Samsung just launched the Samsung 990 PRO SSD connected via PCIe 4.0. This choice might surprise some as PCIe 5.0 is around the corner, but these interfaces are often not the bottleneck for storage devices in real-world conditions.
The company claims this new SSD can reach 7450 MBps (read) and 6900 MBps (write) at around ~1500K IOPS. That’s about 50%  better than the excellent 980 PRO SSD. We’ll have to wait for independent reviews to confirm this, but it seems believable.
The power efficiency is also said to be 50% higher, which could significantly affect heat dissipation and power consumption. For heavy users, there’s a version with a beefier heatsink (but no RGB?).
Samsung is promoting this SSD to gamers and Creative users, which makes sense as they represent the perfect use case for such a product. They are also big spenders when it comes to buying the best performance.
The Samsung 990 PRO comes in 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB capacities, and they all feature an LPDDR4 DRAM cache of 1GB per 1TB, so a maximum of 4GB. They support full-disk encryption and come with a 5-year limited warranty.
Perhaps the best feature is the pricing. At $179, the 1TB 990 PRO is particularly attractive. The 2TB costs $309, and we don’t know the price of the 4TB version or its release date.
Filed in . Read more about Samsung SSD and SSDs.
