Samsung 990 Pro: New performance NVMe SSD reads at 7,450 MB/s

The almost legendary Samsung 980 Pro from 2020 finally gets a successor. The specifications of the new Samsung 990 Pro, which first appeared in a database at the beginning of August, have one or two surprises. Because a PCIe 5.0 connection, as suspected, is unfortunately not offered by the new NVMe SSD.

The Samsung 990 Pro in detail

Finally we have the certainty, because today the new NVMe SSD Samsung 990 Pro was officially presented. Contrary to expectations, however, Samsung is not going for the fast PCIe 5.0 standard, but is still sticking to PCIe 4.0.

“With our 990 PRO, we’ve created the right mix of speed, power efficiency and reliability so gamers and creatives can work and play without interruption,” reveals KyuYoung Lee, vice president of the Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics.

The current model relies on a new V-NAND technology from Samsung and a new, self-developed controller. According to the manufacturer, this is intended to offer the highest speed currently available via the PCIe 4.0 interface.

However, the choice of the standard is surprising. After all, some manufacturers are already preparing the first M.2 SSDs with PCIe 5.0, which allow significantly higher speeds. Among them, for example, the recently unveiled Corsair MP700, which is still scheduled to launch in fall 2022.

7,450 MB/s in sequential read

Specifically, Samsung is talking about sequential read speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s, as well as 6,900 MB/s in sequential write. In random read and write, the Samsung 990 Pro achieves up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS, respectively.

The random performance also increases noticeably compared to the predecessor. Samsung talks about a performance increase of 55% compared to the 980 Pro. At least the speeds of the offered capacities are not supposed to differ from each other – that was still different in the 980 Pro.

Samsung also focuses on gaming performance, not only on PCs, but also on consoles. By which the PlayStation 5 is meant.

Increased efficiency and better heat control

Furthermore, the Samsung 990 Pro is said to offer a more power-efficient architecture thanks to the newly developed controller, providing up to 50 percent better energy efficiency compared to the 980 Pro.

For reliable thermal management, the 990 Pro uses a nickel-coated controller and heatspreader. Samsung’s Dynamic Thermal Guard technology also ensures that the drive’s temperature stays at a suitable level.

As a result, the SSD should be able to access its full performance more stably, while performance fluctuations are prevented. The NVMe SSD is offered in the M.2 2280 form factor and will be available in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB at the start. A variant with 4 TB of storage space and a model with a heatsink including RGB lighting are to follow in 2023.

Prices and availability

The Samsung 990 Pro NVMe SSD will go on pre-sale in October 2022. It starts at an MSRP of 174.90 euros for the 1 TB capacity model. The 2 TB model has a recommended retail price of 324.90 Euros.