Samsung has unveiled its new flagship line of solid state drives (SSDs), the 990 PRO series, which is said to be built for a wide range of applications such as gaming and 4K video editing.
There is quite a bit of hype for the 990 because there were hints that this new SSD will run on the PCIe 5.0 interface. Unfortunately, people will have to wait a little longer for a consumer-grade PCIe 5.0 SSD from Samsung Series 990 PRO (opens in a new tab) still runs on the old PCIe 4.0 interface like the 980. To offer a simplified explanation (opens in a new tab), PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is an expansion bus used to transfer data from a solid state drive to video cards or video capture cards. PCIe 4.0 can transfer data at an average speed of 16 GB/s (gigatransfers per second), while the 5.0 interface does so at 32 GB/s.
This does not mean that PCIe 4.0 is slow at all; just not as fast as 5.0.
Fast speeds
Either way, the 990 PRO series still has impressive speeds. Samsung claims the 990 offers “a 55 percent improvement in random performance over the [old] 980 PRO.” According to the company, the 990 has read and write speeds of up to 7,540 MB (megabytes per second) and 6,900 MB/s, respectively. Read speed refers to how quickly the 990 can access stored files. Higher speed means faster startup time for programs. And write speed refers to how fast the SSD can store files. This is especially useful for editors who need to save or copy large 4K video files. Without such a high speed, the process can be very slow.
Samsung claims it was able to improve PCIe 4.0 performance thanks to the company’s combination V-NAND memory technology (opens in a new tab) and a new proprietary controller in the 990.
If that wasn’t enough, the new devices run from NVMe (opens in a new tab) (Volatile Memory Express) protocol for even faster boot times. Samsung gives an example of testing the SSD 990 with an upcoming game Denied and found the map loading time to be about a second. When testing on hard drives, the boot time increased significantly to around 30 seconds.
It’s about the heat
With so much going on, a solid-state drive like this can get pretty hot, so Samsung designed the 990 to be 50 percent more energy efficient compared to the 980 PRO. The SSD also features the company’s proprietary Dynamic Thermal Guard technology to ensure optimal temperatures and a heat sink label to keep things cool.
Samsung also offers the 990 PRO model with a radiator for those who need additional temperature control. The details of how the Heatsink model actually improves heat dissipation are unknown. The company simply says it “offers an extra level of thermal control.” But The radiator model comes with RGB LEDs on the back (opens in a new tab) for this extra kush.
The base 990 and Heatsink models will be introduced this October and will come in two different capacities. The 1TB model will cost $179 and the 2TB model will cost $309. There are plans for a third 4TB model, but it won’t arrive until 2023. The cost of the third solid-state drive is not reported.
The ad seems to imply that the prices are the same for the base model and the radiator model. We reached out to Samsung for clarification on this, as the wording was a bit confusing. This story will be updated when we hear back.
We also asked if and when the company will release a 990 PRO series model with a PCIe 5.0 interface. Corsair recently announced its new PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive, which should offer a massive read speed of 10,000MB/s. Let’s hope that Samsung will introduce a PCIe 5.0 model soon.
If you want to know more about these discs, TechRadar recently updated their list of the best SSDs for 2022.
https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-new-ssd-promises-awesome-speed-even-without-the-latest-technology/
