO over slower, less expensive QLC NAND drives.
