At a look
Knowledgeable’s Ranking
Execs
- Prime-notch efficiency
- {Hardware} encryption
- Heatsink an possibility
Cons
- Not a cut price
- No 4TB possibility, but
- TBW surpassed by different drives
Our Verdict
A dramatic enchancment over the 980 Professional. The 990 Professional is a drive that may genuinely match the most effective that Seagate, WD and Kingston have to supply. Nonetheless, you pay for this privilege, and the biggest drive dimension is simply 2TB. These searching for a greater TBW and decrease value per GB would possibly contemplate different choices.
Value When Reviewed
From $169.99 for 1TB
Finest Costs At present: Samsung 990 Professional NVMe SSD
Not Obtainable
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 most of the early different choices, and in the present day continues to be thought-about a strong alternative for players and workstations customers.
The snag with being early into any new expertise is that your rivals get to be taught out of your endeavours and use that data after they come to assemble their designs. Finally, 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 to regain the efficiency NVMe crown, is the 990 Professional well worth the premium worth over competitor designs or its earlier mannequin?
Design & construct
- Easy & glossy
- Heatsink not all the time included (however we’d suggest one)
Aside from that Samsung in all probability now wants a brand new naming conference, the one factor that almost all potential purchasers know concerning the 990 Professional is that it’s the newest 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 possibility.
Mark Pickavance
The drive isn’t considerably totally different from nearly all of 2280 spec M.2 NVMe drives, having the entire 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 and not using a heatsink appears a mildly odd alternative. Our evaluate {hardware} was with out one, and we’d not wish to run such a high-performance gadget with out one hooked up.
Wanting on the heatsink-installed design, it’s a slim steel protecting 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 analogous variety of parts and related 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 speak extra about that later.
Specs & options
- {Hardware} encryption
- TurboWrite 2.0
- Spectacular power-efficiency
Attaining 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 velocity.
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 important function maintained from earlier than is that the 990 Professional helps {hardware} encryption, a function most of the different manufacturers have determined is just too area of interest to supply.
An space that usually 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 area earlier than the method is pressured to instantly 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 possibility 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 slightly 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 velocity & 6,900MB/s write
- Solely as much as 2TB whole capability
- Restricted TBW
Critically, the Samsung 980 Professional provided 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 velocity of the 990 Professional is 7,450MB/s learn velocity, making it theoretically at the very least 6% faster than its predecessor, at the very least in that context.
Write velocity 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 terrific idle overhead of 55mW over 50mW on the 1TB possibility.
Mark Pickavance
And, usually the bigger drive has a greater TBW (whole bytes written) ranking 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 provided by the Seagate FireCuda 530, being triple as a lot. And that no capacities over 2TB can be found can also 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 information, studying and writing, the 980 Professional by about 15% till it reaches about 128K information and better.
As welcome as the improved small file efficiency is, the killer distinction right here is the write velocity. 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 practically a 32% improve, and it makes the 990 Professional one of many quickest NVMe drives for writing that we’ve seen.
That enhanced write efficiency might be extremely noticeable for anybody enhancing massive information, like 4K video, or dumping massive datasets onto this storage.
Utilizing the default profile of CrystalDiskMark 8.04, the 1TB evaluate drive managed a learn velocity of seven,474MB/s and write velocity of 6,861MB/s.
As an general 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, apart 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 worth of the 990 Professional isn’t excessive.
At Amazon within the UK on the time of writing, the price of the 1TB possibility is £154.99, and the 2TB model 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 and not using a heatsink. Selecting a heatsink mannequin will increase the prices, after all.
To place that into some perspective, the earlier 980 Professional and not using 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% improve in value over its predecessor, making the 980 Professional appear like one thing of a cut price at its present asking worth.
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 12 months, 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 may not be the most effective time to purchase an NVMe drive.
See our chart of the finest 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 method full saturation of the connection to the PC, and there are few real good points 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 necessary to Samsung, presumably buying and selling resilience to attain these uncooked speeds.
That brings us to the worth, which appears affordable 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 provide a 4TB capability that’s confusingly lacking from the 990 Professional vary.
Samsung says a 4TB possibility 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 worth discount to deliver it nearer to competitor merchandise, and if that occurs, the 980 Professional may develop into an excellent higher deal.
Due to this fact, 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 shortage of a bigger capability. It isn’t for these which can be searching for the most effective worth or who anticipate added options like a heatsink to be included.
Specs
- Interface: NVMe 2.0 M.2(2280) PCIe Gen 4.0 x4
- Pace: 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/assist: restricted 5-year guarantee inside the scope of the TBW